Stuff That Interests Me

Happy St George’s Day to you.My apologies for the late arrival of this week’s missive but I found myself without electricity this morning due to, and I quote, “a fault with the electricity”Never mind. Here we are.Everything seems so headline driven and yet contradictory at the moment. With every change in circumstance, especially at the Strait of Hormuz, a different narrative seems to emerge only for it to peter away almost as quickly.You’ve got to be long oil and gas. Buy. There’s no point. The strait is open. Sell.With so much geopolitical tension you have to be long gold and silver. Debt, deficits, debasement, de-dollarisation, conflict, central bank buying. But gold and silver aren’t moving. They had their move last year.Equities make even less sense. You don’t want to be long equities. You need to reduce risk. World War Three is coming. And the S&P 500 has just broken out to record highs.So you end up with this strange situation where the stories are compelling, but the price action is inconsistent.

Good Sunday to youI’m still finding my feet having just got back from Namibia. I’ve got a full country report coming, as well as a portfolio piece. But I’ve been thinking further about the country’s potential since Wednesday’s note.Namibia has almost everything. Resources. Location. Roads. A small population. On paper, it should work.And yet.Driving through Windhoek, the capital, my guide pointed out a hospital: the Katutura State Hospital.“You don’t want to get sick here,” he said.It didn’t look too bad from the outside. A bit craggy. But I’ve seen worse.The place is infamous apparently. Rats. Endless waits. People lying untreated in corridors. People deliberately go at 3 in the morning, because it betters your chances of being seen the next day. My guide described his own time there when he broke his arm last year. Oof. It makes NHS Accident and Emergency waiting times look slick.Across the road, stood a gleaming monstrosity - the SWAPO (ruling party) headquarters. Brand new. Vulgar. Expensive. Impossible t

I’m travelling, so this week’s note will be brief.What a country Namibia is. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere with so much potential.But also what a mess. Official unemployment is 37%. Real unemployment is likely over 50%. Can you imagine?Per capita GDP is about $4,200. That puts it at 119th the global rankings.The countries that top the list include the likes of Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore, Norway, Qatar. Small populations. Either financial centres with low tax, strong rule of law and minimal corruption, or oil-rich.Strip out the statistical quirks like Ireland, where corporate domiciles distort the numbers, and the pattern becomes even clearer.With the exception of the US, they are all small, with populations under 5 million.Namibia has just 3 million people.Oil has just been discovered offshore. It is the world’s third largest uranium producer, and has an abundance of other natural resources. It’s safe. There is rule of law. It ports are good. Its roads are even better. And its location towards

Good Sunday to you,It seems Iran is planning to turn the Strait of Hormuz into the marine equivalent a toll road, or so at least the Financial Times among others is reporting. Ships wishing to pass through the strait must pay a fee of $1 per barrel of oil.Here’s the clincher: the fee must be paid in bitcoin.Why bitcoin? It’s the best money for the job.As it is “permissionless”, no government can order the funds to be frozen or seized. No bank can block the transaction. There is no intermediary. It is outside geopolitical control. Transactions can be made remotely and digitally. Settlement is within minutes. Ownership is clear. The network is sufficiently liquid.No other widely used currency or payment system in existence has these qualities. Not the dollar, not the euro, not gold or silver, not stablecoins.Suddenly bitcoin has become “a tool to navigate a global conflict’, in the words of bitcoiner Jesse Tevelow.A particular company might not like Iran. Iran might not like the company. Neither might trust the

Good Sunday to you, And Happy Easter.Today’s missive comes to you from Namibia, where I am giving a talk on gold at the Cirrus Investor Conference next week. I’m right out in the Styx at the minute and internet is patchy so I’m keeping this brief. Here’s the view from my window, if you don’t believe me.Coming to AmericaMeanwhile, just as I was setting off, the US copies of the Secret History of Gold arrived. So watch the unboxing.What do you think of the cover?I’ve been delighted at the response to the book in the UK. The reviews on Amazon have been excellent, averaging 4.8 stars, which is good. The audiobook has done just as well. In fact, I get 4.9 for performance. How about that?People have bought multiple copies whether as gifts or to gold-pill difficult relatives. Both my agent and my publisher are pleased with sales. So everything tickety boo.But the US is the Big Test and next month the book comes out there, published by Pegasus. Which means American readers can finally get your copy.I'‘m obviously su

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comYou’ve probably heard: gold has just had the worst month in its history.Given that gold is older than the earth itself, that’s quite a long history. What headline writers actually mean, even if they don’t know it, is that: in US dollar terms, gold just had its worst month since 1971, at a stretch 1789.But the US dollar is a bogus, fiat measure, and the sooner we start using constant money as our unit of account, the more truthful the world will become. Gold hasn’t changed. It doesn’t. What has swung, violently as ever, is the price of fiat. The move looks more extreme than it is because of where the month started. Gold began March near a high, around $5,400, and then sold off hard. A thousand-dollar swing sounds a lot, but after the run we’ve just had it’s not especially surprising. Indeed I would go as far as to say it’s normal. Here is a 3 year chart of gold to put the March move in some perspective. I’ve also added a very

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comNever mind the dodgy mortgages, oil spiking to $150/barrel in July, 2008, just before the panic set in, was as big a cause of the Global Financial Crisis.The price rise was like a sudden, unexpected liquidity drain on the economy. The US economy is built on oil. Costs suddenly rose across every supply chain. Disposable income was sucked out of households. Corporate margins got squeezed and inflation expectations rose effectively tightening financial conditions, just as the system needed liquidity. Funding costs then rose and collateral quality deteriorated. In a system already stretched with cheap credit and thin margins, highly leveraged institutions and ordinary borrowers were simultaneously pushed over the edge. The structure was fragile and it only worked in a low energy, low rate world. Subprime may have been the trigger, but the energy shock had already destabilised the foundations.The oil price tightened financial con

Bull markets don’t last forever. When you’re in the throes of one, it can feel like they do. But they don’t, and at a certain point you have to sell.Gold bull markets can feel even more eternal. Not just because the metal itself is eternal, but because the story comes along that we are going back to a gold standard, or that the Great Purge, which many economists of the Austrian school say is inevitable after fifty years of fiat decadence, is finally upon us.I get that argument. But it is too neat, too deterministic. Real life is much more mucky.So today I want to consider a very important question, and I want to try and answer it honestly:Where are we in this bull market?Has gold already peaked? It’s possible. The spike to $5,600/oz at the end of January had many of the hallmarks of a blow-off top.Or perhaps $5,600 was just a mid-cycle peak, such as we saw in 2006 or 1975-76 during previous bull markets.Or is this bull market still in its infancy?I’m going to study this bull market through every lens I can

Good Sunday to you,You’ve no doubt seen the videos of Iran’s largest oil facilities burning.How much destruction does war cause? To the environment, to wealth, to people’s lives. And governments lecture us about the environment.15% of China’s oil comes from Iran. Not any more. I bet they’re delighted.No surprise, oil futures have spiked again. WTIC has gone to $94 in weekend markets, Brent to $97.I’m glad we own oil and I’m glad we own gold. Iran meanwhile has started targeting desalination plants across the Middle East - how most neighbouring Arab nations get their water - and the probability of an early end to this conflict, despite Donald Trump already claiming the win, seems to be receding by the day.According to Polymarket, the probability of a US-Iran ceasefire by March 31 is just 24%. Even by the end of April it is just 48%. The odds are 67% that the Iranian regime will still be in power by June 30.Meanwhile, in the UK, the strategic stupidity of being dependent on overseas sources for oil, gas and coa

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comWar creates uncertainty. Lots of it. And how we all hate uncertainty. Markets don’t like it either.What’s going to happen? How long does it go on for? Where do things go from here?Iran will be an in-and-out job like Maduro. Actually the regime is more entrenched than that. It’s only going to last four weeks. America’s preparing for a 100-day war. Britain is getting dragged into World War Three. It’s Cuba next. Aaaagh. Help.At times like this it pays to zoom out and take stock of the bigger picture.So today I’m going to do that.With a BIG Forecast.I’ve studied the charts, applied some simple technical analysis, all with a striaghtforward question in mind: where is all this going?We are going to look at:* Gold* Silver* Bitcoin* Crude oil* Copper* The S&P 500* The pound* The US dollarAnd I am going to give you my forecast.Before we begin, though, take a moment.Where do you think these markets will be by the end of the year?*

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comYesterday, the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, targeting key military and other strategic facilities. The Ayatollah Khamenei - supreme leader of Iran for 36 years - has already been confirmed dead, killed in the strikes along with several other senior officials. In retaliation, Iran has struck US military bases, Israel, and targets across the Middle East. Supposedly safe Dubai has been hit. We pray for every innocent caught up in this, wherever they are.We have a major conflict in the Middle East on our hands. Again.ICYMI, here is the week’s commentary. I’m glad we were positioned for this oil rally.The early signsThis operation was reportedly planned for months and rumours about its imminence have been circulating for as long. President Trump has promised to obliterate Iran’s nuclear programme and end the regime. Many Iranians have been pictured celebrating in the streets. This regime was massacring protester

Good Sunday to you,Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in around 1400, and it is considered one of the first great works of English literature.Try reading it today and you might question the “English” part. Here’re the opening lines:Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,It does not get much easier.Canterbury Tales is the story of group of pilgrims who walk from Southwark to Canterbury Cathedral. I have done the pilgrimage myself and I would urge you to as well. The structure is quite simple. To pass the time, the pilgrims have to a storytelling contest and so each tells his or her tale. There are around thirty pilgrims - in effect, thirty professions, and so we get the Knight’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Tale and so on.Here is the interesting part. Since the story was written in 1400 we have had, off the top of my head, the printing press, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, steam power, fossil fuels, the internal c

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comI’m watching amazing video after amazing video made by AI. They’re almost as gripping as the Lowe-Farage blood feud.Hollywood is being “dis-intermediated”, to use the tech lingo. Just as television went from scheduled to on demand, now the content itself is moving that way. Want a different ending to Game of Thrones? Soon you will generate it. And that’s just video. What about everything else? Even if just a fraction of the AI hype actually scales, one thing is certain: we are going to need more electricityMore data centres. More compute. More cooling. More fabrication. More automation. Doesn’t matter where you are in the world - Asia, Africa, America, Europe - energy consumption is going to go up.Because that is what humans do. As we evolve, we consume more energy. We also get better at consuming energy. It’s called progress.Despite ESG orthodoxy, wind and solar subsidy and build, and everything else, global oil consumption

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comGood Sunday to you,In case you missed them, I put out two articles this week. Here they are.By now I am sure you will have stumbled across Matt Shumer’s essay Something Big Is Happening, which has gone bananas viral. Eighty-one million views on X alone. That’s even more than We’re All Far Right Now.Shumer describes how AI capability is improving exponentially, meaning that most screen-based jobs face imminent and major disruption. By that he means all but disappearing. His advice is blunt: get good at using AI now; assume much of what you do will be automated, and thus your doing it will soon be redundant; and start saving up, there’s economic upheaval coming.It’s perhaps the best articulated essay there is describing this bleak view of what is coming.From my own little vantage point, I’m not nearly so pessimistic. I use AI a lot, and I use it more and more. Its rapid improvement over the last six months has been obvious, th

An extra piece for you this week. I had planned to follow up on Dr John’s timely piece on oil and gas today, but it will have to wait.We need to talk about bitcoin.Since peaking at $126,000 in early October, the bitcoin price has been in freefall, and the declines have accelerated this year. Earlier in the week, it touched $60,000 - declines of over 50% from peak to trough. Today it sits at $67,000.Call it what it is. It’s a bear market.Here’s a 2-year chart so you can see the price action. All the gains of 2025 have been given back and we are back at 2024 levels.Bitcoin has become a software proxyMy first observation is that bitcoin’s decline since October has coincided exactly with a brutal selloff in software stocks, even as hard assets - gold, silver, and other metals - have caught one heck of a bid.Just a few years ago, hard assets had no value, it seemed. Forget land, mining, the real economy. It was all about digital, software, IP, trademarks. How things have changed.This chart appeared in a WhatsApp g

I can’t tell you how many messages I am getting from people about silver.Have I seen this video, read this article, looked at this data, listened to this podcast. JP Morgan is about to go bust, the paper markets are overwhelmed, the price is manipulated, China is setting the real price, this is a reset. And so on.The problem with speculative manias, especially when silver is involved, is that enormous amounts of misinformation get spread, much of it about things you and I, as ordinary investors, can do nothing about.Take it all with a pinch of salt is my advice.What I find interesting is that similar amounts of misinformation are being spread about bitcoin. The price is being manipulated on the futures markets, Strategy is about to go bust, Michael Saylor is this, that and the other, and so on. It’s game over.The only real difference is that one is in a bull market, which may or may not be over, and the other is in a bear market, which may or may not be over. Sentiment for both is at extremes, albeit at diffe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comPhew. I need to write about something else apart from silver and gold. But I have to look at the price action we have seen this week, and I will say this. It was violent. Extraordinary, even. But it wasn’t necessarily bearish.Sharp sell-offs like those we saw on Friday and Monday are characteristic of bull markets. In bear markets, corrections are grinding and protracted. Selling pressure is persistent. Value erodes slowly amid deteriorating fundamentals.Bull markets behave differently. They flush. Explosively.Late entrants and overleveraged speculators get shaken out. Stops are tight. Everyone is climbing the wall of worry. When a correction comes, a cascade of stop losses gets triggered all at once. Hence the violence.BTW the latest Atlas Pulse came out on Friday, as level-headed as always. It’s the best gold and silver newsletter out there, in my view. Get your copy here - it’s free.This is not just a precious-metals phen

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comI am rotating some of my gold and silver profits into oil and gas, as I think energy is next. I will have more on this very soon. I promise. But we need to talk gold and silver today, plus we have an update on top pick Metals Exploration (MTL.L)I thought Monday was the top. Silver went from $100/oz to $115/oz over the weekend and then on Monday in US hours reversed and gave back all those gains. It looked like we were shaping up for an island reversal.Here we are on Wednesday and, as I write, we are at $115 again.This is one strong market.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued. 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.Let’s all do the Randolph?I have a friend. We’ll call him Randol

With all sorts of rumours about physical shortages of silver, for your Sunday thought piece today, I spoke to precious metals dealer Joshua Saul to try and find out what is really happening in the metals markets.Joshua Saul has been dealing gold and silver bullion for 20 years. He’s never seen anything like what’s happening now.His key points: silver is catching up from decades of undervaluation. The gold-silver ratio historically sat at 15:1. In recent years it hit 100:1. That’s not a price quirk - it’s a structural anomaly that’s now correcting.Supply can't keep up. Most silver comes as a byproduct of other mining, so production can't respond quickly to price spikes. Industrial demand is surging (solar, EVs, data centres). Mints are sold out. China's quietly accumulating. Physical premiums are spiking globallyThe Pure Gold Company has metal, but only because they have large contractual commitments with the Royal Mint, but he’s clear - this is unprecedented. Even 2008 didn’t look like this.Find out more abou

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comThis has been for ages one of those things that has been going to happen that never actually happens.But on Monday there were signs it is actually going to happen.I’m talking about some kind of financial crisis in Japan, whether in its currency, its debt markets or a bit of both. Because it’s so far away, we tend to overlook in Western Europe what a big deal Japan is: but it’s the world’s 4th largest economy - only the US, China and Germany have greater GDP.But its debt-to-GDP is 230% - 4 times Germany’s (~63%), more than double the UK’s (100%) and almost double the US’s (~124%). But it has sustained these “unsustainable” levels for so long it’s now normal. Shorting the yen has been the great widow maker.In addition to roughly $10 trillion of government debt, Japan also carries around $8 trillion of non-financial sector debt, including corporate and household borrowing. This is not new. What may be new is the market’s willing