The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comYou can watch a video of this article:When I was 19, I started getting these weird heat rashes. Every day, whenever I got hot, these debilitating, paralysing heat rashes would envelop me. Burning, bumpy, red weals suddenly covered my body. So itchy—you wanted to scratch everywhere, though scratching brought no relief. Once the rash started, there was nothing I could do. I just had to wait for it to pass, which would take about half an hour.I didn’t even have to get so hot that I broke sweat for the rash to come on. Just walking briskly would do it, getting flustered, wearing a layer too many, even having a shower.And it came every day, usually mid-morning.I thought it might be stress that was causing it, but it was the other way around: these rashes were causing the stress.I found a way of coping with it: do intense exercise every morning and actually induce the rash. Then it seemed to burn itself out for the rest of the day.But the next morning, it would be back again.I went to see doctors about it. None of them knew what it was. As GPs often do when they don’t know the answer, they brushed it aside, “Oh, it’s probably stress.” I wasn’t making this up! But unless I actually had an attack in front of the GP, there was no way of showing them what it was.I saw a dermatologist, who gave me anti-depressants. I saw Chinese herbalist after Chinese herbalist, who all concocted these disgusting teas for me to drink. Lord knows what damage I did to my liver drinking that stuff. I saw an acupuncturist who declared brightly that he could cure it. But he couldn’t.It made my life a nightmare, because you never quite knew when the rash was going to hit. What if it came on when I was on stage? During that all-important meeting? When I was with a girl I liked? It was a source of acute embarrassment.The condition disappeared, bizarrely, if I went to the tropics. Why, Lord knows. But as soon as I got home, back it came. Then I noticed the condition also disappeared in the summer. What was that about? I realised the antihistamine I was taking for hay fever also prevented these rash attacks.But I didn’t want to take antihistamine every day—that couldn’t be healthy—so, once the hay fever season was over, I would go back to keeping it at bay by trying to do intense exercise every morning and burning it off.When I got married and had kids, aged 30, this became impossible, so I resigned myself to daily antihistamine. This started with Clarityn (Loratadine), moved onto Zirtek (which I hated because if I drank alcohol, I used to get incredibly drunk and that led to a lot of bad decisions and mistakes) and, eventually, Xyzal, which I found I only needed to take every other day. The potential long-term damage of sustained anti-histamine use was a gamble I was prepared to make to avoid the daily nightmare of this condition.If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times, then let me recommend The Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low, quality of service is high and you deal with a human being who knows their stuff. Eventually, I discovered that the problem I had was a condition called heat-induced cholinergic urticaria. I went to see a specialist at St Thomas' Hospital. “There is no cure,” she told me. “Sometimes it clears up by itself,” she told me, “sometimes not. You’re lucky antihistamine stops it. For many that doesn’t work.” I volunteered to be a guinea pig so she could experiment on me as part of her research into the condition. I would go to the hospital, have a hot bath, my skin would erupt, and then she’d prod me and prick me and nod and mutter, but it got me no nearer to a cure.Here I am at 54, and it has not cleared up.What is the cause?I’m still not quite sure if something I did caused it. Urticaria is from the same allergic school of illnesses as asthma, eczema, and hay fever, from which I suffer a little (asthma especially if I run or am near cats), so it might be hereditary or genetic. It affects young men more than any other group, which is what I was.I’ve been on numerous forums where fellow sufferers discuss the condition, and a lot of us took the antibiotic tetracycline. I took it for years as a teenager to help with my acne. God, it makes me cross that I was allowed—even encouraged—to take it for so long. Bloody doctors, or one in particular (no longer with us so I won’t name him and speak ill of the dead), and my mother’s blind trust in them. I thought it might be tetracycline.I had spent two months in Egypt just before I got my first outbreaks, and I got very ill with Giardia, a form of dysentary. Maybe I lost some essential bacteria in my stomach or something, or got leaky gut. (I’ve taken a million probiotics and all the rest of it—didn’t work).Also just before the first outbreaks, I got the sh*t kicked out of me in a park in Milan by a group of young Italians - I mean properly beaten up, 7 v 1 and I made the mistake of fighting back - so maybe it was somehow related to that.Maybe it was the accumulation of everything.Nature’s magic superfood comes to the rescueOne of the unintended benefits of my health drive in recent years is that my asthma, which I’ve had since I was born, appears to have, for no apparent reason, gone. I haven’t been near cats to test it there, but I no longer need my puffer to play football. (Don’t know why. It might be an age thing; a health thing, most likely a seed oil thing).Then I forgot to take my antihistamine for a few days, and I noticed that I wasn’t getting urticaria attacks either. Praise the Lord! I thought my urticaria might’ve cleared up too. No such luck, as it turned out. It hadn’t. I went abroad and, after a few days, it came back. Then I realised there was something I’d been taking at home, and I hadn’t taken it away with me.It made all the difference.That mysterious ailment you’ve had for ages and can’t rid of. this might sort that out too.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comYou can watch a video of this article here: Robert F. Kennedy has been grabbing headlines this week, not just for his alliance with Donald Trump, but for his criticisms of the American food industry, which he holds responsible for the epidemic of obesity and poor health.I can’t believe what he has to say is even considered controversial, when it’s so obvious it’s true. Yet Time, The Guardian, The New York Times, and all the usual suspects have all come out to smear him.Surely it’s clear? Processed food is bad for your health. Processed food causes obesity. Processed food is the cause of many modern illnesses. Don’t eat processed food. It is bad for you.I’m not a doctor. Then again, I’m not an economist either. I’m just a guy who gets interested in stuff, especially systems—how they work and what their effects are.In the noughties, I became very interested in our systems of money, largely because I couldn’t understand why houses cost so much relative to what people earn. Before long, I felt I had a good grasp of how money works. I ended up writing a film that became an internet sensation (and got horribly plagiarised in the process), several books, and umpteen articles, all making the case that if the West is to save itself and create a level playing field, we need sound money. Whether that’s based on gold or bitcoin doesn’t really matter. Money needs to be independent, rather than a tool  of government.Recently, I’ve become very interested in health - on particular, improving mine. For years, I have been unable to understand why I—and millions like me—could never keep weight off.I have become convinced that seed oils are to health what fiat money is to the economy. It is that fundamental, in my mind. Thanks to bitcoin and gold, the fiat money narrative genie is out of the bottle. Fiat is not going to die tomorrow—it will probably take decades —but more and more people are realizing how bad it is and are taking steps to escape the system via alternative money. The same thing needs to happen with seed oils. I find myself becoming as passionate about this as I was about money 15 years ago. Why are so many people obese? Why are so many people, who work on their health, diet, and fitness still 10 or 20 pounds heavier than they’d like to be? Why were so many people skinny in the 60s and 70s, but not now? Are people greedier now than they were then? They can’t be. We are the same human beings. Indeed, we exercise more.What’s changed is processed food. It barely used to exist. Now it’s almost impossible to avoid. The main enabler of processed food, the thing that gives it such a long shelf life, is seed oil.What are seed oils?"Seed oils" is a catch-all term for the various vegetable oils that have replaced animal fats to become a mainstay of the Western diet: sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, palm oil, margarine, and so on. Anything hydrogenated is bad.Seed oils were mostly invented for industrial purposes, but because of their price and properties, “entrepreneurial” companies, assisted by regulators, quack research, and lots of PR, gradually added them to their food products, so that seed oils have now, mostly, replaced animal fatsJust look at how they’re made. You gather seeds from plants such as soy, corn, cotton, safflower, or rapeseed; heat the seeds to extremely high temperatures, so the fatty acids oxidize; process the seeds with petroleum-based solvents such as hexane to extract the maximum amount of oil; add chemicals to remove the foul smell (this deodorization process produces harmful fatty acids); and then add more chemicals to change the colour and appearance of the oil. Not healthy. One of their properties is that they don’t break down easily (they can thus help lengthen food’s shelf life). The problem, it seems, is that the human body can’t properly break them down either.Okinawa in Japan became famous for its longevity, with many people living well into their 90s and 100s. Then along came Western processed food, and suddenly there is an increase in obesity, diabetes, and other modern illnesses. The once famously long-lived population is now seeing both a decline in life expectancy and an increase in health problems that were previously unknown.When correlation equals causationThis chart shows the consumption of vegetable oil in the US since the late 19th century. We didn’t used to eat seed oils; we ate animal fats. You can see they change in diet.Sugar often gets the blame for the rise in obesity, but if you look at current US sugar consumption, it’s not that different from what it was in the 1930s or 40s. Obesity has grown, while sugar consumption has remained broadly flat.Now, let’s look at vegetable oil consumption and obesity rates. They correlate. And in this case, correlation is causation.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comA cock-up at HQ some of you didn’t see Sunday’s piece about a scam in the gold bullion markets. Here it is ICYMI: Also in video format if you prefer.Now we look at what must be the most important price in the world: that is the price of the global reserve currency, the US dollar.Does it go up or down from here?There is probably no more important question in global finance to know the answer to.If the dollar is falling, it usually signals boom times for assets: equities and commodities especially. The US prints and spends, and then exports the inflation. Money gets loose and the party rocks.But when the dollar is strong, everyone gets the jitters.Today the US dollar is seriously oversold.Conversely, the inverse trade—gold—is at all-time highs. US equity markets are flirting with all-time highs, while the euro and the yen, even the pound, have been soaring.What’s more: the US General Election is coming. On which note, how about this for a chart? Since 1985, the dollar has declined with the Republicans - Reagan, Bush x2 and Trump - and rallied with the Democrats - Clinton, Obama, and Biden.Who wins in November has a big impact on the priceBut there’re several months to go till November, and a lot can change in just a few weeks.Let’s start with US dollar index, which tracks the dollar against the currencies of the US’s main trading partners', over the past year. Look at the RSI.The RSI has gone beneath 30 for the first time in over a year. You would typically expect a reversal from these levels.Look at the 3-month rally the dollar had starting in July 2023, the last time it was this oversold, it was quite something.In fact, based on this, I have taken a small short position in cable, betting that the dollar will rise against the pound.Last week, Fed Chief Jerome Powell indicated that the Federal Reserve is now ready to start cutting rates, which should be bearish for the dollar. However, oversold is oversold."The time has come for policy to adjust." he said. "My confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%."The market is somewhat divided as to whether that cut will be 0.25% or 0.5%, but lower rates go. The inflation—by their definition—monster has been tamed.“The 2-year yield has fallen to 3.9% compared to base rates at 5.5%, which is the bond market’s way of pricing in future rate cuts,” says Charlie Morris at Bytree. (Have you subscribed to his letter? You should.) "The difference, at -1.6%, means that a full rate-cutting cycle lies ahead. Indeed, this reading is more pronounced than seen in 2001 and 2008, implying the cuts could come thick and fast."2001 and 2008 were major turning points in the US dollar. What about sentiment?To gauge this, I ran some polls on various WhatsApp chats and Twitter/X. What did they show?

You can also watch this article in video format here:There are some unscrupulous bullion dealers out there who are taking advantage of rookie buyers who don’t entirely know what they are doing when buying gold.I am not going to name names. But don’t fall the scamIf a dealer tries to flog you graded coins, in almost all cases they are trying to rip you off. Don’t pay a premium for graded coins.You are not buying gold to try and be clever and hope that your coin gets some kind of rarity value. In most cases, that will not happen. There are clever people who know this market better than you already playing this game. Don’t get involved. Your priority is to get as much gold for your money as possible. You are buying gold to preserve purchasing power, not to lose it. If a dealer tells you that some recent sovereign, for example, is extremely rare, that it was one of the last coins minted under Queen Elizabeth or some such, and that it has been graded and has a special certificate and blah blah, and it therefore carries a huge premium, they are trying to pull a sly one. The reality is that the extra premium paid is almost impossible to claw back when you come to sell.It really annoys me that bullion dealers are doing this. When buying gold, trust is everything and they are breaching that. You are buying gold for safety, not to be ripped off.Eventually, the FCA or the Office For Fair Trading or someone will eventually come after the dealers, but it will be too late. We all know how slow these organisations can be and by this point many more people will have been scammed. Why do dealers do it? A dealer might buy a large stock of coins from the Mint. Coins are often of a slightly different quality. Dealers then send them off and pay a small fee to get them graded according to their Mint State. The scale ranges from MS-60 to MS-70, with MS-70 being a perfect, flawless coin. They then charge a large premium for coins with high grades, even though they barely paid any premium when they bought the coins The margins when dealing in gold are on the slim side - sometimes just a few percent. But if they get an additional premium for the rarity, that margin can rise to 100%. No wonder there are so many unscrupulous salesman trying to flog graded coins. Fractional coins—¼ or 1/2 sovs for example—or older coins do trade at a higher (though not enormous) premium. These can trade for 15-20% above the spot value of the gold content. But you are likely to get that back when you sell. (Demand for fractional coins has increased this last year while it has fallen for 1oz coins).But for graded coins you can end up paying 100% premium to the spot value of the gold, yet when you come to sell you get little more than the spot value. So when you come to sell, you can lose over 70% even if the spot price of gold has increased. It’s like buying a painting by a modern artist and being told by the vendor he’s more famous than he is, only to find out later on that he isn’t.Don’t fall for it. And spread the word. The more people that know about this the better.If you are interested in buying gold in these uncertain times, then check out my recent report, and look no further than my recommended bullion dealer, the Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, and you get to deal with a human being who knows their stuff and won’t try and flog you graded coins at rip-off premiums.IMPORTANT: somebody keeps impersonating me on various social media, including on here asking readers to message them on WhatsApp. It is not me. Don’t engage. Please report and DON’T send any money.Finally, my Edinburgh Fringe show Shaping the Earth, a “lecture with funny bits” about the history of mining, is coming to London October 9th and 10th to the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. It’s a really interesting show, even though I say so myself. 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

If you would rather watch this piece go here:IMPORTANT: somebody has been impersonating me on Substack, on Instagram and on YouTube. Please don’t engage. Report and block. And please DON’T send any money.Thanks to all who came to see Shaping The Earth up in Edinburgh. The show got incredible feedback. I am doing it in London October 9th and 10th at the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. House prices have to come down some time. But when exactly? That’s what we all want to know. So here’s your answer.The declines start in the US and Canada in 2025, followed by the UK, Europe and Australia in 2026.That’s what the 18-year property cycle says, at least.Today we explore that cycle and what it says about house prices.18 Years of Boom and BustEconomist Fred Harrison, who first covered the theory in his 1983 book, The Power in the Land, is very much the Godfather of the idea that real estate follows a predictable pattern over an 18-year period. I first stumbled across Harrison in 2005, when so many were sure house prices had to come down (needless to say they didn’t), on reading his brilliantly prophetic article for MoneyWeek, arguing that we were two or three years from the top. Wasn’t he right. Today, by most accounts, property should have already crashed. Real estate prices bear little resemblance to earnings. With the rise in interest rates that followed Covid, mortgage-holders found themselves with higher costs. Some were forced to sell, while prospective buyers could no longer afford to borrow as much as before. Increased taxes - I’m looking at you, Stamp Duty in the UK -  have only added to the unaffordability.And yet, while the market may be slow and stagnant in many parts of the country and indeed the world, it is not exactly crashing.There was one school of thought that was steadfast in all the house-price bearishness which followed Covid, saying property’s time to crash had not yet come. They were the acolytes of the 18-year cycle in real estate. Yet again they’ve been proved right. Real estate peaks in 2026, they said. After that we get four years of decline.You know my views on cycles. We have the seasons, days and nights, the moons, menstruation, the cycle of life - cycles are turning all around us. There are economic and investment cycles too: bull markets and bear markets, commodities super-cycles, Gordon Brown was always blathering on about the economic cycle, mining is cyclical. New technology goes through a clear cycle as it evolves and is adopted. On the other hand, it’s easy to look back at the past, find some random pattern and declare it a cycle. Actually trading them in real time is a very different matter. In fact, the human need for narrative and the fact that cycles make for good copy mean it’s very easy to get wedded to the idea of a cycle, when a very different reality is staring you in the face. After 2008 many got it stuck in their heads that this was Kondratiev Winter and the next Great Depression, and, as a result, missed one of the most rip-roaring bull markets in history. With all that said, the 18-year cycle in real estate has proved remarkably reliable, and, says Akhil Patel, author of The Secret Wealth Advantage, and one of Harrison’s great disciples, it goes all the way back to the turn of the 19th century. (I’ll show you that data in just a sec).Looking to buy gold in these uncertain times? Check out my recent report, and look no further than my recommended bullion dealer, the Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, and you get to deal with a human being who knows their stuff.Broadly speaking, there are four phases to the cycle - and it actually lasts about 18 and a half years.* Years one to seven. A silent rally followed by …* A mid-cycle slowdown or dip at around the seven year mark.* The explosive phase. That’s when house prices really get on the map. Think 1983 to 1989 or 2002 to 2007. In the last couple of years you get a classic blow-off top - the winners’ curse.* Finally, the correction which lasts around four years. Think 1989 to 1993 or 2008-2011. Then the cycle starts again.Here it is, illustrated.This is, says Akhil, “primarily a North American phenomenon, though Britain and Europe follow the US and, increasingly, emerging markets do as well.”Here, for the historians out there, is a table from Akhil’s book that shows the data in the US going all the way back to 1800.Recent turns of the cycleThere is no doubt the cycle has played out in the UK over my lifetime. (The US is typically 6 months to a year ahead of the UK ). From the mid-1970s through to 1989 there was an extraordinary boom in the UK, followed by that infamous crash from 1989 to 1993 and negative equity so bad that thousands simply posted their keys in the letter box and walked away from their homes. Prices peaked in the third quarter of 1989 at £63,000, before falling to £51,000.But in 1993 things got going again. By the turn of the 20th century property erotica was all over the television, houses had become financial assets and today’s intergenerational wealth divide was just beginning to show its face. The market peaked in Q3 2007, and declines followed, though it wasn’t such an out and out crash as 1989-93, largely because there were few forced sellers with the slashing of interest rates. The average house price then fell from £183,000 in Q3 2007 to £149,000 in Q1 2009. They fell by a lot more than 18% if you were a foreigner, however, as the pound lost a good 30% in the foreign exchange marketsIt would be 2012 before the market properly got going again. We saw the mid-cycle dip around about Covid time, and now we are in the explosive phase, though in many parts of the country this is one helluva limp explosive phase. While prices are rising in some areas, the market is stagnant in many others.It’s clear from all the leaks that Labour are looking at ways to extract some of the wealth tied up in housing. Whether that’s going to come from increased council taxes (0.5% levy of the value of the property - a number that will only go one way), capital gains tax on the sale of your main residence, increased attacks on buy-to-let landlords, increased Stamp Duty or by some other means, we do not yet know. (Labour are doing what the Tories used to do: leaking and then seeing what the reaction is). None of that bodes well for house prices. Nor do their plans to increase housing supply via new builds, or indeed the mass exodus of people with money.On the other hand, lower interest rates, which are coming, should give the market a boost.Overall, my advice to any prospective buyers is to wait. I think this market is primed for big falls, but, like the 18-year guys, I don’t think these falls come for another couple of years. That said, often not buying a home means putting the rest of your life on hold, which is not a good thing to do. If there’s a place you’ll be happy in, and you can afford it now, then do it. Cost is not always the main priority. And, of course, there’s always the possibility the 18-year-cycle guys have got it wrong. 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

(And, no, I’m not standing on a stool!)After the unexpected popularity of my post about weight loss (still can’t believe it had 11 million views), I am trying something a little bit different this Sunday morning with this short video about dead hangs, while doing a dead hang. I am planning to cover alternative health a bit more frequently on here in the Sunday morning thought pieces. (NB If you want to try dead hangs, but aren’t yet ready to hang fully, try resistance bands or standing on a step and still putting as much weight as possible through your shoulders).Enjoy!In case you missed them, last Sunday’s post on immigration was extremely popularAnd we also had an update this week on the Dolce Far Niente portfolioTRANSCRIPT:Hey Siri. Timer in 2 minutes.Today, I’m going to talk to you about dead hangs. I’m going to try and do a 2-minute dead hang while recording this video. Not sure if I can last two minutes while talking.I had a motorcycle crash when I was 27, and I've had problems with my neck ever since.Then, last year, I got a trapped nerve in my shoulder and I was in agony. My osteopath helped a lot. I did about 3 or 4 minutes of neck stretches most days. However, the problem continued.And it was only after I started doing dead hangs a few months ago, that my neck issues, shoulder issues and trapped nerve mostly cleared up.Dead hangs are great. Everything we do, whether exercising or just sitting, compresses the spine. Dead hangs stretch it all out.As well as decompressing the spine, they have all sorts of beneficial side-effects. * They improve your posture.* They re-aligning the spine.* They stretch out all the evils of sitting at a desk in front of a screen all day.* They increase neck and shoulder strength, flexibility and mobility.* They stretch through your torso, particularly if you swing from side to side, improving your stomach and core strength. * They are great for your grip strength, your fingers and forearms. * And holding the position for extended periods is probably good for your determination too.So get a pull up bar. The ones you hang in your doorway are you but the ones you put on the wall are better, like this one, and keep hanging every day. At first you’ll only be able to hang for 10, 20 or 30 second, but keep doing it and you’ll quickly increase the time you can hang for.Then you can start hanging in different ways. You can extend the width of your grip. swing, do one-armed hangs. Try and do a couple or three dead hangs a day and they will benefit you in all sorts of unexpected ways, I promise. I can’t think of a physical more beneficial way of spending a couple of minutes than a dead hang. When it finishes you get this rush of pain, this exhilaration through your shoulders.And I’m hoping it finishes pretty soon. Hey, Siri, how long on timer?Hey, Siri, how long on timer?It didn’t set!Tell your friends about this amazing video.Here’s the original weight loss post, in case of interest.Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. 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

To watch this piece, go to: 1. There are more people in the world than ever - and we all want better livesThere are some 8.2 billion people in the world - more than ever - and, whether it’s people displaced by war, famine, or lack of water, or (the big one) people seeking a better life with more opportunity, more us are on the move than ever.Some stats:4.6 billion live on less than $10/day.7 billion live on less than $40/day. 7 billion!While the number of people in extreme poverty (below $2.15/day) has capitulated in South Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific, it is rising in sub-Saharan Africa.I was interested to know what the global population by ethnicity is (search engines do not make that easy to find out), but, broadly speaking, it looks something like this (obviously there are lots of mixed race people):* Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.): ~3.2 billion / 43%* Indian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka): ~1.5 billion / 20%* Black African: ~1.4 billion / 19%* White European: ~750 million / 10%* Middle Eastern (Arab, Persian, Kurd, Turk, etc.): ~500 million / 7%* Amerindian (North and South America): ~100 million / 1%* Pacific Islander: ~12.5 million / 0.2%Visualised:Though this is rapidly changing with Asian growth, the majority of the world’s wealth lies in the predominantly white (for the time being) countries of Western Europe and North America. There are a gazillion different reasons put forward as to why this might be, which differ according to worldview, ranging from slavery to IQ to system of rule. Regardless of what the reason is, Western Europe and North America have become the prime destinations for migrants. That is where the money is. Language is a huge and overlooked factor too. Most people around the world speak some English. If the migrant speaks German, they might prefer Germany, but English is more widespread, and that means greater numbers will favour the Anglo-Saxon nations.But the population of Western Europe is less than 200 million, 265 million if you include the UK. The population of the U.S. is 345 million. We are tiny in the global context.The difference in the weight of numbers is staggering. (Another good stat for you: more people are born in Nigeria each year than in all of Europe).2. Modern transportationBecause of planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention boats (fossil fuels and engines, basically), people are able to travel further and faster than ever before.Forget Around the World in 80 Days, itself a miracle in 1872 when the Jules Verne story was published, now, it’s almost (not quite) possible to get around the world in 24 hours.Meanwhile, the days of the medieval serf, who was tied to his land and not allowed to travel, are long gone (for the most part—there are bits of Africa and Asia where you are still tied).3. Modern mediaMedia and communication are more advanced than ever. Whether it’s TV, film, or, most crucially, social media, the whole world is able to see how the other half lives. As of 2023, there are approximately 6.8 billion smartphone users worldwide, representing about 85% of the global population.This has increased awareness of better lives to be had, and it has stoked desire. Modern communication has also enabled travellers to exchange information on how to move.So you have:* more people than ever* better transport than ever* more awareness than ever * more desire than ever.That is why the mass movement of people is now at levels never before seen in history. That is also why it is only going to increase.This is a point that nobody in a position of influence in the media or politics seems to be making. Global migration levels are not going down. They are going up.So instead of brushing the issue under the carpet and calling people racist, immigration is a conversation we need to be having.What is the plan in the face of migration levels that are inevitably going to increase? Do we want more people? Fewer people? More of certain types of people? What is the optimum number of people? Who are the optimum people? People with certain qualifications? People from certain cultures—Judeo-Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu? People of certain ethnicities? Must they pass wealth tests, skills tests, IQ tests, values tests? What?How can this all be agreed? By referendum? By poll?And once agreed (fat chance), how can it all be ensured?Spoiler: it won’t be. We are not even going to properly talk about, let alone do anything. At least not until it’s too late (if it isn’t already).Instead, we will see the further South Africanisation of everything, and yet more internal division while these issues of immigration continue unaddressed.If you are young, I really wouldn’t hang about. There is a whole world out there. I’d go and be a migrant yourself.Until next time, DominicLooking to buy gold in these uncertain times? Then check out my recent report, and look no further than my recommended bullion dealer, the Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, and you get to deal with a human being who knows their stuff.On the subject of the recent protests, you might find this of interest: why I think they will achieve very little:Finally, Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. 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.comIMPORTANT: somebody has been impersonating me on here and asking readers to message them on WhatsApp. Obviously it is not me. Don’t engage. Stop engaging and block, if you have started. And DON’T send any money.I am now at the Edinburgh Fringe with Shaping the Earth, a “lecture with funny bits” about the history of mining. The show is going great guns. I’m then taking it to London on October 9th and 10th to the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. The Edinburgh link is here. And the London link is here.But today, just as the title suggests, I am going to explain the extraordinary volatility we have seen in markets all over the world this week. I’ll then look at what we should be doing next. What should we do with our gold/bitcoin/oil and gas/equities and all the rest of our holdings?The trigger for all of this lies in the Land of the Rising Sun.The Japanese yen has been undervalued for a long time. For the first time, perhaps in my living memory, Japan has become a cheap—well, not super expensive—country to visit. Against the dollar, pound, and euro, then yen was at multi-decade lows.The main reason for the weak yen is Japanese monetary policy. The Japanese central bank has suppressed rates for many years in an effort to stimulate the Japanese economy. It hasn’t worked, but like so many policymakers, when confronted with a failed policy, the reaction is not to change tack but to double down. In 2016, rates actually went negative.But even as the rest of the world raised rates to try and counter the inflation that came post-COVID, Japan kept them low, creating quite the differential.Until last week, Japan had only raised rates once in 17 years—by 0.25% in March.Here are 15 years of the yen against the US dollar so you can see just how weak the currency had got.Talk about a long-term bear market.This situation created what is known as the Yen Carry Trade. You borrow in yen, pay a very low rate of interest, and then use the money to buy other assets that pay a better yield. It might be other currencies, bonds, equities, or even cryptocurrencies.Let’s say you borrow at below 1% and buy a government bond in another currency that yields 5%. The arbitrage is pretty generous, and the risk is very low. Borrow at below 1% and buy something like an S&P 500 tracker, which might grow by 10-15%, and the rewards are handsome.The longer this situation has gone on, the more capital has gone into this trade, and the greater the risk taken on. Not unlike the British riots (too much immigration for too long when nobody voted for it), this has been a powder keg waiting to blow for a long time. All that was required was the spark.

I am now at the Edinburgh Fringe with Shaping the Earth, a “lecture with funny bits” about the history of mining. I’m then taking the show to London on October 9th and 10th to the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. The Edinburgh link is here. And the London link is here.ALSOIMPORTANT: somebody has been impersonating me on here and asking readers to message them on WhatsApp. Obviously it is not me. Don’t engage. Stop engaging and block, if you have started. And DON’T send any money.“They don't give you gold medals for beating somebody. They give you gold medals for beating everybody.” Michael Johnson, sprinterWhy do Olympic winners bite their gold medals? The short answer is: for no other reason than a photographer just told them to. But the tradition of biting gold goes back a long way.You might have seen pirates in movies biting their coins too. While such hard-toothed individuals might inspire excitement in modern audiences, ordinary merchants and traders, indeed anyone handling money, used to bite their coins too: it was a rude test of the purity of the metal. Prospectors in the 19th-century gold rushes also used this method to differentiate between real gold and fool’s gold? As well as scraping (to look for plate) or indenting to test softness, biting might involve a little bending too, using the teeth as a clamp to bend against. If the metal is soft and malleable, it was likely pure gold or silver. Hard and brittle, it could indicate that the coin was counterfeit or mixed with other metals. Too soft, however, and the coin was likely lead, coated with gold, a common counterfeit in the 19th century. (Lead is softer than gold). The method might expose crude forgeries, but it would by no means have been foolproof. Copper was added to gold coins from the Tudor period onwards, which would have made them harder, and the bite test that much less reliable, though in Mediaeval times biting might have worked better. Coins, such as Florence’s florin, the standard of the day, were 24 carat, thin, and relatively soft. The bite test might have exposed forgeries.Weighing is more effective, and any merchant would have a set of scales, though perhaps not a pirate. The stamp of the issuer, ideally a reputable royal, also went a long way to certifying authenticity. For the prospectors of the gold rushes, however, who only required a simple differentiation between actual and fool’s gold, the bite test would have been more dependable. We have always used our bodies to measure things.Looking to buy gold in these uncertain times? Then check out my recent report, and look no further than my recommended bullion dealer, the Pure Gold Company. Premiums are low, quality of service is high, and you get to deal with a human being who knows their stuff.What are gold medals made of?Today’s Olympic winners needn’t bother biting their gold. The last time an Olympic gold medal was made of solid gold was over a hundred years ago in 1912 in Stockholm.The gold medals at the 1896 Olympics in Athens, when the Games were first revived, did not contain any gold. They were made of silver and gilded with a thin layer of gold. The same happened at Paris in 1900.Things perked up for the athletes in 1904 at the St. Louis Olympics, when the gold medals were made of 12-karat gold (50% gold, 50% copper). There was a considerable upgrade in 1908 in London, when the gold medals were 22-karat gold, weighing almost an ounce (25g). This proved the peak. (Just as it was probably Britain’s peak too). There were 109 gold medals handed out. That’s over 100 ounces. Expensive!Steady debasement followed. At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics the gold medals were 18-karat gold. From 1920 in Antwerp onwards, the medals were back to gilded silver.Today the International Olympic Committee stipulates that modern Olympic gold medals must weigh at least 500 grams, and contain at least 6g of gold. Olympic gold medals remain largely of silver (93%), copper (6%), plated with about 6 grams of (a bit more than a 1/5 ounce) of gold. A gold medal is thus roughly 1% gold.  At the 2022 Olympics in Tokyo, the metals to make the medals came from a recycling initiative. The Japanese handed in nearly 80,000 tonnes of electrical gadgets, including laptops, digital cameras, gaming devices and 6 million phones. The appliances yielded 32kg/1,000 ounces of gold, 3,500 kg/113,000 ounces of silver and 2,200kg of copper. (There is, I learn, about eighty times as much gold in one tonne of cellphones than there is a typical tonne of rock at a gold mine). All 5,000 medals were made from the recycled materials, which were identified using Vanta X-ray fluorescence analyzers, which can identify metals and accurately determine their karat value in a matter of seconds.Until next time,DominicCharlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. 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

Good Sunday afternoon to you,I was blown away by the response to Wednesday’s article about weight loss. The Twitter/X summary got more than 10 million views. Here it is, in case you missed it. Going forward, I am thinking of writing more alternative health stuff, as there seems to be a huge appetite for it. But today it’s business as usual: gold. And I have a question for you …The Great Steppe stretches approximately 5,000 miles from the Pacific coast of China through Mongolia, Siberia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Romania, reaching the Danube Delta and Hungary.Vast stretches of grassland, savanna, and shrubland—harsh and dry, devoid of trees and large vegetation—are sandwiched between forests to the north and mountains and deserts to the south. This region has connected Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and South Asia since the Paleolithic Age, serving as a predecessor to the Silk Road and the Eurasian land bridge.This ocean of grass is one of the world’s largest ecosystems. Many remarkable species—elk, gazelle, brown bear, leopard, and tiger—have made it their home. So have many great nomadic empires—the Xiongnu, the Scythians, the Mongols, the Huns, and the Göktürk Khaganate—all famous for their ferocity, horsemanship, and military might.The open space gives rise to mighty extremes of weather—howling winds, unbearable heat by day, and freezing cold by night. Humans could only survive by breeding creatures—goats, sheep, camels, and cattle—even hardier than themselves. Of all of these, perhaps the most essential to human survival and evolution was the horse.The horse was first domesticated on the Steppe about 6,000 years ago, probably by the Botai people in present-day Kazakhstan. Their horses—likely similar to today’s Mongolian horse—were small, stocky, and hardy, able to travel long distances in trying conditions. The horse enabled tribes to guide their flocks over large distances as they searched for new grazing lands. It facilitated trade and exchange, and allowed them to form huge and terrifying armies.The fearsome Scythians were the first to use horses in battle, carrying stones, clubs, and bows as weapons. These marauding armies inspired fear. Their warriors were such brilliant horsemen that it seemed they and their horses were one creature, giving rise to the Greek myth of the centaur: wild, untamed, and violent; strong, fast, and ferocious; drunken, lawless, and lustful, with the upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse.The Greeks had a complicated relationship with the Scythians, both admiring and fearing them. Chiron, one of the centaurs famous for his wisdom and knowledge of medicine, tutored many of the greatest Greek heroes, including Hercules, Achilles, and Jason. Perhaps the Greeks exaggerated their barbarity to contrast it with their own sophistication and culture.In any case, while the centaur has endured in myth, it was not long before it was realized that man and beast were not one, and the practice of horse-riding spread beyond the Great Steppe. The horse became the primary mode of land transport for thousands of years.You really should subscribe.Then the Industrial Revolution came along. The first steam locomotive was developed in England in 1804. By the mid-19th century, railroads had become the primary mode of transportation for people and goods across much of the world. It was the beginning of the end for horses as a primary mode of transportation.In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the automobile emerged. “Horseless carriages,” they were called. Karl Benz developed the first gasoline-powered car in 1885. By the early 1900s, cars had become a common sight on many roads, further diminishing the need for horses.Inventor Alexander Winton sought investment for his Winton Motor Carriage Company. “Get a horse!” a banker told him. “You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse.”Winton continues:“From my pocket, I took a clipping from the New York World of November 17, 1895, and asked him to read it. He brushed it aside. I insisted. It was an interview with Thomas A. Edison: ‘Talking of horseless carriages suggests to my mind that the horse is doomed… Ten years from now you will be able to buy a horseless vehicle for what you would pay today for a wagon and a pair of horses. The money spent in the keep of the horses will be saved and the danger to life will be much reduced.’”The banker threw back the clipping and snorted, “Another inventor talking.”Today, the horse is, for the most part, an expensive luxury. Its use is often just symbolic.How does this relate to goldHere is my question:Could you say the same about gold?The horse was transport for 6,000 years. It was transport for almost as long as gold was official money. It was “natural transport.”But just as transport changes as technology evolves, so does money.Perhaps gold is to money as the horse is to transport?Something to ponder this Sunday afternoon.(SPOILER: I don’t think it is!)Tell your friends about this amazing article. As from later this week I will be at the Edinburgh Fringe, performing Shaping the Earth, a “lecture with funny bits” about the history of mining. I’m then taking the show to London on October 9th and 10th to the Museum of Comedy. Please come if you fancy a bit of “learning and laughter”. The Edinburgh link is here. And the London link is here.Plus:Charlie Morris is one of my closest mates and he writes what I think is one of the best investment newsletters out there, in fact a suite of them. I urge you to sign up for a free trial. 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