Afleveringen
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Gold again today. I just can’t stop writing about it.
Another day. Another new high. We touched $3,500 in the early hours of yesterday morning.
That’s 27 new highs in the gold price so far this year.
Yet there is still something about this bull market that doesn’t feel right or complete: it’s not confirmed by silver, which should be trading north of $50. Instead it’s mired around $32. Nor is this bull market confirmed by the miners, which, in most cases, are nowhere near all-time highs.
Nevertheless, on the basis of gold’s price relative to equities, commodities and houses, as outlined last week, gold is starting to look expensive. Is it time to have an eye on the exit?
In the short term, maybe. It’s overbought. We are going into a weak time of year for gold (May to August). But that’s why I like physical. It stops you trading!
How about this for a chart?
It now takes more work than at any time in the last 100 years to buy an ounce of gold.
This is as much a function of declining wages in real terms, and the erosion in value of fiat, as it is the price of gold, but all the same it’s pretty incredible: how we’ve all been lied to!
There are, though, many signs that gold is now fully valued.
But these are not normal times.
And a “proper” bull market will see blow-off tops in silver and the miners. We don’t have that yet.
Let me give you six more reasons (ie largely previously unmentioned reasons) not to be selling your gold.
1. You live in the UK.
(This is one I have mentioned before). Do not be fooled by the fact that the pound has been performing relatively well in the foreign exchange markets this year. It has lost 37% of its purchasing power since 2020 and has repeatedly proven to be a rotten store of value.
The interest on UK gilts is rising, meaning it is getting increasingly expensive for the government to pay for its own debt. We’re above Liz Truss levels and the trend is rising.
We’ve got high energy costs too.
What this government is actually doing to rein in its spending is one thing. What needs to be done is something else. There is no Elon Musk taking the guillotine to it all. The scale of our government inefficiency, waste, corruption, misallocation of capital is both larger, relative to GDP, and more entrenched than in the US. At the level of government we are not even having a conversation about what needs to be done, let alone actually doing anything.
Nor is there any likelihood of this country re-industriali sing. We’ll just have to hope people buy our services, what few we offer. In the meantime we’ll keep borrowing to pay for stuff.
The only way is currency debasement. There has never been a Labour government that did not devalue sterling. Think this one will be any different? Do not store your wealth in sterling. They take enough from you in taxes as it is. Don’t let them take any more.
As always, if you are looking to buy gold, the bullion dealer I use and recommend is the Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. Find out more here.
2. Chinese retail
I’m endlessly wittering on about China’s central bank buying gold, but one thing I confess I’ve overlooked is Chinese retail buying. Its real estate and stock markets have both been rubbish, the former especially, so they are buying gold instead.
Then think about the sheer size of China’s retail market: over a billion potential buyers. Never mind central bank buying, the potential scale of this thing is enormous. What if they al buy an ounce each?
When do they stop buying and start selling? When their real estate and stock markets pick up …
Meanwhile, China’s central bank, the PBOC, which says it bought 5 tonnes last month, actually bought ten times that.
(De-dollarisation, which is perhaps the biggest factor of the lot, except re-monetisation, does not even make it onto this list as I‘ve covered it so many times before).
3. What about Western retail? What about Western institutions?
Western retail and institutional investors have been slow to this bull market and are under-allocated. As my buddy Ross Norman says, “this gold rally has not, to date, been driven by retail investors buying coins and bars, high net clients clamouring for physical, nor institutions buying the gold ETF, not even speculative flows to any great extent. This has been an incredibly low participation rally. A stealth run even”.
Portfolios are roughly 2% allocated to gold at present. They were four times that at the peak of the last bull market in 2011.
That means a lot of room for more Western buying.
Since the confiscation of Russian assets, central banks have bought every pullback to the 50-day moving average. But it’s not just central banks now, retail and institutional investors the world over are coming to the party.
And if you think they’re underweight gold, wait until you see how underweight they are gold miners. (Even these are slowly starting to move - MTL anyone :)?)
4. Gold vs the Nasdaq - OMG
Trends in this ratio tend to go on for a long time, like ten years or more.
How about this for a chart?
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Congratulations to all who bought. Gold is now trading above $3,300. Goldman Sachs has raised its target to $4,000/oz. It’s all going swimmingly. But nothing lasts forever.
(Actually gold does, but you know what I mean).
So, today, I want to ask: when do we sell our gold?
To answer that question, I am going to look at some long-term ratios.
How is gold looking relative to stocks, to other commodities and against house prices? (We’ll look at gold versus house prices in the US, the UK and Australia).
There is a strong argument, by the way, for never selling your gold, especially if you’re in a country such as the UK with an unreliable national currency. If you don’t need the money, keep the gold and pass it on to your heirs - and tell them to do the same. But macro conditions are not always as gold-friendly as they are now. See the 1980s and 90s for more details.
What’s more, given how these trade wars are unfolding, with unpayable levels of debt across the western world and China’s extraordinary accumulation of gold, there is a significant chance - say, 25% - that gold ends up being remonetized somehow.
(If China wants global reserve status for its yuan, it’ll almost certainly have to make it exchangeable for gold - meaning higher gold prices. But even if not, all China has to do is declare it’s real gold holdings, and the price will rocket).
In the event of remonetisation, which also means some kind of crisis, gold prices will be dramatically higher. However, it’s also likely that your gold would either be confiscated or heavily taxed, so that the gains from the revaluation (aka fiat devaluation) pass to the state rather than the citizen, as happened in the US under Roosevelt in 1933.
But let us leave such speculation for another day.
As always, if you are looking to buy gold, the bullion dealer I use and recommend is the Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. Find out more here.
Gold vs Stocks
I want to start with the Dow-to-Gold ratio: how many ounces of gold does it take to buy the Dow?
There is much history in this chart. It’s quite something.
You can see how, most of the time, the ratio stays within that green band. It is only at points of maximum extremity that it goes beyond, such as:
* The peak of the stock market in 1929
* The Great Depression in 1932
* The suppression of gold in the 1960s, ending with the collapse of the gold standard in 1971
* The peak of 1970s gold mania, inflation, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
* The end of the gold bear market in 2000 and the peak of Dotcom
Today, with gold at $3,300 and the Dow at 40,000, it takes 12 ounces of gold to buy the Dow - and we are in the low- to mid-range of that green prediction band.
At the peak of the last gold bull market in September 2011, the ratio reached 5.7.
To reach such a level again, either the gold price would have to double (possible) or the Dow would have to halve (unlikely, I would have thought).
Most probable is something along the lines of the Dow falling 25% and gold rising another 50%.
Would this ratio ever go to 1:1, as it did in 1980? If so, we would be looking at a gold price in the tens of thousands.
It’s possible, I suppose.
I think a ratio of 5-8 is a reasonable possible target.
Here’s a similar history of gold against the S&P 500:
Today, we are at 1.7. It takes 1.7 oz to buy the S&P.
The ratio reached 0.2 in the 1930s and 1940s. It went to 0.13 in 1980.
I doubt we’ll see that again.
But that 2011 level of 0.6, or perhaps even a little below if things get really spicy, is not an unreasonable target, I suppose. That could mean the S&P500 at 4,200 and gold at $7,000/oz. Something like that.
So that’s some bull food for you.
In the interests of balance, let’s now put some bearish fodder on the menu.
We’ll start with gold versus oil - and the bad news. Then we’ll look at gold and house prices.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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I’m excited to share a brand-new video diving into one of the most gripping questions in finance and geopolitics: How much gold does America actually have?
You may have read my piece on this from a few weeks back. Here it is in video form: a deep dive into the rumours, history, and high stakes surrounding US gold reserves—and what the upcoming audit might reveal.
My thanks go to Will Freeman for all his hard work crafting this.
Whether you’re revisiting the mystery or uncovering it for the first time, this is a story that matters in today’s world. Please let me know what you think in the comments.
Given everything that is going on in the world, we recommend people to own some gold in the portfolio. Our recommended bullion dealer I recommend is the Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
And if you missed yesterday’s piece - also on gold - here it is.
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Gold broke out to new highs on Friday: $3,237/oz. It is proving one of the prime beneficiaries of all the market mayhem, and no surprise.
Gold is your hedge against government, and this is all a creation of government.
Where to park capital? Equities are all over the place and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. With US authorities transparent about wanting it lower, the US dollar is not the safe haven it’s been since 2007 in market sell-offs. As for treasuries, they’ve become a weapon in the trade wars.
Inert gold, on the other hand, is neutral. It doesn’t care which side of the trade wars, the culture wars, or any other wars you’re on, and at the moment, it seems everyone wants a piece.
China, we learn thanks to the sleuthing of analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs, bought another 570 tonnes in 2024. Who knows how much more it has bought in 2025? To put that 570-tonne number in perspective, the UK’s total holdings are 310 tonnes.
Tell your friends.
What’s driving it all?
This move in gold started shortly after the US confiscated $300 billion in Russian state holdings after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It hasn’t been driven by retail. Central bank buying has pushed up the price.
If you’re not on Team US or Team G7, why own assets they can confiscate, like dollars or treasuries?
Own gold instead. The US would have to invade you to take your gold—or send in Kelly’s Heroes.
In 1950, gold made up 70% of international reserves. In the noughties, it was just 10%. The dollar, meanwhile, reached 60%, with the euro at another 20%.
Now gold is at 20%, the dollar at 45%, and the euro at 15%. The trend is clear, as this cool little video from Nieuwenhuijs and Money Metals shows:
In my opinion, we’ll be at 40% five years from now.
Here’s gold since late 2022. Every pullback has been bought. It’s as though someone with deep pockets is saying, “Buy the pullback every time it hits the 50-day moving average (red line).”
The UK seems to have been forgotten in this global rout, but I have little doubt the chickens of our shocking national finances and woeful productivity will soon come home to roost in the form of a sterling crisis. That’s when we overlooked Britishers will be mighty glad we have our gold.
Gold is now £2,475/oz. Another year of this, and we’ll be north of £3,000.
Summer is approaching, and May to August is typically when gold is weakest. Take advantage of pullbacks, is my advice. Do what the Chinese are doing. They’re smarter than we are (when it comes to gold, at least).
With oil having cratered, we should finally see gold miners fetch a proper bid. (They are already moving a little). Energy can represent 15% to 40% of mining costs. Lower costs and a higher price for the final product should mean they make more money, and thus higher share prices. (I’ll cover miners again soon, I promise, though I am worried I’ll jinx it)
Here’s something Charlie Morris observed—and you really should subscribe to his gold newsletter, Atlas Pulse; it’s top dog in a crowded field - it’s free. GDX is the largest gold mining ETF by far. Despite higher gold prices, it’s seen outflows of 25% over the past year. When inflows start, these things will rocket. The sector is tiny relative to the capital out there.
Here’s three years of Brent, FYI. It’s almost the reverse of gold. Good for mining.
If you’re interested in buying gold, by the way - and you should own some, if you don’t already, given everything that is going on - the bullion dealer I recommend is the Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
A 2-minute video for your Sunday entertainment
I’ve got lots of content coming up over the next fortnight. I’ve just returned from two days of bitcoin conferences, so I’m fired up about that. I’ve got that gold mining piece to write. I have a lot more to say about gold. I have a fab video to share with you which I will send out tomorrow. And I want to explore where we should deploy capital in all this market mayhem: which sectors will do well in tariff wars, and which won’t. So, plenty to come.
You ought to subscribe.
In the meantime, as it’s the weekend, enjoy this silly little 3-minute vid I put together for my comedy Substack - not to be taken seriously - about alien invaders on planet Earth stealing our gold at the dawn of civilization. (Click the image below)
Finally, if you’re interested in gold and haven’t already seen it, here’s my guide to investing int he shiny stuff.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe -
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com
I don’t normally put out market commentary on a Sunday, especially on a Sunday evening, but the events of last week were so extraordinary I feel I have to.
We are in full-on crash mode, it seems. The price action reminds me of the Covid panic or even 2008. It almost doesn’t matter what you own. Portfolios around the world have been battered.
The declines in the final two days of last week, since so-called “Liberation Day”, when President Trump announced his tariffs, are roughly as follows:
* Bitcoin: -1%
* Gold: -3%
* S&P 500: -9%
* Nasdaq: -10%
* Brent Crude: -12.5%
* Copper: -13% (phew!)
Magnificent Seven:
* MSFT: -6%
* GOOGL: -7%
* AMZN: -13%
* META: -14%
* NVDA: -15%
* TSLA: -15%
* AAPL: -17%
We are, of course, very long gold and bitcoin here at The Flying Frisby, so I guess we’ve come out of this comparatively unscathed. What’s more, we have a good allocation to wealth preservation in the Dolce Far Niente portfolio. But our speculative positions, like everyone’s, have been hit, and I’m angry with myself for not getting more defensive sooner. I’ve been saying for some time I don’t like the price action one bit- eg here and here - and the words of that freaky preacher keep ringing in my ears.
In any case, there’s no point beating myself up. Life is easy in hindsight. Investing is even easier.
I spent considerable time on Friday and Saturday reading and watching interviews, trying to understand exactly what these tariffs are about and what the implications are, and I think I have come up with something of a roadmap.
We’ll start by explaining the plan. Then we’ll look at what comes next. And, finally, we’ll look at what to do with some of our recent speculations.
Why our opinion is irrelevant
I’m a free-trade guy, or at least I was. I’m not quite sure what I am any more. But I’m not going to waste my time - or yours - here with arguments about whether tariffs are a good thing or not. There’s no point. My time - and yours - would be as well spent howling at the moon. As far as I know, Donald Trump isn’t a reader of The Flying Frisby. He knows his own mind and he’s not going to turn to this Substack, or any of our social media feeds, for policy advice.
Don’t be like DT. Subscribe to the Flying Frisby.
Tariffs are here, and they’re here to stay. Trump is attempting a major economic redesign - the kind of reset that those who rail against economic injustice have been calling for for years. Now it’s here, and as we look at our portfolios, many of us aren’t so sure we want it.
What I want to understand, first, is the logic behind the tariffs, then their implications, so we can best navigate them.
The first thing to note I’ve already said: Trump isn’t going to backtrack. As I watched tumbling share prices on Friday, I thought to myself—he’s going to backtrack. He has to. But Trump isn’t the Conservative Party, or indeed the Labour Party, changing tack at the slightest sign of discontent.
Critics say he’ll cave if stocks keep tanking, I’m not so sure. His track record suggests otherwise, and he’s put a loyal and strong team together to back him up and implement his plan.
He’s going to give his tariffs longer than a couple of days to have an impact.
Many say Trump hasn’t properly thought this through. Of course, he has. He’s been thinking about it night and day for years. He’ll have been thinking about little else as he wrestles with the problem of how to reinvigorate industrial America. That doesn’t mean his plan will work, but the idea he hasn’t thought about it is just a facile invention of Trump perma-critics to use against him.
Trump may be a bit of a clown - he has a comedic instinct and can’t resist a gag - but he’s not stupid. Clowns rarely are.
Why Trump’s doing what he’s doing
Trump intensely dislikes the decimation of industrial America, which began in the 1980s and still continues, with the outsourcing of manufacturing to Asia and elsewhere. Even 40 years ago , he was giving interviews about this (hence why I say he has thought it through) and he wants to restore it. That’s part of what he means when he says, “Make America great again.”
He can see that while the American coasts may have thrived, thanks largely to finance and tech, much of what is in between has not. This is the America he wants to make great again.
There are two reasons he wants to revive American industry.
First, is that he believes the model by which America takes on debt to buy cheap stuff from China is unsustainable and has to stop - and the sooner the better. So it’s for the good of the American economy.
Second, is for reasons of security. While China and the US may be trading partners now, they are also rivals, and if your rival is making your essential military and strategic equipment and components, whether it’s semi-conductors, industrial and consumer electronics, pharmaceuticals or battery and energy storage systems, you have a big problem on your hands. Covid exposed just how fragile supply chains are, and Trump has taken it as an early warning sign.
Something very similar, as readers of Daylight Robbery will know, happened in the US after its War of 1812 with the British, a war that lasted three years. The war badly exposed US over-reliance on British industrial goods, so the US introduced tariffs in 1816 to try and nurture and grow its own industry. Those tariffs ended up having grave long-term consequences (they were a major factor in the lead up to the civil war - but that was 45 years later). In the short term, they worked. (More on this here).
Coming to America
“Come and build your factories in the US,” Trump is saying. “Then you won’t pay tariffs. Relocate from China, Mexico, Vietnam.”
Here’s a case in point. Jaguar Land Rover has already announced it’s halting shipments to the US for one month. Now, this company’s management - remember its recent rebrand? (see below) - is on the opposing side of the culture war to Donald Trump and MAGA, so that is one factor at play. But when I wrote my piece about how good self-driving Teslas are, a lot of people commented that the Jags are better. I don’t know—I haven’t been in one. But for sure, Jaguar Land Rover won’t want to lose momentum or network effect in this all important arms race, particularly while Tesla is struggling: 45% off its recent highs, victim to nationwide vandalism and Elon Musk no longer the darling but the villain of the eco-warrior left. So what does Jaguar do now? Not sell into the all-important US markets? Pay 25% tariffs? Or build a factory stateside? I think the answer is fairly obvious.
Whatever it chooses to do, it’s going to take longer than a couple of days.
With DOGE and the shrinking of the US state, meanwhile, there’ll be plenty of workers to fill those new positions. As the US state shrinks, its private sector grows. That’s the idea, anyway.
His tariffs may lead to higher prices for American consumers, as many have pointed out, but not as high as widely thought, argues Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in this recent interview with Tucker Carlson (a recommended watch, by the way). Bessent’s calculations are that tariffs won’t gouge consumers as much as feared. What’s more, the revenue from tariffs could eventually enable lower levels of taxation back home, which will further ease pressure on US citizens, those who work at least.
What about the upheaval Trump tariffs cause to the rest of the world? Not his problem. America first.
Yet he’s creating enormous uncertainty, and markets are tanking. On Friday, markets were in full panic mode, and the baby was being thrown out with the bathwater. What about that?
The amazing stat which shows why Trump won’t give two hoots about the stock market - for now
At this point, I want to press upon you one of the most telling statistics I’ve seen for some time:
* The richest 1% of Americans own 50% of US stocks, worth $23 trillion.
* The bottom 50% of U.S. adults hold only 1% of stocks, worth $480 billion.
If you expand to the top 10%, that group holds 87% of stocks, valued at $36 trillion.
If I’m correctly inferring Bessent’s comments, at this current point, Trump doesn’t care about Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, or the parts of the US economy that have become so rich over the past 40 years. It’s the bottom 50 - or even 80% - that Trump is concerned with. They hardly own any stocks, so the market mayhem won’t matter so much to them. Wall Street has made good for decades. It can suffer a bit of pain while Main Street gets rebuilt.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that US equities were enormously overvalued when Trump took office, so some kind of correction had to happen anyway. The Shiller price-to-earnings ratio was at its third highest level in history (the only times it was higher was 2000 and 2007, and we all know what happened next). That’s why Warren Buffett built up his enormous cash position two months ago ($330 billion). Buffett, by the way, really is a genius.
Best to get the inevitable correction out of the way early in the Presidency. What’s more, as Bessent points out, these market declines began several weeks ago with China’s AI announcement of DeepSeek, the app that can do everything ChatGPT and Grok can do with much lower power use. Prior to that, the Magnificent Seven had driven the extraordinary gains seen in the S&P 500 over the previous 18 months. Strip them out, and the picture was much less rosy. (Now the Mag7’re down 30-45%).
Trump’s announcement may have pricked the bubble, but a bubble is still a bubble and if one thing doesn’t burst it, something else will.
Trump’s plan, meanwhile, (and I’m not saying it’ll work, everyone will have their opinion) is not to boost the stock market. It is to reset the economy. The economy and the stock market are not the same thing.
Some numbers
The US is trapped in a vicious debt spiral.
$36 trillion is the current US National Debt. The US will spend $6 trillion this year, while only collecting $4 trillion in tax revenue. So there is a $2 trillion deficit. It will borrow the difference, and the debt will grow to $38 trillion.
The DOGE plan is reduce the deficit by 1 trillion by getting rid of waste, corruption and more.
The tariff plan is to raise another half trillion in revenue. Plus, as a result of tariffs, more business relocates to the US, which also increases revenue. Mass deregulation will also make doing business easier and further add to both economic growth and tax revenue.
Then there is Trump citizenship plan. According to Grok, 1 million people worldwide could realistically afford to buy a US residency for $5 million. Let’s say 10% of them did that. That’s another $500 billion and the $2 trillion deficit is eradicated.
Suddenly the US is running a surplus.
This all means the US gets in a better position to lower taxes, which will further increase revenue (the golden rule of Daylight Robbery), because trade will increase as a result. Trump could lower corporation taxes to 15% which would be a lot more attractive than the rates of 20-30% paid in Europe. So business relocates to the US. He could lower income taxes, especially for high earners, thereby attracting higher earners to the US.
Meanwhile, the cost of all that debt starts to come down, thereby freeing up even more capital.
And, suddenly, you are in a virtuous cycle.
These numbers make it look easy. But to get there takes an enormous fight - standing up to vested interests, taking on a cultural establishment that detests you, the media, the woke, Trump Derangement Syndrome and so on. It’s not easy, and it requires a lot of backbone.
The three essential keys to the Trump reset
So what fundamentals does this economic reset need, and how does the US get there?
First, it needs cheap energy. Cheap energy is fundamental to economic growth: economies need energy. That’s happening. Crude has fallen more than 10% since “Liberation Day”. Falls were turbocharged when, on Thursday, 8 OPEC nations made the surprise announcement that they were ending output cuts and increasing supply. Plus we have the domestic policy of drill baby drill. What with the plethora of natural gas and other shale energy co-products, we’re going to see a lot of cheap energy. (Which is going to make our own Ed Miliband’s high-energy-cost policies look even more deranged.)
Second, it needs a cheaper dollar. A weaker dollar will encourage investment and relocation from overseas (it makes the US cheaper). That’s happening too. Indeed, what was so unique about this week’s panic is that the dollar—usually the first port of call in a financial storm—didn’t rise (at least not at first). Here is the US dollar index. It’s coming down. It’s already down almost 10% from its highs. That means America just got 10% cheaper to invest in. A move back to the low 90s, or even below, would be ideal.
What is the third component?
And what next for markets?
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We have more stock tips for you today with multibag potential.
But first, let’s get political.
Remember how the Conservative Party from David Cameron onwards effectively abandoned the right and became social democrats?
Increased state spending everywhere, so that instead of shrinking the state they grew it, more taxes, higher taxes, more planning and regulation, more quangos and experts, ‘owning’ the NHS, green subsidies, Net Zero, social liberalism, MPs who didn’t represent the views of the membership, increased immigration, weaker policing, increased crime - and so on. Those were the days, eh?
The Tories were so bereft of first principle, and so terrified of the left, particularly the left-wing media, that they pandered to it and eventually became it.
I remember going on podcasts 18 months ago making the argument that Labour would do the same thing and lurch right.
After an insert-disparaging-adjective-here first six months, which saw Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval ratings drop below even those of Rishi Sunak, we are starting to see that happen.
With the books not balancing, suddenly spending is being cut. Not by a lot, but it’s happening. Starmer has axed NHS England, something the Tories would never have dared do, criticising “two layers of bureaucracy”. We have what the Independent calls “Austerity 2.0” with cuts to disability benefits and welfare spending. The foreign aid budget has been cut to spend more on defence. All of a sudden he is as champion of small businesses. Heck, he’s even fixing the potholes. Meanwhile, he is boasting on X about “securing our borders” and “removing illegal immigrants at the highest rate in 8 years”.
“If you don’t have the right to be in this country, then you shouldn’t be here. It’s that simple,” he said yesterday. Does that sound like a Labour leader or Nigel Farage?
When fantasy meets reality
The next right-wing shoe to drop is fossil fuels.
Ed Miliband’s fantasies of climate justice and clean energy are slowly being exposed. His green delusion is going to be abandoned. If an economy is to grow, then it must consume more energy, not less. Wind and solar power are too expensive and too unreliable, never mind the damage they do to the environment and the carbon footprint they leave. They are already pledging to paint offshore wind farms black because of all the birds they are killing. Finally, an admission of the wildlife these things destroy.
Offshore wind is not going to replace oil and gas. Fossil fuels remain a better, cheaper, cleaner and more reliable source of energy. For an already heavily taxed country that is living well beyond its means, where growth is the only thing that can save it, with the added pressure of Trump tariffs soon coming, needlessly expensive energy is not possible.
The Reform party is making the cost of Net Zero one of its main lines of attack. All Labour has to do is further abandon the left of its party, a process which is already half complete, just as the Tories abandoned the right, and let Miliband go, which is inevitable anyway, and the Reform weapon is blunted.
All the above is preamble to my main argument today. North Sea oil and gas is going to stage a comeback. This is going to happen, as sure as eggs are eggs. Political and economic reality mean it is inevitable. Otherwise, the national finances, and with them the Labour Government, evaporate. Power is more important to politicians than adhering to any zealotry, green or otherwise.
The ban on new North Sea oil and gas licenses will be lifted. The taxes on North Sea oil companies will be lowered to incentivise activity (it’s effectively 78% at present. Are legislators demented?). And all those companies that saw their businesses and market caps decimated by this deluded religion are going to make a comeback. Some will multiply many times over. That’s what I think is going to happen, anyway.
This also means, for we observers on the foothills of inconsequence, the time is nigh to buy North Sea oil and gas companies.
So what are these companies and how do we invest?
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A rant for you this Sunday morning. Enjoy!
If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times - and you should if you do not already own some - as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
By the way, in case of interest, I have the following comedy shows coming up int he next fortnight.
* Bath, April 3. Tickets here. SOLD OUT
* Bordon, Hampshire. April 12. Tickets here.
* London, Crazy Coqs, May 14. SOLD OUT. (Waiting list only)
* London, Backyard, May 20. The Mid Year Review Tickets here
* London, Crazy Coqs, Sept 24. Tickets here.
* London, Crazy Coqs, Nov 5. Tickets here.
* London, Crazy Coqs, Dec 3. Tickets here.
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How I boosted my testosterone with no TRT—exercise, sleep, fasting and diet.
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From this week’s Moneyweek Magazine …
Two rumours have been swirling around the gold markets for many years. Some have called them conspiracy theories. Others note that conspiracy theories often prove true. What’s the difference between conspiracy and truth? About 30 years.
The first is that China has far more gold than it says it does. We actually now know this to be true. The other is that America has far less than the 8,133 tonnes of gold it says it possesses.
This rumour has been doing the rounds since 1971, when Peter Beter, a lawyer and financial adviser to former president John F. Kennedy, said he had been informed that gold in Fort Knox had been removed. He went on to write a best-selling book about it: The Conspiracy Against the Dollar.
The problem is a total lack of transparency on the part of the US authorities, something that according to current US president Donald Trump, and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, will not be the case for much longer.
Roosevelt triggers a boom
But to understand this situation we need to go back in time, all the way to 1933, when US president Franklin D. Roosevelt famously devalued the US dollar and revalued gold upwards by 70%, from $20 an ounce (oz) to $35/oz, in order to bolster growth. US gold reserves would increase to unprecedented levels in the next 15 years.
Some of the gold came from US citizens. It was now illegal for them to own gold and they had to hand any they owned over to the authorities. Some came from the fact that the government then bought all US mined supply (the upwards revaluation of gold triggered a mining boom) and any gold imported to the US assay office. The US even began buying gold on foreign markets to protect the new higher price.
Thus US official holdings in 1939 on the eve of World War II totalled 15,679 tonnes. They would only increase. With Nazi invasions, European nations sent all the gold they could across the Atlantic, either for safekeeping or to buy essential supplies; 1949 saw the high watermark of US gold holdings – 22,000 tonnes, as much as half of all the gold ever mined.
In July 1944, with it clear that the Allies were going to win the war, representatives from the 44 Allied nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference to design a new system of money for the new world order.
International accounts would be settled in dollars, and those dollars were convertible to gold at $35/oz. Countries had to maintain exchange rates within 1% of the US dollar. In effect, the US was on a gold standard, and the rest of the world was on a dollar standard.
The system relied on the integrity of the US dollar to work, and that integrity was in question, even before the end of the war. The June 1945 Federal Reserve Act reduced required gold reserves for notes outstanding from 40% to 25%, and against deposits from 35% to 25%. Between 1944 and 1954, because of increased supply, the dollar lost a third of its purchasing power, though the $35 Bretton Woods price remained.
“Six major European countries,along with the UK, co-ordinated sales to suppress the gold price”
US government spending was soaring, and it began running balance of payments deficits – made worse by the costs of foreign aid, America’s new welfare systems and maintaining a military presence in Europe and Asia. Gold began leaving the US. By 1965 reserves had fallen by 9,500 tonnes, down 40% from the 1949 peak.
Successive US administrations tried to stop the outflow, without success. Dwight D. Eisenhower banned Americans from buying gold overseas, Kennedy imposed the “equalisation tax” on foreign investments, and Lyndon B. Johnson discouraged Americans from travelling altogether. “We may need to forgo the pleasures of Europe for a while,” he said.
Fears that the dollar would devalue following the election (won by Kennedy) sent the gold price in London to $40/oz. The Bank of England, in collusion with the Federal Reserve, began increasing gold sales to keep the price down.
Thus did the London gold pool begin, with the addition of six major European nations the following year (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and Switzerland), which co-ordinated sales to suppress, or “stabilise”, to use their word, the gold price and defuse unwanted, upward market pressure.
But the pool struggled against growing demand. In 1965, an ounce of gold was still $35, but the purchasing power of the dollar had decreased by 57% from 1945, while gold reserves had also fallen sharply. The culprit was the costs of the US government, in particular the Vietnam War and president Johnson’s enormous welfare spending.
If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times - and you should if you do not already own some - as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
Bretton Woods under pressure
With inflation rising at home and international confidence in the dollar waning, these programmes were not just costly – they undermined Bretton Woods. Non-American nations felt aggrieved that they had to produce $100 worth of goods and services to get a $100 bill, when the US could just print one. French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing called it “America’s exorbitant privilege”.
President de Gaulle, meanwhile, had had enough. He ignored the pool to turn all French dollars and sterling balances into gold. The French even sent battleships to New York to collect their gold. De Gaulle became the target of several assassination attempts – coincidence, I’m sure. There were rather more US dollars in the world than there was gold to back them, he felt, and he was right.
By 1967, US foreign liabilities were $36bn, but it only had $12bn in gold reserves – a third of what was needed to back the dollar. West Germany, Spain and Switzerland began demanding gold for their dollars. Even the British, with sterling going through one of its quadrennial collapses, asked the Americans to prepare $3bn worth of Fort Knox gold for withdrawal. Private gold demand was overwhelming.
“The floor of the Bank of England’s weighing room collapsed under the weight of all the bullion”
In November 1967, the British government devalued the pound by 14%, from $2.80 to $2.40, in order to “achieve a substantial surplus on the balance of payments consistent with economic growth and full employment”.
In that month, the London market saw greater bullion demand than it would typically see in nine: as much as 100 tonnes per day. To stem demand they banned forward buying, leverage and the purchase of gold with credit. The pool still lost 1,400 tonnes that year, more than a whole year’s mined supply.
Selling pressure on the US dollar only increased when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam launched the first of a series of surprise attacks on US armed forces in South Vietnam in January 1968.
Desperate to prop up the system, US military aircraft flew tonne after tonne of gold to RAF Lakenheath from where it was trucked in military convoys to the back entrance of the Bank of England: at one point the floor of the Bank of England’s weighing room collapsed under the weight of all the gold.
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Shoring up the system
In the four days between 11 March and 14 March 1968, some 780 tonnes were sold to market. The effort to protect the price was deemed hopeless. On 15 March, UK chancellor Roy Jenkins declared a bank holiday, and the gold market was closed for a fortnight, “at the request of the United States”.
Zurich also closed. Paris stayed open with gold trading at a 25% premium. All in all, the final 15 months saw over 3,000 tonnes sold to market to protect that $35 price. The pool had lost more than an eighth of its reserves.
Two days later, in the rushed-through Washington Agreement, governors of the central banks in the gold pool declared there would be one fixed gold marketfor official government transactions at $35/oz and another, free-market, price for private transactions. Not for the last time, central bankers were living in a world of their own.
Gold is one thing. Gold standards are another. They tend not to last, particularly bogus ones such as this one, under which citizens themselves did not handle gold. Keynes called them barbarous – ironic, perhaps, given that he was one of the architects of this one.
In August 1971, president Nixon took the US off the gold standard, a “temporary” measure that remains more than 50 years later. For the first time in history, gold – Switzerland aside – played no part in the global monetary system.
Of course it was the fault of the speculators. It always is. “I have directed the secretary of the Treasury to take the action necessary to defend the dollar against the speculators,” Nixon said, deflecting responsibility, and “to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold”.
High time for a US gold audit
The US keeps its gold in four places: at Fort Knox, Kentucky (roughly 56% of its 8,133 tonnes); at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (8%); and the remaining 36% at the mints in Denver and West Point. There has not been a proper public audit of this gold since 1953. There have been internal audits, especially between 1974 and 1986, but these were not transparent.
There are many people, among them gold experts, who do not believe the gold is there. The US spent it trying to suppress the gold price in the 1960s, theysay. But in this new age of American transparency, both Trump and Musk have repeatedly pledged that this gold will be audited.
There is talk of it being done on a livestream. Trump has even suggested the gold has been stolen. “We’re actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there,” he said, “because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tonnes of gold.”
They’ve been making such light of it, one has to assume they know the gold is there. Musk was laughing about the conspiracies on podcasts, and he even posted a picture of a Fort Knox starter kit: a brick and some gold spray. I can’t see how they would be joking if there were any serious doubts.
Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, has said quite categorically that the gold is there. The last audit was in September 2024, he said in a recent Bloomberg interview, before looking down the camera and assuring the US people that “all the gold is present and accounted for”. But this would only have been an internal audit, and it would not have been a full audit.
According to the US Mint, “the only gold removed has been very small quantities used to test the purity of gold during regularly scheduled audits”. No other gold has been transferred to or from the depository “for many years”. How long is many years, though? As far back as the 1960s?
It’s quite astonishing just how secretive the whole thing is. They opened the vaults for a congressional delegation and certain members of the press to view the gold in 1974. There were rumours swirling about then too. “We’ve never done this before and we’ll probably never do it again,” said the then director of the US Mint Mary Brooks.
“The gold commonly confiscated under Roosevelt contained some copper, and is not pure enough for sale”
Then in 2017, during Trump’s first administration, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell were invited to view the gold. “The gold was there,” Mnuchin said. He is “sure” nobody’s moved it. There are “serious security protocols in place”. But there are more than 4,000 tonnes in Fort Knox. A tonne would be about the size of a medium to large suitcase. Did he see all 4,000 of them?
The other big issue is the purity of the gold. What is there might not all be of good delivery quality, meaning it would not be readily accepted in international bullion markets. If much of the gold is the bullion Roosevelt confiscated in the 1930s, it will be in the form of “coinmelt”: melted down coins.
The commonly confiscated coins, such as the $20 double eagle, were only 90% pure and mixed with copper to make them harder. When melted down, they were not always properly refined to modern standards, while the bars they were melted into weighed 320-330 ounces, not the 400 oz bars of good delivery standard today. In practice, this means Fort Knox gold would not be accepted without additional processing.
But, until a proper audit takes place, this is all speculation, albeit reasoned speculation. We don’t know the full facts. The reasons given for not conducting a full audit are flimsy: we don’t need to, it would be too much of an undertaking. Please!
If the US gold turns out not to be there, then the gold price goes up – potentially a lot. If it is there, it’s business as usual.
For now, I’d say the markets are behaving as though it is business as usual. They are climbing, and every dip is being bought, largely, it seems, by central banks (especially in Asia), who are diversifying their holdings and de-dollarising. But this audit cannot come quickly enough.
Large volumes of physical gold - over 1,000 tonnes by some counts - have recently been transferred from London to New York. One theory is that was the gold was transferred in anticipation of tariffs. Another is that it was the US buying ahead of its audit. We will soon find out.
Finally, I would just like to debunk one theory doing the rounds. US gold is currently marked to market at $42/oz. After the audit, those 8,133 tonnes – assuming they are there and of good delivery quality – could be marked to market at current prices, meaning a significant uplift in the value of holdings.
The theory doing the rounds is that Treasury ecretary Bessent will use some of the upwards revaluation to monetise the balance sheet – not unlike how Roosevelt did in 1933 – to create funds for, among other things, the strategic bitcoin reserve. But Bessent has quite clearly stated that is not his intention.
This article first appeared in Moneyweek Magazine.
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Everything looks decidedly shaky all of a sudden. Trump is swinging the wrecking ball. Markets are tanking. What to do?
A bear market was long overdue, but now that we are teetering on the edge of one, it doesn’t feel very nice.
Markets don’t like uncertainty, and there is a lot of it about at the moment. President Trump likes to create it. It’s one of his negotiating tactics. And he is creating one heck of a lot of it.
Unlike his previous presidency, when he made a lot of noise but wasn’t able to get much actually done, this time around he seems to be shaking up a world order that has been in place for decades, both internationally and at home.
Is he serious about America no longer being the world’s policeman? It seems he is. It began with a global freeze on most U.S. foreign aid as part of his “America First” policy, and USAID’s closure is reverberating internationally. Many have lost their jobs; some 10000 grants and contracts have been canceled, disrupting global aid programmes and more. So much of it was illegitimate, bent, or wasteful. Elon Musk called it “beyond repair” and an “evil criminal organization,” boasting of feeding it “into the wood chipper.” Maybe so. Doesn’t mean ending it will be easy. Anything but.
There have been cuts to the federal workforce; numerous bodies, such as the Social Security Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have been targeted.
But at present, the administration is moving quickly and breaking things. Many support what is happening. Many don’t. Nobody knows quite how far this will go, but it seems a lot further than anyone anticipated.
Europe is going to have to pay its way, and he really means it. What are the implications of that?
What is going to happen between Russia and Ukraine? What deal does he have in mind? Will Presidents Putin and Zelensky go along with it?
What’s going on with tariffs? Are they really about the revenue (I don’t think so) or about something else? What are the implications there?
What is the reaction from Trump’s political opponents going to be? They’ve started attacking Tesla factories. They hate him so much they could not even bring themselves to applaud when a terminally ill child with brain cancer was given an honorary Secret Service award. Whether it’s in the courts or on the streets, they will oppose everything he does. They would rather have corruption, waste, and no transparency than have Donald Trump.
The amounts that have been saved so far are disputed. DOGE claimed $55 billion in the first month. Others have it closer to $15 billion. Either is peanuts in the context of the $2 trillion figure Elon Musk touted during the campaign and reiterated post-inauguration. This would represent roughly 30% of the federal budget ($6.75 trillion 2024). We are a long way from that. There are a thousand billions in a trillion.
Musk is aiming for $1 trillion to be cut from the U.S. deficit in the first year. We are a long way from that too. Even with all the cuts, one Reuters analysis shows that spending has actually increased under Trump, largely due to the increase in interest payments on that extraordinary $36 trillion U.S. national debt. President Joe Biden increased that debt by $8 trillion—31%. Though, to be fair to him, Trump increased it by almost $8 trillion (40%) in his first term.
I remember when it was below $10 trillion, and that seemed like a lot.
If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times - and you should if you do not already own some - as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
Was he right?
Remember this freaky interview I posted back in October?
The preacher man who described Trump’s assassination with uncanny accuracy, then talked about a mighty crash. People are always predicting crashes and getting it wrong, but this guy was amazing.
Aaaaagh. Scary!
As I say, if there is one thing markets don’t like, it is uncertainty. And we have that in abundance. Nobody quite knows how this is going to pan out. I, for one, am incredibly optimistic. The sooner the system is drained of corruption, waste, rent-seeking, non-productive endeavour, crony capitalism, non-accountability, and all the rest of it, the better, in my view.
But I recognise there is a mountain, and more, of upheaval to get through first.
Thank goodness we have such a large allocation to gold. It is behaving like a trooper. Who knows? A mining boom might even come out of this.
But the stock market does not like it one bit.
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Beware: imposters! Anyone appearing to be me, but soliciting you to chat on Telegram or WhatsApp or anywhere is NOT ME. It is someone trying to scam you out of your money.
Video version of this article here:
We are talking testosterone today.
I posted this video on YouTube the other day of me breaking the Lewisham dead hang record. Dead hangs are not the greatest spectator sport, so it might be one to watch sped up. In any case, somebody in the comments asked if I had been taking some kind of testosterone supplement. The answer is, “sort of.”
Testosterone is something I have been meaning to write about for a while, and it is something I have been experimenting with, so here goes.
I haven’t had TRT - testosterone replacement therapy - or anything like that, but I have been looking to improve my testosterone levels, and I think I have had some success.
Getting your levels up, whether man or woman, will make you feel A LOT better.
Physically, higher testosterone levels mean more energy, more muscle, more fat burn, better sleep, better cardiovascular health and blood flow, better bone density and less inflammation. These are all super important once you pass 50.
You’re stronger, basically.
Mentally, with more testosterone, your concentration improves, you become more targeted - that’s another way of saying your focus improves (I don’t like the word focus) - your spirits are higher, your confidence improves, you get bolder, more assertive and more driven.
I have noticed improvements to all of the above.
One thing, in particular, I have also noticed is a lower tolerance of fools, a higher appetite for risk and much more of a DNGAF attitude, which is something I’ve always wished I had more of.
I had a blood test in September 2023 and it showed my testosterone level as 577 ng/dL. The normal range is 200-750ng/dL. An athlete in his early 20s might have levels above that. So my levels were above average - upper-middle - without being amazing.
Testosterone peaks at 18 (probably why young men get into such trouble), then declines ever after. After 30 it declines at 1% per annum. But once you pass 45 - take note - there is an acceleration in decline. That is what we need to address.
I haven’t done another test, but I know my levels have improved. I can feel it. And I think I am well above 600ng/dL.
Here is how to improve your testosterone
1. Exercise
Lift weights
Regular strength training boosts testosterone production, especially in the short term. Resistance training stimulates muscle growth, which signals the body to release more testosterone. Intensity matters - heavier weights with lower reps has a bigger impact. Compound movements such as squats, press-ups, bench presses and deadlifts are particularly effective.
Sprint
Sprints are more effective than light jogging. In fact, any kind of HIIT is good. I usually jog for 2 or 3 miles then do 4 30-second sprints up a hill at the end. It takes me about half an hour in total. Short, maximum-effort sprints (even just 6-10 seconds at 90-100% effort) with full recovery periods (1-2 minutes) work best.
Play some competitive sport
Any kind of competitive sport is good. Tennis, table tennis even. I still play footy - 6-a-side. I’ve found in the last year I am going in for challenges that I would not have attempted ten years ago.
But, of the above three, resistance training is the most important.
2. Other habits
Sleep
Good sleep is as important as exercise, perhaps even more so. The majority of your testosterone is produced when you are asleep. 7-9 hours is optimal. 5-6 hours and your levels drop by 10-15% in just a few days. One 2011 study found young men restricted to 5 hours of sleep had testosterone levels closer to someone 10-15 years older.
My guide to sleeping better is here, but … go to bed an hour earlier.
Use mouthtape when you sleep - breathing through your nose is better for testosterone. Lord knows why but that’s what the bros say.
What next?
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At the moment it is relentless. I suppose I should take it as a compliment, but every day, sometimes several times per day some new account masquerading as me pops up. I block, report and delete as soon as I get wind of it, but I can’t be in front of my computer 24/7. Please be aware: I don’t use Telegram. I never invite people to chat on WhatsApp. So if somebody who appears to be me solicits you to join them on Telegram, WhatsApp or anywhere else, it is not me. It is someone who is trying to scam you.
Let me start today’s note with a very warm welcome to the many new readers who have signed up the Flying Frisby.
Many have signed up because of the recent promotion for Lifetime Membership. That ends today, so if it’s caught your eye, time is running out. For a one-off payment of just £450/$570 you will get full access to the Flying Frisby for life.
Click the button below and you will see the option - I stress this is a one-off payment
Today, with stock markets looking very wobbly indeed, I thought it would be a good time to check in on the Dolce Far Niente portfolio.
Dolce Far Niente, as I’m sure you know, means “the sweetness of doing nothing”, and the idea was to create a strong, long-term portfolio
* which will grow and thrive
* with which you will not have to constantly tinker
* about which you will not to have to constantly worry.
You can just leave it alone and let it be.
It emphasises strategic asset allocation - being in the right market - above individual stock picking.
So, with so many new readers, and with it being six months since we last looked, let’s check in on it today.
1 Gold (15% allocation)
Gold is the ultimate Dolce Far Niente asset. It does nothing but sit there and look sweet. The shine may be coming off everything else, but it will never come off gold.
It’s up 55% since inception in October 2023 and going strong.
My firm belief is that everyone should own some gold. Especially now.
My guide to investing in gold is here. If you are looking to buy gold, try the Pure Gold Company.
2. Bitcoin (5% allocation)
HODL is another way of saying Dolce Far Niente, and, even with the current shake out, bitcoin has been another winner. It has more than tripled since inception (a 233% gain).
Some will argue bitcoin has no place in a “low risk” portfolio such as this. I’d argue that the greater risk is not owning bitcoin.
For those in the UK who can’t buy it directly or buy the ETFs, our vehicle to play bitcoin via a UK-broker, and circumvent/satisfy ill-conceived-FCA regulation, was to own Nasdaq-listed Strategy Inc (Nasdaq:MSTR).
This is one volatile stock, and the chart now looks nasty, but its President Michael Saylor is a genius. He embraces volatility, seeing it as a feature not a flaw. And the company has been another winner, up 9x since the inception of the portfolio, even after the recent correction.
By the way, Strategy is proving a leading indicator for bitcoin - it was already falling when bitcoin was re-testing its old high. That makes it a super-useful forecaster. Take note.
3. Special Situations (10%)
This is the fun/painful part of the portfolio.
Lightbridge (NASDAQ:LTBR) was a big winner here, as was and the tax-loss trade (time to exit this one if you haven’t already). Junior miners, Condor and tax-loss trade aside, continue to suck.
By the way, check out this nuts Lightbridge chart. The bots must have got hold of it. Surely one be one to buy on the dips and exit on the spikes.
4. Uranium (5% allocation, reduced to 2.5%)
I reduced the uranium allocation to 2.5% in February 2024, because it all felt too frothy. That has proved a good decision, as the price has since come down. We are in proper bear market now.
I don’t like uranium miners. Most of them will not see any production for years, decades even and are, therefore, drains on capital. We own the metal itself.
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Another video for this Sunday morning, based on the very popular New Year’s How To Win piece. I hope you draw some inspiration from it.
(I meant to put it out in Jan, but didn’t).
Please like, watch, share and all those other things.
All the best
Dominic
PS Could I draw your attention to a couple of things…
Lifetime Membership
Many people do not know about this, so, for one week only, I am running promotion. For a one-off payment of just £450/$570 you will get full access to the Flying Frisby for life.
Click the button below and you will see the option - I stress this is a one-off payment
Please consider upgrading your subscription - and if one of last year’s flyers - Lightbridge, Novavax or Microstrategy worked for you, then consider this a way of saying thank you!
PPS As always, if buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company with whom I have an affiliation deal. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
PPPS This week’s commentary about my recent experiences in the US and, in particular, Tesla, went down a storm. ICYMI here it is:
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If you missed last week’s special report, I urge you to take a look. Some of these are already starting to move, and fast .
And so to today’s piece. Tesla .
I am just back from a two-week trip to the States, and what a time I had.
I felt so privileged to be there at what feels like the dawn of a new golden age for this most amazing of countries.
The first week I spent in Palm Springs, California, visiting my mum, and the second in Naples, Florida. Quite the contrast. One was Meltdown Central, the other was in a state of jubilation. Everyone everywhere was talking about the USAID revelations.
I did not know Naples. What a stunning place. Hot, sunny, green, humid, beautiful (the architecture is lovely, even the newbuilds—that’s traditional measures for you), polite, safe, cultured, healthy, delicious food. Life seems to slow down as soon you arrive. What’s happening elsewhere no longer seems to matter. Were I to go there and settle, I think I would lose all ambition.
The problem with settling there, though, is price. It has the most expensive real estate in the US. One house was for sale for $295 million. Even Satoshi Nakamoto would wince at paying that.
“I told my kids, when they were growing up,” said Mike, who I was having dinner with, “this is not the real world. Naples is not reality. It’s something else. They needed to know that.”
I turned to his son—Matty Ice—the man who had brought me to Naples to talk tax, bitcoin, and other such things on the Runway Pod, an entrepreneur and family man in his early 30s. “Well, I’m not leaving. Why would I?”
It turns out lots of people come to Naples on a temporary basis, then decide to stay.
It’s not just Naples real estate that is expensive, by the way. The whole of the US has got super dear. I paid $18 for a pint of beer in Miami airport. I had dinner at a friend’s—he paid $60 for three steaks for the barbeque. I thought steak was cheap in the US. In a Palm Springs supermarket, I paid $4.99 for three organic onions. They saw me coming.
In general, I would say food is twice the price it is here in the UK. And that’s with a strong dollar. The country has got very expensive. Inflation is a big, big issue.
My eldest son works in recruitment—in the chemicals industry—and most of the time he is recruiting in the US. He says US workers get paid three times the money for doing the same job as a UK worker - in that industry at least,
But, whether it’s Naples, neighbouring Fort Myers, or Miami, Florida; or Los Angeles or Palm Springs, California, there is also a lot of money in America. You can see it everywhere. It is several standard deviations of wealth up from the UK. The wealth is visible in the houses—even the middle-class houses—in the cars, in the clothes, in the prices. We in the UK have been left behind. It was not always like this.
That wealth gap is only going to get bigger, as the UK continues to pursue high taxes, big regulation, mass migration, and zero growth, while the US goes in the other direction. The place is full of opportunity.
Go to the US. Move there if you can, especially if you are young. The US was already something special, but something really special is happening there: the Washington purges are cleaning the place up. You’ve read the news, you’ve been on X, you’ve seen what’s going on. You really don’t need me to tell you.
But watch what you eat.
I put on 5 pounds (2 kilos) in just two weeks. Mind you, I couldn’t stop eating. The food is yum. (People in the gym kept asking me how I got to be so lean - “by not living in America, and not eating American food” I explained).
I don’t believe this level of political reform would have happened to anything like the same extent without the involvement of Elon Musk. He really is doing God’s work rooting out all that corruption. What emerges will be so much cleaner, more efficient, more honest, and more united.
But of all the things I actually witnessed in person, do you know what most blew my mind?
I did not expect this.
It wasn’t $295 million dollar houses. It wasn’t all the private aircraft in Naples airport next to where we were recording.
It was driving in a Tesla on autopilot. I’d never done it before.
I know I am late to this, but OMG.
Matty typed our destination into his computer, put the car into self-driving mode. Off it went.
The Tesla was a noticeably better driver than I am. It positioned itself on the road well, staying in the middle of the lane at all times. It cornered beautifully. It maintained the exact right distance to the car ahead. It knew the speed limits of all the roads we drove on. It knew when the lights were changing and set off straight away. It has a 360-degree awareness—a human can only look in one direction—and knew exactly what other cars nearby were doing. It didn’t get impatient and start doing silly things like jumping lights.
With machine learning, each Tesla is feeding info back to HQ, so that every car is learning from the others’ experiences. Teslas know the roads - every inch of them - better than you, even the local roads. They are learning how to deal with every conceivable traffic incident. This data-driven driving constantly updates.
I am a backseat driver. I often push my foot down on the imaginary brake. As I was getting over my control issues, I did this at a red light in the distance. Turns out it was miles away. The Tesla braked at exactly the right time.
It got us to our destination and then reversed and parked with precision into a tight spot. I’m a good parker. The Tesla was better. Of course it was. It has 360-degree vision, and my neck is getting stiff.
The driving conditions were good. But how much better would it be in rain, fog or ice, I wondered.
Tesla, Matty pointed out, is as much a software company—a platform like Airbnb, Facebook or TripAdvisor—as it is a car company.
The next day, I had an Uber drive me from Naples to Miami airport.
The Uber driver was good, but sometimes he was doing things on his phone—changing the podcast he was listening to, updating the map. “Look at the road,” I found myself thinking. Sometimes overt the 2-hour journey he strayed from the centre of the lane. One time he braked sharply. No such imperfection in the Tesla.
Transport as we know it is about to change
The main barriers to Tesla’s self-driving progress are regulatory, but a certain Elon Musk is now in a position of influence. One of the reasons he is doing what he is doing is to clear out the regulators and bureaucrats who were so biased against him and blocked his progress—whom he came to despise.
I think the regulatory barriers to self-driving vehicles start to come down quickly. Self-driving vehicles will soon be a feature on US roads. Then what happens?
“I will have my car drop me at the office,” said Matty, “instruct it to pick me up at five, and then in the meantime I’ll put it to work”.
In other words, his car will not be idly parked all day. It will spend the day ferrying other people about. It will earn him money.
Other Tesla owners will do the same. Suddenly owning a Tesla will become potentially profitable. A car will not be quite such a depreciating asset. No doubt some will buy fleets of them. Like any platform, Tesla itself is going to take a cut of the profit.
Just to get the self-driving capability added to the software of the vehicle, you must pay another ten grand. Then comes the rent.
Leaving your car parked 95% of the time, as most of us do—my car in London can stay parked for weeks at a time—is so inefficient. Not for much longer. At least, in the US. It’ll be years before we allow it here in the UK or Europe. Of course, it will.
What happens to American roads in the meantime? Fewer people are going to own cars, especially in cities. They won’t need to. They can just call a Tesla. What happens to the rest of the auto industry? Fewer car sales.
The cost of taxis though comes down.
Drivers lose their jobs to robots. I guess something similar happens to the trucking industry too.
The roads themselves are used more efficiently, as robots drive demonstrably better, leading to better traffic flow and less congestion.
Public transport will see fewer users. Why use such a smelly system when you can travel privately in a Tesla?
Self-driving cars were a pipe dream. That is about to change. American roads are about to change.
There are other self-driving operators - Waymo, Cruise, or Mobileye - which are already fully operational in limited areas (ie driverless). They have partnered with the likes of Jaguar, Mercedes, Volvo and Hyundai, but they do not have Tesla’s end-to-end autonomy. Nor do they have Tesla’s immense network effect.
The network effect is an incredibly powerful force in the evolution of a business. It’s often more important that the tech itself (why, for example, VHS beat Betamax or CDs obliterated minidisk). It’s why I advocate bitcoin ahead of other sh*tcoins.
Tesla’s dominance of roads could be on a par with Apple’s dominance of the smartphone market. It is ahead of the pack.
So should we all be buying stock in Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)?
Let’s take a financial overview.
Phew! It’s an expensive company. A lot of what I’ve already described must already be priced in.
With a market cap now over $1 trillion, it is among the world's most valuable companies.
Annual revenue in 2024 was $98 billion, with minimal growth on the previous year. The pro-electric narrative of a few years ago has dissipated over the last couple of years.
EBITDA for the twelve months ending in December 2024 was $15 billion. The EV-to-EBITDA, which compares the company's enterprise value to its EBITDA, stands at around 72, indicating a “premium valuation” relative to its operational earnings.
Its trailing P/E ratio is high, high, high at 177, as is its forward P/E of 124. A lot of earnings growth is expected. This could reflect anticipation of Tesla’s expansion into new markets, battery technology, and/or the self-driving revolution I have described, but it also points to a richly priced stock, for which investors are paying a substantial premium. The Price/Earnings to Growth (PEG) ratio, at 8.5, also implies Tesla is overvalued.
Any setback—some kind of bad accident, a large insurance claim, a rival technology becoming suddenly competitive—and this stock can take a big hit.
Turning to the company’s financial health and profitability, Tesla's Return on Equity (ROE) is 10.4%—I’ve seen worse—and its Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) is 6%, which denotes an efficient use of capital, something Musk is known for.
Tesla maintains a relatively low Debt/Equity ratio of 0.18, suggesting a conservative approach to leverage, which should reduce volatility. The current ratio of 2.02 indicates good short-term liquidity, allowing Tesla to meet its short-term liabilities comfortably.
But it is a volatile stock—so perhaps one to buy on weakness. The 52-week high is $488, the low $139. You can more than double your money if you buy this well. Currently at $350 we are in the middle of the range—well up from the lows, but also well off the highs—and in a downtrend.
Analysts, meanwhile, are divided. Predictions range from $115.00 to $550.00. reflecting a wide range of expectations.
Tesla is unique. It has the potential to transform transport as we currently know it. It could have enormous first-mover advantage and a near monopoly on roads, as more and more people “put their car to work,” and what is currently an expense becomes a secondary source of income. It is the market leader, it is the technological leader, it could enjoy something of a monopoly on roads as it drives ahead of its competitors.
To maintain and grow this valuation, it needs to stay ahead of rivals, it needs to overcome the regulatory barriers it faces, and it needs to manage the many inherent risks of the automotive and tech industries.
But one thing Elon Musk has is vision. He will have seen all of this and be working towards it.
I can quite easily envisage a scenario where Tesla’s dominance of roads is near monopolistic—like Apple’s dominance of phones or something.
In such a scenario, its valuation will be a lot higher.
It’ll make money on the car, on the software, then on the rental.
It will also be the most common car on the roads.
Transport is about to change.
Disclaimer:
I am not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or any other regulatory body as a financial advisor. Therefore, any information provided in this newsletter does not constitute regulated financial advice. It is solely an expression of opinion. Stocks are inherently risky. Please conduct your own due diligence and consult with a financial advisor if you have any doubts. Remember, markets can both rise and fall. I am not aware of your individual financial circumstances, so only invest money that you can afford to lose.
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Hundreds of tonnes of gold - so much so that there is now something of a shortage in London - have made their way across the Atlantic to the US to get ahead of Trump tariffs. Something like 400 tonnes have gone to the Comex alone, never mind what's gone to the private vaults of HSBC, JP Morgan et al.
With a shortage of physical gold for delivery in London, waiting times now as long as eight weeks, and the Bank of England refusing to comment, there are all sorts of rumours flying about. It's not a great situation for London, which is normally the epicentre of the physical gold markets.
I don't think we're going to get a proper run on gold, but it's possible nonetheless, and if we do, talk about unintended consequences...
A bit of zip in the normally quite sleepy physical markets.
Today, however, I wanted to give my outlook on gold for 2025. Before I do this, I have two things to plug:
One is my mate Charlie Morris' newsletter, Atlas Pulse. This monthly gold report is, in my view, the best out there bar none, and it's free. More here.
And, two, if you are thinking of buying gold - and I think everyone should own some - my preferred bullion dealer is the Pure Gold Company. You should get your gold or silver from them.
Gold’s Silent Surge
The gold price has been rising relentlessly since November 2022.
Here we are in early 2025, within a few dollars of all-time highs at $2,800.
Gold is at or close to all-time highs against the Japanese yen, the euro, the Swiss franc, the Great British peso, the Aussie and Canadian dollars, and pretty much any other fiat currency you care to mention.
And yet I don't recall seeing much mention of this anywhere. This is very much a stealth bull market, the best kind of bull market. It means there is plenty more hype left in the can.
Private investors are almost completely ignoring gold. In Germany, normally one of the biggest buyers of physical, I gather we are seeing net selling in the retail markets. One reason is there's profit to be had, especially for those who bought during Covid - of which there are many . Two, because the economy is in the toilet and people need the money. Higher rates in recent years have dampened both investment and speculative demand for gold.
A lot of the money that fuels the junior end of the mining markets also comes from retail buying, and if they're not buying bullion, they are certainly not buying miners: hence the atrophy there.
So who is buying then, if the price keeps on going up?
The answer, as regular readers of the Flying Frisby will be able to tell you straight away, is central banks, especially in Asia. This trend accelerating after the US began freezing Russian assets following its invasion of Ukraine.
China imported 124 tonnes just in November, writes Jan Nieuwenhuijs of the Gold Observer. It has bought 1,050 tonnes since the Russian Freeze, and it is buying 400 oz bars from London, which are almost certainly making their way to the People's Bank of China - 400 oz bars do not trade on the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It is also buying roughly three times as much as it declares.
The explanation is obvious. Central banks need reserve assets which other governments can't freeze, so-called bearer assets. Gold, which is value in and of itself, is the answer. There is no equal.
Here we see gold as a percentage of central bank reserves is now at 20%.
I doubt we go back to the heady pre-WWII days when gold made up 80-90% of reserves - money was not fiat then - but you can see the trend is very much up. It has been for 10 years now. The percentage has doubled in that time. I see no reason why it can't double again in the next ten years. 40 % of reserves held in gold seems like a reasonable number, a conservative number.
Nations are, says Nieuwenhuijs, "obviously preparing for a multipolar world in which the dollar's role as a reserve asset will be gently reduced."
You can look at all this and describe the process as natural and sensible asset allocation: diversification away from other government currencies, especially the US dollar.
Or you can proclaim that other nations are preparing to abandon the dollar and for a new gold standard. It's probably about 80% former and 20% latter. That may well change - but we are not there yet.
While nations might not be so much abandoning the dollar as they are simply increasing their gold holdings, they, are, however, reducing their holdings of US Treasuries. De-dollarisation and diversification.
At the moment, the whole process is covert and benign, but it may become a lot more significant a few years from now.
I urge you too to be diversified and own plenty of gold. It may well be that you are going to need it, and you're better off booking your seat on the lifeboat now while they are still available. This is especially the case if you are in the UK: there has never been a Labour government that didn't devalue, and this particular lot are flip-flopping and clueless. My guide to buying gold is here, in case of use:
I don't see any reason for this central bank buying to abate, by the way. My prognosis is that it continues.
What about the new President?
I want to, briefly, consider gold and President Donald Trump.
Here is what gold did last time he was in power.
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Here’s one for you.
Thousands of years ago aliens landed on earth. They came in great space ships, which the ancients took to be chariots of the gods, and they came for gold.
They were the Anunnaki from the planet Nibiru, according to ancient astronaut theory, which derives from author Zecharia Sitchin's interpretations of Sumerian texts. Tall and imposing, with features both human and otherworldly, they were seen as deities.
They needed gold dust to suspend in their planet’s atmosphere to protect it from the solar radiation that was slowly destroying it.
But the primitive hominids they found here, such as homo erectus, were useless, so they combined their alien DNA with them to create a worker race capable of mining the gold they had come for: Homo sapiens. They established mining colonies in Africa and in the Fertile Crescent, which became the cradle of civilisation.
The Anunnaki taught humans many things – agriculture, astronomy, mathematics, writing and record keeping - to ensure their mining operations ran smoothly.
Eventually, they departed, taking vast quantities of gold with them, but they left behind some of what they had created. Evidence of their existence can be found in myths, ancient mines, ancient texts and, of course, in the Megalithic structures they created such as the Pyramids and Stonehenge.
There is actually some evidence that the capstones on top of the pyramids – the pyramidia – were gilded with a layer of gold or electrum (gold-silver alloy), which, of course, would add to the many celestial and religious connotations of these structures. It’s also thought we could not build them today.
This is one of the reasons we associate gold with the gods.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Tell your friends about this ancient alien race.
If you haven’t already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris’s monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it’s free. Sign up here.
And, of course, if you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
You really should subscribe.
I mucked up the title of my mid-week piece, so in case you missed it here it is:
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I regard the crimes committed by the Pakistani Rape Gangs as some of the most barbaric, if not the most barbaric, given the scale of them, ever to have been perpetrated on British soil.
Yet, while I knew they were bad, I don’t think I realized quite how bad they are.
I’ve just finished playing a judge - Judge Peter Rook - in a new "verbatim film," which recreates the sentencing word for word of one of the most notorious grooming cases in Oxford. What went on is horrifying.
It’s called "The Grooming Gangs Cover-Up." It is produced by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, founders of the Unreported Story Society, which specializes in verbatim dramas, plays, and podcasts, and it comes out this Tuesday, January 21. Here’s the trailer:
At times, I could not believe the words that were coming out of my mouth.
I remember telling my elder son and daughter about these rape gangs back in the mid-2010s. Neither believed such a thing was possible. My son started googling. Even on the internet, there was little evidence of what was going on. Rapists are predominantly white, he concluded, and that was that in their minds.
The internet had smothered the story.
In 2020, when everybody was squabbling over Brexit, there was this campaign to get the Remainer anthem - Beethoven’s "Ode To Joy" conducted by André Rieu - to the top of the charts in time for the day we left. Fighting a rearguard action, Leavers then tried to get my song about Brexit, "17 Million F*ck Offs," to Number One. The result is that quite a few singles got sold. The media loved the story, and it was all over the papers. But there is one thing they left out: that I donated the proceeds to the Maggie Oliver Foundation, a charity set up to help the victims of rape gangs. Even that got covered up. (I don’t know what Rieu did with his royalties).
Midjourney, an AI art app which I use to illustrate these articles, refuses to design me a picture to illustrate the title of today’s piece.
Cover up, like the crimes themselves, is still happening.
A couple of years ago, my daughter-in-law was drugged by a Pakistani Bolt driver who had offered her a drink of water. This was in London - not Rotherham or Telford. Fortunately, the drug only kicked in after she had arrived at her destination and her friends looked after her. But what would have happened if that man had "helped out" by offering to take her home? How many other young girls have not been so lucky?
I put a picture of the guy online along with a warning. There were a lot of comments underneath. Many of them were deemed racist. Such is the extent of the brainwashing in the name of multiculturalism, a comment is now deemed of greater concern than actual deeds.
What is racism, anyway?
I define it as the wilful persecution of someone on the grounds of their race.
These white girls were the victims of racism. And sexism. And paedophilia. And rape. And GBH. And, in some cases, murder.
They were targeted because of their race. They were called "white w****s," "white c*nts," and "white slags," and no amount of contempt was enough for them. Yet, of course, they were white, and apparently, whites cannot be the victims of racism. Whites are privileged, you know that.
When is this two-tiered insanity going to stop? Is it not clear how much damage these false, progressive narratives, which we have let thrive, are doing?
We need a clear discussion followed by a definition - not the definition of a race grifter - of what racism is. And the rules need to be the same for everyone. No more multi-tiered nonsense.
These were racist crimes. And they went on for so long because those who should have put a stop to them were scared of being labelled racist. Rather than risk that slur, they threw children under the bus. Woke is, truly, cancerous.
If you live in a remote rural village, and somebody of unusual appearance comes along, and you stare at them, that does not make you racist. Staring at what is unusual to you is normal. If you use a word that is now considered out-of-date, perhaps as a result of not mixing in sophisticated urban circles, with zero harmful intent that does not make you racist. However, if you target a little girl because she is white, then groom her, inject her with drugs, rape her, and then sell her body to people you know so they can rape her - well, that is racist. And a whole lot more besides.
Let the truth be told
At lunch the other day, I started to read out to my family some of the judge’s sentencing remarks, which detail what happened. We got about two sentences in before it all got to be too much, and they didn’t want to hear it. No surprise. What happened is beyond awful.
Read the below if you can stomach it.
How can one human being do something like this to another?
The beauty of these verbatim dramas is that the creators cannot be accused of sensationalism or exaggeration. It is the truth. That is what needs to come out. We have to learn about what has happened if only to motivate ourselves and our leaders into doing something about this.
It has been going on since the 1990s. It is still going on today. No more brushing it under the carpet in the name of multi-culturalism.
The Jay Report claims that 1,400 children (that’s just the under-age ones) were sexually exploited in Rotherham over 16 years. If you extrapolate that number over 50 other towns and cities, you arrive at roughly 70,000 victims. That is a conservative estimate. You can do similar extrapolations and come to a figure of a million. The likelihood is 250,000-500,000, given that we are talking about a period longer than 16 years and it has been happening in more than 50 locations. Kids!
For sure, the cover-ups - the unwillingness to police, prosecute, publicize, or punish - meant the rape gangs went much further than they otherwise would. They thought they could get away with it.
We need truth, even if it is unpalatable, if we are to stop things like this ever happening again.
Most of these girls have never had anything like justice. How is a few years in prison anything like justice anyway?
If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
The system does not work - smash it
Prison is no longer sufficient punishment. It does not work as a deterrent. With almost 20% of inmates now Muslim and, according to a solicitor friend, with prisons now largely controlled on the inside by Muslim gangs, prison has become a place of indoctrination, radicalization, and Islamism. Thus, not only does imprisonment not work, it is actually counter-productive: it is creating offenders. Who’d’ve thought something run by government doesn’t work as intended?
Then prisoners get let out too early, especially to make room for people uttering wrong think on social media.
Prison is also expensive - annual imprisonment now costs more than £50,000-100,000 per year per inmate, plus the costs of processing it all (police, courts, legal aid, etc) also amount to more than £50,000. As if what the rapist has done is not already bad enough, now we have to pay for him too. The courts are overwhelmed. The justice system is exploited. We need something different and better. It’s long overdue. Horror stories like this one can at least motivate the required reform.
There are other factors motivating the cover-up in my view. Policing your own community, where everybody knows who's who, everybody speaks the same language, and comes from the same culture is one thing. But policing another culture, where the language is different, the values are different - even the names are difficult - is much harder.
It gets even harder when the majority of that culture feel a greater loyalty to their own people and culture than they do to what is right in the eyes of the host culture, or indeed the people of the host culture. If the alien culture does not integrate, it gets even harder.
It was probably easier for the police to let stuff go, and focus on other things.
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Here’s a thought
In the largely secular UK, where the state now takes on responsibilities which were once borne by the church - education, care and so on - the state has also replaced religion. From Nigel Lawson to Polly Toynbee, it is now recognized that the NHS has become a religion.
But the Pakistani communities that have taken over so many towns in the north and elsewhere do not feel the same sense of loyalty, protection, or worship to Britain’s welfare state. It is something to take from rather than contribute to. They worship the Prophet Mohammed, not the NHS.
I will wager a large bet that - especially in these communities where cash plays such a big role - they are paying much lower levels of tax than their earnings dictate. They will pay their Zakat long before they pay their VAT, Income or other taxes. Is HMRC policing these economies to the same extent? You know it isn’t.
Will a thorough investigation be commissioned? Of course it won’t. That would be racist.
More tiers, more iniquity, more injustice.
But that’s is another story, and it’ll be years before that one comes out.
Please tell your friends about this article.
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Heads up: there is now a video version of last week’s predictions piece, if you fancy:
Onwards …
I am bullish on America.
For all its failings, I think it’s still, as comedian Lewis Schaffer is forever telling me, “the greatest country in the world.”
The new administration has huge hurdles ahead of it - not least sorting out the excess spending on its military-industrial complex and atrocious healthcare system, though perhaps "system" is not the word I should be using. The administration also faces considerable resistance from its ideological opponents who prevail in the deep state.
But if Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK, et al. get just a third of the stuff they have planned over the line, then the economy is going to boom like hell. There is a lot of money in that country, a lot of entrepreneurial spirit, and a lot of opportunity. Just the size of the US alone means it is, in itself, an enormous market.
However, while the economy and the stock market are bedfellows, they do not always march forward hand in hand. How often this century have we seen stock markets boom while life for the ordinary working person becomes ever harder? Inflation, for example, eats away at his effective earnings, and he struggles to keep up, while the same inflationary dynamic actually pushes up stock markets.
The reverse can also apply. There might be an economic boom "on the street," but stock markets, on the other hand, might be flat. Perhaps they already advanced a year ahead of the boom in anticipation. Perhaps life made better for the American worker by, say, tariffs does not suit global companies like Apple, and so stock prices retreat.
So, while I am bullish on America, am I bullish on US stocks?
I must confess to being rather more ambivalent, as there are a number of headwinds and warning signs.
Let’s look at some of them.
First, there is the small (by that I mean large) matter of the US dollar.
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Enjoy!
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Here’s the original article if you prefer to read or listen”
If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.
And
If you haven’t already, take a look at my buddy Charlie Morris’s monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse. It is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there, and, best of all, it’s free. Sign up here.
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