The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comWith gold hitting new highs yesterday and the importance of owning some, in my view, as paramount as ever, I am going to send out my report on how to buy gold later today or tomorrow. If it is old hat to you, please just ignore the email.If you prefer, you can also download the PDF version here:(If that PDF doesn’t work, try this link)In the meantime, today I want to take a look at oil. It is having a nice, quiet run.What fossil fuels have made possibleThere were some really interesting comments following this week’s Sunday morning thought piece about declining birth rates. You lot are clever.My argument is that unaffordable housing has been a major cause of declining birth rates: people are having smaller families later in life, for the simple reason that they cannot afford anywhere to live. Dan Shaw replied as follows:For the housing cost argument to be credible, it needs to explain what has changed. Basic necessities, including housing, have consumed the vast majority of people’s incomes until very recently in the developed world. They still do for most people today in the global south (where birth rates are also falling). Fiat inflation is undoubtedly eroding real income in the developed world, but it is only regressing disposable income towards historic norms when people were happy to start families. Why will people not start families when they have roughly the same wealth, in real terms, as their greatest generation (great) grandparents? Why are people in the global south, who have never seen Western wealth, also not having children?Let’s put aside the issue of birth rates - they is not the focus of today’s piece, but Sunday’s. Instead let us ask: what was it that created this unique period in the 20th-century West, when ordinary middle-class people could afford housing and other basic necessities, and still have plenty of income left over for cars and other luxury items? It goes against almost all of history. The answer must surely be fossil fuels. The energy they granted made us incredibly productive. It made 20th-century progress possible.Today a variety of factors are undermining that: fiat money and the debasement of currency; restrictive planning laws and overregulation; and of course, a needless focus on other, more inefficient and wasteful energy sources.The world seems to be slowly coming to its senses regarding fossil fuels, thank goodness, and, like them or not, they are clearly going to have an enormous role to play in powering economies for, at a guess, at least a hundred more years or until a superior form of energy is found. This is why they make up a core 10% of the Dolce Far Niente portfolio.Whether it’s mines, farms, or factories, trucks, cars, boats, trains, or planes, or heating and cooling, we need fossil fuels, and they are going to make life a lot better for a lot of people.Global economies seem to be ticking over reasonably well and finding their feet again. In particular, Chinese manufacturing data seems to be quietly improving. China and India are certainly growing consumption. Attempts to electrify western economies, well-meaning though they may be, seem to be coming apart, meanwhile. In short, oil demand is on the up.This is confirmed by the  latest oil market report from the International Energy Agency, which says: “Global oil demand is forecast to rise by a higher-than-expected 1.7 mb/d in 1Q24 on an improved outlook for the United States and increased bunkering” (refueling of cargo vessels). Meanwhile: “World oil production is projected to fall by 870 kb/d in 1Q24 vs 4Q23 due to heavy weather-related shut-ins and new curbs from the OPEC+ bloc.”The combination of falling production and increased demand is what has led to higher prices.Here’s Brent crude over the last two years, and you can see that nice solid low around $72.50, and the recent run from December to today’s price of $88.The seasonal patterns favour a continuation of this run for at least another few weeks. January to May tends to be the best time of year to be long oil. Things tend to get dicey in the autumn. (Though beware of attaching too much importance to seasonals; they are more an additional rather than core reason for an investment decision).Oil is still relatively cheapI have two very interesting long-term charts to show you next.First, is the long-term ratio between gold and oil. When this chart is high, oil is expensive relative to gold. When low, as is the case now (to an extent), oil is cheap relative to gold.On a long-term basis, of the two, you probably have to say oil is the better bet. It’s not often you will hear me say that! To be clear: I advocate owning both.This next chart is also interesting from a very long-term perspective. It shows energy as a percentage of the S&P500.This has been creeping down for years - ever since $150 oil in 2008, but it has been creeping back up since Covid. You might validly argue that because of the emergence of new tech, new tech companies, and improved productivity, energy as a percentage of the S&P500 will inevitably go lower. That is certainly the evidence of the last 16 years. But you could equally make the case that energy is both essential and undervalued. In my view, it’s a bit of both.So how to play all of this?Simple ways include the likes of Shell (SHEL.L) and BP (BP.L), with Guinness Global Energy (ISIN 0P0000SV1G.L) another, more diversified possibility.If you are looking for something at the spicier end of the market, then I challenge you to find a better report than this one by Dr. John from last autumn, in which he identifies his picks of the North American oil and gas juniors.So to my vehicle of choice, and the one we hold in the Dolce Far’ Niente portfolio:

Back in 2011, a landmark study by the United Nations Population Fund warned that the global population would reach 15 billion by the end of the century, “putting a catastrophic strain on the planet's resources unless urgent action is taken to curb growth rates.”Cue lots of subsidies, initiatives, hand-wringing, wasted money, damaging narratives, damaging policy, and articles in the Guardian.Here we are today, and suddenly the issue is population decline. By 2100, 97% of the world’s countries will have a shrinking population, according to a study published in The Lancet, leading to “staggering social change”. The Telegraph followed with a ludicrously sensationalist headline: "World population to fall for the first time since the Black Death."Cue, no doubt, lots more subsidies, initiatives, hand-wringing, wasted money, damaging narratives, damaging policy, though, perhaps not so many articles in the Guardian. The last thing that publication wants is westerners reproducing. Not white ones, anyway.The problem is economic modelling. It is wrong as often as it is right. Tossing a coin or consulting a psychic is just as reliable. Economic models commonly rely on extrapolating trends, which can work for a bit - trend-following is a highly effective investment strategy, after all - but they are largely based on the assumption that current conditions will persist, when they usually don’t, particularly when projecting decades out. Something unforeseen happens, such as lots of people making decisions an economist didn’t expect, and this changes everything.Yet such flawed models, even though nothing more than projections that only carry more weight than Mystic Meg because they were delivered on a spreadsheet by a bloke with a PhD, become the basis for huge and expensive decisions by policymakers. We have seen it with climate change, with Covid, with economic policy, and with anything the OBR touches. The consequences are sometimes really harmful to people: lockdown policy being the most obvious recent example. It was based on flawed data and it was deeply destructive. Net Zero is the next one. Everyone can see it, yet still policy-makers persist.I was, broadly speaking, persuaded in the early 00s by the arguments that population growth was inevitable. I am less persuaded by the idea that we will now see population decline, though perhaps I shouldn’t be. Fertility rates are coming down: globally, between 1950 and 2021, they fell by more than half: from 4.8 children to 2.2 - and there is not a nation where they haven’t fallen. Annual global births peaked at 142 million in 2016, falling to 129 million by 2021.But whatever. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. There could be a nuclear war and the population might sink below a billion. Global planning laws could be eased, just as the world abandons fiat money for gold and bitcoin, with the result that house prices come down, just as people realize that seed oils, processed food, and tap water have all been making them infertile, and, as a result, we suddenly get a population boom. So much of this is economic. In Developing Countries, people tend to have fewer children as they get richer and live longer. Irony of ironies, in the richer, Developed World, the main reason people have fewer children is that they can’t afford them. Italians, being Catholic, are associated with large families and lots of brothers, sisters and cousins. But when Elon Musk, himself a prolific reproducer, observed yesterday that Italian birth rates hit their lowest level since the country was unified in 1861, he got this reply: The main reason people are not reproducing is expense. What is the biggest expense in your life? Your government. It takes roughly 50% of everything you will ever earn. The next biggest expense is a house, something few can afford. With less government and cheaper housing, westerners would pretty quickly start reproducing again. What government is going to stand for less of itself and cheaper houses? Not one that I can see, except maybe in Argentina.The idea that government is going to fix a problem of its own creation. Please. It will only make it worse. I do know that stuff often happens for reasons we can’t explain, so the last thing we want is the planners meddling, especially with something as significant as this, when their models are so flawed. It doesn’t matter if the global population goes up or down; human beings will find a way of coping. We always do. The last thing we need is more government intervention based on spurious data.So what if growth falls? GDP growth is a bogus measure, anyway. Dimwitted, short-sighted obsession with GDP has been one of the major reasons mass immigration has gone so unchecked, if not encouraged, with such terrible consequences to local culture, history, and tradition, never mind locals’ opportunity and earnings.GDP focuses on quantity not quality. It neglects individual quality of life. It ignores income and wealth distribution. It ignores unaffordable housing and high levels of taxation (if anything high house prices are seen as a good thing). It creates societies based around spending and consumption, rather than making stuff and saving. It incentivises government activity - please, no more intervention - and short-termism. There are other better measures. Or, better still, take the John James Cowperthwaite positive non-intervention route and ban the Office of National Statistics altogether. The Returning Soldier Effect.After World War One - itself a monumental government cock-up - which saw the death of countless young men across Europe, the number of boys born relative to girls increased. It happened after World War Two as well. This phenomenon has been noticed so many times after wars that it now has its own name: the Returning Soldier Effect.All sorts of explanations have been posited, ranging from changing female hormones during wartime to divine intervention to a surprisingly persuasive argument that "taller soldiers are more likely to survive battle and that taller parents are more likely to have sons". On the other hand, it could just be Mother Nature. There is plenty that Mother Nature gets up to that we don’t even notice, let alone find a credible and proven explanation for. Yet she determines much of what we do, without us even realising it.Our instincts come from Mother Nature. Our first instinct is survival: to find water, food, and shelter, for ourselves and then those close to us. Next is the survival of the species: the urge to have sex and reproduce with the best possible mate. These instincts come before nice houses, cars, and clothes. But even the urge for those derives from a need for safety and to make ourselves look more desirable to a potential mate - aka Mother Nature. We are animals.At the birth of my children, I came away with the thought that a woman is nature’s vessel, subservient to the species as a whole.So back to population levels: it really would not surprise me to discover that some kind of Natural Law is at work, in the same way that plants talk to each other, and it will deal with the population issue way better than any government. But even if not, the human population will be what it is as a result of a plethora of individual decisions, many of which will be guided by Mother Nature, and many of which by economic circumstance. As the great man Cowperthwaite set, “A multiplicity of individual decisions will produce a better and wiser result than a single decision by a Government or by a board with its inevitably limited knowledge of the myriad factors involved, and its inflexibility.”So please let’s keep Positive Law and meddlesome planners with flawed models out of this.My first book, and many readers’ favourite, Life After the State - Why We Don’t Need Government (2013), which fell out of print last year, is now, thanks to the invaluable help of my new buddy Chris P, back in print (Amazon, Apple Books), with the audiobook here:Audible UKAudible USApple Books And if you are in the Guildford neck of the woods this Friday, there are still some tickets left to my show, which, among other things, will feature me playing Elon Musk’s new favourite song. Bath on Saturday is sold out.Thank you for being a subscriber to the Flying Frisby! 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 morning to you,I am putting back my promised piece on gold miners until mid-week, so keep a look out for that. Meanwhile, Life After the State - Why We Don’t Need Government (2013), my first book, and many readers’ favourite, which fell out of print last year, is now, thanks to the invaluable help of my new buddy Chris P, back in print (Amazon, Apple Books), with the audiobook here (Audible, Apple Books). I’m very proud of the some of the reviews it had - “A brilliant book,” Steve Baker; “A must read,” Merryn Somerset Webb; “Something extraordinary,” James Harding; “Incredibly readable", Al Murray and so on.But, as is often the way, my favourite review came from a “random on the internet”, an Amazon reviewer: “The most important book I have read in a long time. I’ve just bought five extra copies, and plan to force it on all I meet, in the manner of a Jehovah’s Witness.” :)Today, for your Sunday morning thought piece, I thought I’d publish a short extract. I hope you enjoy it.(First edition paper backs are now trading hands, by the way, for over £200. No hardbacks for sale - so all those who helped fund it back in the day, if you’ve still got your copy it’s worth something).In the 1990s, when I was in my twenties, I was mad about Latin America. I loved the people, the tropical weather, the forests, the mountains, the beaches, the language, the ancient history – and I was nuts about the music. All I wanted to do was go there and have adventures. Every year I would catch a cheap Boxing Day flight and come back at the beginning of February. I went to all sorts of wonderful places: Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Peru, Honduras and, in 1996, Cuba.This wasn’t at the height of Cuban repression. Fidel Castro was still president and the very worst of the poverty that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union was now behind it. But the country was still desperately poor.Havana was an amazing place, full of contrasts. The only cars were either huge American classics – symbols of booming 1950s USA that looked like something off the set of Back to the Future – or dour and bleak Ladas that had been imported from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s, symbolic of the Cold War and communism. There were magnificent Art Deco or Art Nouveau buildings, yet there’d be a hole in the roof, or part of it had fallen down. There were pro-Castro symbols and slogans everywhere you looked, but the walls on which they were painted would be crumbling. The entire city looked like it needed re-rendering.After one obligatory, over-priced night in a government hotel, I found a room in a Havana apartment belonging to a well-educated Cuban family. Luis was a political economist and a professor, no less; Celia was a doctor. They had three young children: two girls and a boy.I had gone to Cuba with preconceived notions about what an amazing place it was. Any problems it had were entirely due to sanctions and other American punishments, I thought. It had the best health service in the world, the best education in the world and was a shining example to the greedy West on how things could be run. I don’t know where I got those ideas from – conversations at university, probably – but Luis quickly put me right.‘What is the point of a great hospital, if there is no medicine?’ he would whisper to me. ‘What is the point of great schools when you have no paper?’ I didn’t have an answer.I say whisper. Criticism, even indoors, was always whispered. Many Cubans would loudly declare how wonderful the regime was, surreptitiously look about to check no potential informant was in earshot, then come up close and whisper, ‘I hate Castro’ – or something along those lines. So oppressive was the regime that paranoia, secrets, denial and deception permeated every area of life. People didn’t dare to be honest. They were too scared of what the repercussions might be.Some Cuban friends of mine in London had told me before I left, ‘You need dollars. You can’t buy anything with pesos.’ I was a pretty intrepid explorer in those days and dismissed this advice. I thought I’d be able to get off the beaten track into the real Cuba, where I could use pesos like real Cubans. But my friends were right. You couldn’t. There was, simply, nothing available to buy with pesos. There were no shops or businesses that accepted pesos, except the odd street stall that sold ice cream or bits of cooked dough, loosely described as pizza. Cubans got their bread and other essentials with ration books and a lot of queuing.Western goods did exist. Clothing, electrical and hardware goods, and food and drink – Havana Club rum, beer, cheese and cured meats, for example – were sold in grey, colourless supermarkets. The supermarkets were not at all cheap and, despite the fact that they were state-run, would only accept US dollars – one of the many hypocrisies I would encounter.So the only way anyone could buy anything was with US dollars at a state-run store. However, most people were employed by the government in some way or other, and paid in Cuban pesos. So how did they get dollars?The answer was: from tourists.Luis and Celia got their dollars renting out a room to people like me. Most Cubans didn’t have the option of an apartment with three bedrooms. (Luis’s parents had somehow managed to avoid it being expropriated.) Some were lucky enough to have the use of a car and could be taxi drivers. But this was another option that was only available to a tiny few – there was no manufacture of cars and no import trade. You, or more likely your parents, would have somehow had to have acquired a car way back when, and kept hold of it. There were a few restaurants and bars scattered about, and a tiny, well-connected elite could become waiters. Where did that leave everyone else?As an economist and a doctor, you’d expect Luis and Celia to be a fairly wealthy couple. And by Cuban standards they earned good salaries – about 500 pesos a month each. The official exchange rate was one peso to the dollar, thus they earned the equivalent of $500. The unofficial rate, however – the real market rate – was 20:1, so Luis and Celia’s 500 pesos amounted to about $25. A pair of jeans in the supermarket cost twice that. But, remember, you couldn’t actually buy anything with pesos.One night’s rent from me was more money than Luis, with a PhD, would earn in an entire month. A taxi driver might land that figure in two or three fares. On a good night, a waiter might earn that in tips. But the big money was in selling sex. If she found a generous boyfriend, a prostitute – a ‘jinetera’, as they were called – could earn many times that in one night.More than any of the other European nations, it was Italy that seemed to have caught the Cuba bug. My flight out was full of Italians. All over Havana there were Italians. They loved Cuba. I naively thought it might have to do with the historical links between Italy and communism, but wandering around Havana I soon saw another reason. The Italian men loved the black Cuban women – and vice versa, it seemed. Everywhere you looked you’d see stylish Italian men arm in arm with young Cuban black girls, their paid girlfriends for the two weeks they spent there.Cuban men were selling their bodies too. A rather plump Greek- English woman I knew in her late forties married a beautiful (yes, beautiful) man – a ‘jinetero’ – at least 25 years her junior. I had to deliver some money to him for her. I was amazed when I met him. He looked like a young Sidney Poitier. She looked like a chubby, middle- aged Bette Midler. A most unlikely couple.In some cases, I’ve no doubt, couples fell in love. Marriages and families may have resulted. Cuba is a famously sexual country. I expect that many of the jineteras derived some occasional pleasure from their work. But, in most cases, the reality was rather more dark and sinister. Their economic circumstances meant that these people felt they had no other option but prostitution, if they wanted to improve their lot.It’s hard to believe just how widespread ‘jineterismo’ was, and probably still is. There has been no formal study, but anecdotally it appears that more than 50% of Cuban women below 50 have practised prostitution at some stage – if not with a tourist, then with another Cuban.‘Everyone is jinetera,’ said Luis. ‘Look around. Everyone. Jinetero, jinetera. Look what Fidel has done to our country. Look what he has done to our people’.We were sitting on the Malecón – the wall which runs along the Havana sea front – watching good-looking jineteros and jineteras attempting to snare a tourist. Of all the Latin American countries I visited, I found I had the most intense conversations in Cuba. This was one of them. I transcribed it into my diary later that night. ‘I don’t want my children to be a doctor like their mother, or a political economist like me. What is the point? MD, PhD, a month’s work and I cannot buy a pair of shoes.’ Luis continued: ‘Useless life. A much better life for my son is if he is a taxi driver or a waiter. Then he can get dollars. Maybe he can get a tourist to fall in love with him. And my daughters? I tell you a secret. I pray my daughters will be beautiful. Every father does. So they can have tourist boyfriends, have money, maybe marry a tourist, and get out of here. That is why every Cuban father wants his daughter to be a jinetera. Jinetera – that is the best life you can have here, that is how you survive, that is how you escape. Thank you, Fidel!’I don’t know what the motivation behind Castro’s great revolution was or why he and his cohorts made the economic and political choices they did – lust for power, political idealism, or, maybe, just to get rid of Batista. It seems his decision to ally himself with the Soviet Union was, at least initially, more of a reaction to US aggression and sanctions than any deep Marxist sentiment. I very much doubt their intention was the eventual consequence: a society so imbalanced and distorted that taxi drivers and uneducated young people could earn, in one night, many times more than a professor, a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer might earn in a month; where the large majority of young girls in Havana were selling their bodies for dollars, and where every Cuban father wanted his daughter to be a jinetera.Cuba was probably my first lesson in the Law of Unintended Consequences. And my story illustrates many of the themes of this book: the power of the state; how the state interferes in people’s lives; how political decisions, often made out of expediency, even if benevolent, can have such grave and unexpected repercussions; why the freedom to trade and exchange is so important; and how, if you limit that freedom, you limit people’s possibilities.The useless peso, moreover, was my first experience of how essential a properly functioning system of money is to a society, and what can happen when politicians start to use money as a political tool.Life After the State is available at Amazon, Apple Books and all good bookshops, with the audiobook at Audible, Apple Books and all good audiobookshops.Until next time,DominicPS If you missed my report into buying gold, it is here:(Any issues downloading the PDF, please reply to this email or try this link). 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 morning to you,I am going to be sending out two pieces in fairly quick succession: first, today’s, some commentary on the latest bitcoin price action, and then another, tomorrow hopefully, about gold mining.It looks like bitcoin (currently $67,000, down from highs of $73,500) is now “enjoying” a correction. Microstrategy (NDX:MSTR) has 5xd, since we covered it in the summer, and some profit-taking is inevitable. My own strategy though is to HODL. I don’t think this is the end of the cycle. Longer term I think bitcoin goes higher, even if it is short-term overbought and over-heated. I know of no strategy that has consistently beaten HODL, so that is what I am going to continue to doThere is an expression you will have heard me use from time to time: “from false moves come fast moves in the opposite direction”. Sometimes you will see a move above an old high, a “false breakout”, before a market reverses. At the moment the breakout above the old high to $73,500 then the reversal looks like it could be one of those. It may do that. It may not. You never know. But the risk with bitcoin is not having a position. My preferred interpretation is: “ongoing correction in a bull market”. But these are the kind of doubts that haunt you when climbing the wall of worry. There is nothing a bull market likes to do more than throw you off. Hence HODL.It has been said before, but I say it again: were you to sell your bitcoins for pounds dollars or euros, you would effectively be swapping a technologically superior form of money for one that is technologically inferior. When looked at in these terms, selling bitcoin for fiat makes little sense. When bull markets come along you always kick yourself for not owning enough bitcoin, so, again, HODL.I met a city friend of mine at a drinks party last night and he was telling me how many institutions are buying $200,000 btc September call options: that means some traders in institutions are, in effect, making leveraged bets that bitcoin will be $200,000 in 6 months time. Buying such high risk, out-of-the-money calls could be seen as symptomatic of excess bullish sentiment. It signals irrational exuberance. It signals catch-up trade - trying to make up the money you missed out by not being positioned sooner. But that institutional money, with all the information it has about order-flows and all the rest of it, is making such bets is also a bullish sign. I, for one, hope those call options come good.Altcoin Season is Upon Us - or It WasFinally, another anecdote from earlier in the week, which shows just how hot things were getting, this one about altcoin season. Fortunes, sometimes life-changing fortunes, get made and lost, though mostly lost, in altcoin season. It was upon us. My son’s mate from uni, age 23, is now a trader. On Tuesday he was bragging on their Snapchat about a win he just had. LocalAI - I have no idea what that is - began trading on Monday. On Tuesday it was up over 17,000%. You read that right. On a Tuesday.I took a look at it on Wednesday. It had just fallen over 60%.The following day it nearly tripled, before falling 50% again. Nuts!How to navigate it all? It’s a full-time job keeping up with what’s going on in the altcoin world and they are not something I know a great deal about, I’m relieved to say. I’m familiar with about ten. Fortunately, I know a man who does. So let me take this opportunity to recommend Charlie Morris’s Bytefolio. Charlie is a former fund manager from HSBC, who ran the billion-dollar Absolute Return fund for 20 years. He also wrote the extremely popular Fleet Street Letter for many years, before handing it over to Nigel Farage and his team. Charlie now runs a suite of letters at Bytetree. He was early to the bitcoin story, back in 2014. He has almost unrivalled knowledge of portfolio management and asset allocation, of technical analysis and trend following, and he applies it to the world of crypto and altcoins. So take a look and see what you think - you get the first month free. The crypto letter is ace, but I also like his more mainstream Multi-Asset Investor and his speculative Venture too.Right, I’ll be back very soon, tomorrow hopefully, talking gold mines. Will I ever learn?Until then, 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 morning to you,We have a pot pourri of offerings for you today. First, I posted the above sketch on Twitter yesterday and it struck a nerve. I thought you might also enjoy it on here. It’s eight years since I recorded it, but it is still as apposite as ever.In other, more serious news, I met with Campbell Smyth, Chairman of Fitzroy Minerals (FTZ.V), yesterday, and we have a long old chinwag about the state of the mining and metals markets. You can listen to that interview here or on your podcast app:Trees of LifeAnd, finally, my buddy Mark O’Byrne, formerly of Irish bullion dealer, Goldcore, got in touch about his new and rather beautiful coins: Trees of Life, they are known as, and they are available in both gold (0.1 oz and 1 oz) and silver (silver 1 oz). He sent me a couple of the silver ounce coins to review and they are really rather beautiful. Here is a pic:Let me help out a mate and give them a little plug.On one side is the Tree of Life, a symbol, common to many religions and mythologies, not least Celtic and Nordic, of balance, fertility, wisdom and strength. On the other side is the Rising Sun, symbolising dawn, a new day, new beginnings and the end of darkness. There is the Harp, Éire’s sacred musical instrument and national emblem. (Ireland is the only nation in the world that has a musical instrument as its national emblem - bet you didn’t know that). And there is the Tri Spiral. This spiral is carved onto a large stone at the back of the tomb of Newgrange, one of Ireland (and indeed the Earth’s) oldest and most sacred places, thought to pre-date both Stonehenge and the Pyramids.You can find out more about these coins, likely, I would have thought, to become collectors’ items at Tara Coins. With St Patrick’s Day little more than a week away, these should make lovely gifts. Order yours at any of:* GoldBank in Ireland* Merrion Gold in Ireland* Bullion By Post in the UK* APMEX in the US* Bullion By Post in the US  * Celtic Gold in Germany: Enjoy your Sunday,Dominic 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

Campbell Smyth, Chairman of Fitzroy Minerals (FTZ.V), joins me to talk about the state of mining and metals.Lots of interesting insights in to copper, gold, lithium, oil and other essential commodities. 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

Bitcoin is off on one its runs, it seems. Congratulations to all who bought and held. It is now trading at all-time highs in 30 different currencies around the world, currencies representing more than 60% of the world’s population. How about that for a thought?From China and India to Congo and Sudan, it’s like a Noel Coward song.In US dollars, we are flirting with $60,000, still roughly 15% from the peak of US$69,000, the all-time high back in late 2021.In British pounds, the all-time high was around £48,000. We are touching that now.Meanwhile, Microstrategy (NDX.MSTR), which we suggested as a means to play bitcoin via a traditional broker, and avoid the FCA-created headaches of buying and investing bitcoin in the UK, is going great guns. $960 now. It was $350 when we first recommended it in the summer. Is it too late to buy?No. I haven’t been asked on TV to talk about it yet. See me on the box, then you can start getting concerned that the top is near. (Here’s one from BBC Daily Politics towards the end of a previous cycle. Chief Economist Dr Savvas Savouri. LOL)There is no doubt that the market is hot, hot, hot at the moment, and when markets get this hot, that usually means it’s time to back off. Cripes, the amount of excitement on social media is screaming run away. But bitcoin is like one of those metals - tungsten or tantalum - which can withstand abnormally high levels of heat. The evidence of previous bull markets is that bitcoin gets overbought and stays overbought.It’s usually better to buy when the markets are quiet, when nobody cares. But that is not where we now are.I have repeatedly argued that the risk with bitcoin is not owning it; it is not owning it. That hopefully makes sense in print. The potential of this thing is so abnormally huge, why would you not want to have a position?We are talking about the most technologically brilliant system of money ever invented. Own a piece of the pie.Why bitcoin will supercede other moniesRemember the old rhyme: Money is a matter of functions four:A medium, a measure, a standard and a store.National currencies are a good-ish medium of exchange - within national borders. But even then, they have their shortcomings. They are useless for micropayments. The smallest amount you can pay in the UK is 1p. Most banks and credit card companies won’t even process amounts that small. Even medium-sized transactions can be problematic. I wasted about an hour of my life this morning on the phone to Lloyds Bank as their security blocked a transfer of £3,950 that I was trying to make. In the grand context of things, that is not a huge sum, but Lloyds’ alarms went off and that was it. One hour gone. (During my peak productive time too. That’s one of the reasons this missive is late).But for cross-border transactions, national currencies are crap. Forex fees, paperwork, slow transaction speeds. If I want to send a payment to someone who operates with a different currency of, say, £1, via a bank, the costs are prohibitive. Revolut is about my only option - and that has issues. If I want to send a micropayment of, say, one-tenth of a cent, it is just impossible. But industries based around micropayments are a huge area of potential growth, especially in a world of artificial intelligence and the internet of things: streaming, apps, games, in-app and in-game purchases, rewards, likes, donations, tipping, credit card verification, identity verification, wifi access, public document access, libraries, parking, phone calls, public transport, pay-per-use in cloud computing, exchange of or access to information via the internet of things, content licensing, ad-free browsing, access to news and journalism. These are all areas that will see enormous use for micropayments.National currencies do not enable the micropayments economy, they are a barrier to it, especially across borders.At then other end of the scale, somebody just transferred the bitcoin equivalent of $1.3bn for a fee of $2. It took a minute or two. No forms, permits or declarations were required. You can send huge amounts or tiny amounts of money across borders for a fraction of the effort. Bitcoin is a good medium of exchange for the internet. It will only get better.You should subscribe to this letter. It’s really good.And what a store of value!The pound has lost a third of its purchasing power just since 2020, according to Truflation. Since Jan 2020 bitcoin meanwhile has gone from £5,000 to almost £50,000. Which is the better store of value? Measured in the constant that is gold, the pound has lost 90% of its purchasing power just this century (Gold was £150/oz in 1999. Today it is over £1,500/oz). Meanwhile, since its inception in 2009, bitcoin has been the world’s best performing asset. So what if it’s volatile.Finally, we have the last two functions of money: measure and standard. A measure - in other words, a unit of account - needs to be constant to be effective. National currencies, because of the constant debasement, fail in this regard. Statisticians and economists have to resort to “inflation-adjusted dollars”, but not everybody agrees as to what inflation actually is, never mind the inflation rate. Bitcoin has not attained widespread unit of account status yet, but its finite supply will, eventually, make it a more constant unit. As for standard, that is coming too - whether as a standard of deferred payment or a standard as in the gold standard. Its independence and ever-increasing purchasing power will see to that. But this evolution, even if inevitable - technology is destiny, after all - will take many years yet, which is another reason I argue that it is not too late to take the orange pill.By the way, there are many people who are so sure that bitcoin is going to a million dollars, they are now measuring the bitcoin price thus: $0.05m. How about that for a unit and a standard?The point I am eventually trying to get to is this. Institutions and individuals tend to hold their savings in fiat dollars, pounds, euros, or yen. Corporations keep their treasuries in fiat. In doing so, even with interest, you are losing 5 to 10% per annum to currency debasement. This is guaranteed. Imagine being a Japanese corporation holding your treasury in yen. Michael Saylor, meanwhile, in keeping the corporate treasury of Microstrategy in bitcoin, indeed issuing paper to buy more bitcoin, has 10xd his company's valuation in four years. Microstrategy has gone from a $1.4bn to a $14bn market cap. Do you not think other CEOs will follow suit?Bitcoin is becoming an an online savings vehicle, the default online savings vehicle - ahead of fiat. When other large corporations and billionaires start keeping their treasuries in bitcoin as a norm - we are still a few years from that - then is when the price moonshots and hyperbitcoinisation happens.Of course, hyperbitcoinisation may not happen. Then again: maybe it will.Where and when does this bull market end?I have mentioned before: there are four typical phases to a bitcoin cycle. * There’s the Quiet Accumulation. Few outside of the bubble of ardent bitcoiners take notice, as it discreetly creeps up. * The Frenzy and Blow-Off Top. The price rises accelerate. There is a rush to buy. The media is all over it. Everyone on social media is crowing. There’s a huge row about whether bitcoin is in a bubble or not. See 2013, 2017 and 2021 for more details.* The Monster Correction. Bitcoin loses over 70% of its value. Economists who missed the boat go on telly and declare they were right, ignoring the fact that the price to which bitcoin corrected to is several hundred percent above where the quiet accumulation phase began. * The Frustrating Consolidation. Bitcoin goes into a period of range trading, consolidating the gains of the previous bull market. This is a period of relative quiet, at least by bitcoin standards. There are rallies that get many excited, but prove to be false dawns. Investors get frustrated by the grinding action. The media loses interest. Many forget about it, and so we gradually drift into another Quiet Accumulation phase.We are now in the early stages of phase two. This typically comes around halvings, but the ETFs appear to have brought it forward.So what’s next and when does this bull market end?There are some obvious numbers to look for. $69,000, the old high. There will be resistance there. As we move towards that number we can expect some selling. Expect volatility.Bt after $69,000, everyone who ever bought bitcoin ever and held is in profit. How about that for a thought?Then $100,000. It is such a big, round number - like $1,000 and $10,000 before it. I’m inclined to think we get there this year.On the downside there should be some support around $52k with the next line in the low- to mid-40s.Bitcoin bear cycles (stage 3 above) tend to last about a year, consolidations about another year. Bull markets tend to last two to three years. This one began 15 months ago. There will be wild whipsaws on the way, but I suggest this phase has a good year to go before it’s done.Three years ago $69,000 felt too expensive. It doesn’t anymore. I think this bull market ends with bitcoin at six figures.The evidence of previous bull markets is that we overshoot to the upside. But don’t expect not to get thrown about along the way.A final thoughtI first heard about bitcoin in December 2010. It was 20c. I didn’t really look into it; I just thought it sounded like a cool idea. When I came around to the idea of buying, the price kept going up. I got outbid for some physical bitcoins on eBay, I remember.I couldn’t bring myself to buy something after it had doubled and tripled. It went to $32. Then it corrected all the way to $2. I still didn’t buy. I had lost interest I think.People were giving me coins at this stage. Trying to get me into it. Then the price started going up again. It went to $200 then $1,200. I ended up writing a book about it. Even though I had a position, I never put the amount of money I should in because I couldn’t bring myself to buy something that had gone up so much. I could be a stupendously rich billionaire now, but I was scared off by the price rises. I’m fine by the way. You don’t need to worry about me. But I have a fraction of what I might have had. I got hacked as well but that’s another story.In December 2017, with bitcoin at $5,000, I went on the BBC Daily Politics show to talk about it. Over the next month, it quadrupled to $20,000, before going into one of its bear phases.Even buying at the very top of that cycle, you would still have tripled your money.Moral of all this: don’t be put off by the rising price.Here’s that interview again. There’s a lot to be learned from it:My 2023 guide to buying bitcoin is here. I’ll put an updated one together in the next few days.If you liked this article, please subscribe to the Flying Frisby. It’s really good. 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

You might have seen in the news a couple of days back that, to make Britain’s unaffordable housing affordable, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and the Treasury are considering a scheme whereby people can buy homes with a deposit of just 1% and get a 99% mortgage.Thus, in theory, you could buy a one million pound home with just a ten-grand deposit.(I expect they will cap it below that level, but you get the point).It has become a cliché of the internet, but we say it anyway: “what could possibly go wrong?” It’s good to see the lessons from 2008 have been learned.Who would guarantee these loans should the buyer default? You would. You probably didn’t know this, but you’re already guaranteeing £4 billion under the existing mortgage guarantee scheme. You could soon be guaranteeing a whole lot more.Remember how they used taxpayer money to bail out the banks in 2008 and it was called “socialism for the rich”? This is the same thing, except this time they are bailing out the housing market. The Tories have this annoying (and mendacious) habit of leaking a policy to the press before it is actually policy to see how it goes down. I say mendacious because it is misleading. If they had any actual first principles by which they operated, then they would not do this. Instead, what sets policy is what Tories think might make them popular.In any case, I would hope this is another one of those test-the-water leaks, rather than something we will see come the next Budget in March, because it will send prices higher, just like its predecessor Help To Buy did, and that is the last thing we want. The solution to unaffordable housing is lower prices, not more debt.But regardless of whether the scheme gets the go-ahead or not, it still tells us all we need to know about how the Blob is going to fix Britain’s housing crisis: it isn’t. Instead, it’s going to come up with increasingly innovative ways to bring more debt into the market and thereby send prices even higher.It was the same after the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. There was a chance to let the whole thing reset. Instead, we got suppressed interest rates, Quantitative Easing and then Help To Buy, all of which protected the already-haves at the expense of the have-nots. Labour won’t make a jot of difference, by the way. It is just as bereft of first principles. That is how Keir Starmer is going to win the next General Election: by not standing for anything. Not that it matters who wins. The Blob still runs the place.The destructive effects of high house pricesIt makes me weep what high house prices have done to this country. I see an entire generation, if not two, psychologically damaged, almost beyond repair, because they cannot afford somewhere decent to live.They feel inadequate. They delay starting families, or have smaller families, or have no children at all because they cannot afford anywhere to house them. They then hate themselves because they have no children.The result of smaller families later in life is population decline. The Blob then says there aren’t enough young people and opens the doors to mass immigration. Guess what happens then? Cheap imported labour pushes wages down, but increases demand for housing and essential services. State systems are too slow to adapt. Housing gets even more unaffordable. It is the most vicious of vicious circles.Locals are then told that priority in the workplace must be given to the newcomer because diversity. Complain and you are racist. Your history is bad, by the way. And you wonder why everything is such a clusterfook.Why do you think so many young people are so nihilistic? Because deep down they know they are never going to be able to afford anywhere decent to live, never mind pay off their student loans or have a family. They are, effectively, excluded from society. But stop drinking lattes and work harder.Who do you know who can afford to buy somewhere where they grew up? I know I can’t, and I’m part of the One Percent. It’s the opposite of progress. When people can’t afford to live where they gre w up, they lose touch with their roots, their traditions, their culture, the very land. And you wonder why we have lost touch with who we are.All because of stupid house prices.Houses themselves are not that expensive. Look here’s a 1,400 sq ft, 4-bed house with a 145 sq ft porch for £45,000. Delivery in six weeks.Looks nice, no? (You’ll need someone to put it together).The issue is land, and it’s a needless issue that goes all the way back to one of the most insidious and stupid bits of legislation ever enacted, The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. When you create debt, you create money. The more money you bring into a market, the higher prices go. See student loans for more details. When that market is limited in how much it can expand, which is the case with UK housing because of restrictive planning laws, you get our situation where houses have gone up by three and half times more than wages.All the Treasury is doing with this policy is finding new ways to get more money into this market. There is only one way that will send house prices. It will only make things worse.The solution to unaffordable housing is lower prices. The Blob will not let that happen.By all means prop up the housing market. The cost will be your country.Further reading on the housing market:* Why Houses Cost So Much* What Really Causes Inflation* A Solution 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

The self-improvement industry is just enormous. It’s worth $41 billion worldwide says this report, but, by the time you factor in everything from health and diet to training and education to media, I think it’s much, much bigger than that. We are almost all of us looking to improve ourselves in some way. We might spend fortunes and hours getting fit, strong or supple. We might spend ages making ourselves look beautiful. It never ceases to amaze me how long my eldest daughter can spend getting herself ready for work. She’s only going to work! We might spend hours reading or listening podcasts about how we can improve our performance, our habits or our psychology. Of Amazon’s best selling books last year three of the top ten can be filed under self-improvement (Atomic Habits by James Clear and two Nathan Anthony books on healthy eating). But there is one thing we don’t seem to spend any time trying to improve, and that is how we speak Occasionally, clips of people being interviewed way back when appear on Twitter or Facebook. Just ordinary folk. What is so amazing to me is just how beautifully people spoke. Compare that to the noises that come out of some peoples mouths today: the awful vowel sounds, the poor diction, even the language itself is frequently just so ugly. Even actors and broadcasters, who are supposed to be professional speakers, are mostly dreadful. Little priority is given to excellence in voice and speech. When I hear actors in period dramas, I want to despair. Leading politicians are mostly awful. Listen to Rishi Sunak: the Prime Minister’s voice is puny. I had a father who was a theatrical, obsessed with the spoken word and I guess that has always made me look at the world - or should I say listen to the world - from that angle. He and I used to work together loads on various exercises. Then at drama school we spent hours and hours on voice and speech: humming, singing, diction exercises - exercising your tongue with little bits of wood between your teeth to stretch it (I can’t even remember what those bits of wood are called. Edit: bone props - thanks to reader Nicholas Benson).“Articulatory agility is a desirable ability manipulating with dexterity the lips, the teeth and the tip of the tongue”. We had to say that over and over. I guess that stood me in good stead because voiceovers became my primary source of income for 25 years. But even I don’t think I’ve done a voice or speech exercise in over a decade, and when I catch myself speaking I often think, “sloppy”.Elocution lessons were a big thing once upon a time. People would actively try to improve the way they spoke in order to improve their situation. I guess, because of microphones and amplified sound, the need has gone away, though we are still judged on how we speak.I know that there are plenty of voice and speech coaches today, but in general, this is one area of self-improvement that doesn’t seem to have taken off. How I wish it would. How often do you see somebody, who looks absolutely magnificent, only for them to open their mouth and then something horrendous comes out? But if you should criticise somebody’s voice or speech, that makes you a snob. “They can’t help how they speak,” comes the retort. Yes, they can. Voice and speech are physical skills. They improve with exercise. In the same way that we have a culture of exercise and sport, I wish we had a culture of improving our voice and speech as well.It would make such a difference.Never mind free speech. Let’s have some good speech. Until next time,DominicPS Don’t forget my two shows this week on Feb 14th and 15th at the Museum of Comedy in London. All about gold. And delivered with impeccable diction.If you are looking to buy gold in these uncertain times, let me recommend the Pure Gold Company, with whom I have an affiliation deal. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. More here.And, if you missed it, here is something interesting from earlier in the week: 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.comRussia has been buying military drones from Iran and it has been paying for them with gold. This story seems to have gone largely unnoticed, but for those of us interested in the developing narrative that is de-dollarisation, this story has ramifications. A quick word about gold and national currenciesWe all know gold retains its role as store of value - otherwise central banks would no longer keep it, nor would ETFs be a thing. This is never going to change, by the way. Gold has always been and will always be used as a store and display of value. But gold has never been much of a medium of exchange, except for high value transactions. This role usually fell to silver and other metals. Under the classical gold standards of the 19th century gold did find some use. The old pound coin - aka the sovereign - was 22 carat gold, for example, and national currencies were supposed to be interchangeable with gold. But any role gold had then has gone now. Except in extremis, such as in times of war, when gold finds function as a money of last resort, gold has not been used as currency, as a medium of exchange, for over a hundred years.The remonetisation of gold, and the inevitable resulting official upwards revaluation, as governments tie their currencies to it once again to shore up their value, has been the dream of many a gold bug for many a yearIn order to free themselves from the clutches of the US and its banking system, those countries that make up the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (most of Asia) have long since wanted a settlement currency that is not the US dollar. The problem is what? Which national currency can the likes of China, India, Russia, Iran and the various stans all agree on and trust in?One possible solution is the internationally recognized money that is the shiny yellow stuff. Another is the rather less shiny, digital equivalent.That gold has been used to settle a large debt between two SCO nations is, therefore, a very significant development. It may just be an “extremis” case, resulting from sanctions on Iran and Russia. It may also be a step in the direction of remonetisation. Our misleading mediaFirst, let me clear up the fake news.I first spotted the story at Ross Norman’s site Metals Daily and, with Ross’s kind help,  have since done some digging.“Moscow paid billions in gold bullions to Iran for Shahed drones, leaked documents reveal” says the headline at Indian news site, First Post. “Leak reveals minister's claim that $1.75 billion contract was signed for 6,000 Shaheds and Kremlin ‘paid in literal gold’”, says the subtitle at the Telegraph. (Versions of this story are eyebrow-raisingly similar, leading me to think one has copied and pasted it from the other. But in doing so, with so little vetting, they have also copied and pasted what is misleading). Here is Andrew Buncombe in the Telegraph:‌”Moscow signed a $1.75 billion contract for 6,000 of the unmanned aerial vehicles from an offshoot of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) last year, according to leaked documents posted online by a hacker group called the Prana Network.‌It reportedly paid in gold bullion, shipping more than two tonnes to the manufacturer Sahara Thunder.”The thing is - and what neither journalist appears to have noticed - is that two tonnes of gold do not amount to $1.75 billion. Two tonnes are around $130 million. Some digging leads us to Defence Blog (edit: this site has since gone down) and then the original source for the story, in Ukranian, at news agency Militarnyi. The short of it is that a group of hackers, Prana Network, infiltrated the emails of Iranian company “IRGC Sahara Thunder”. Moreover, the maths reported at the Telegraph and elswehere are out (I can talk). Russia, it seems has a licence to construct up to 6,000 drones using Iranian parts within 30 months at a price of around $193,000/unit, or $290,000 per unit when ordering 2,000. But, as reader L has pointed out, 6,000 units at $193,000/unit only equates to $1.16 billion. Only at $290,000/unit you arrive at the $1.75 billion figure. But the important takeaway is this. Russia has been conducting financial transactions and payments with Iran in gold. In February 2023, the Russian organization “Alabuga Machinery” transferred 2.06 tonnes of gold bars to Sahara Thunder. We presume this is as payment for services and goods.So the story is slightly different, but the point is the same. Russia and Iran have been using gold as currency.What else, one wonders, has Russia been using gold to buy? And off whom?The shortcomings of gold in international tradeTo use gold is a long-winded way of doing business. Gold is heavy. There are security issues. They will have had to fly it over. (The logistics of transporting gold are one reason bitcoin will probably win the battle to be the default settlement currency outside of the banking system).Under classical gold standards, gold ownership could be transferred without the gold ever having to leave the vaults of trusted banks in London, New York and Switzerland. But if the SCO is to start using gold as currency, it is going to need a trusted third party to hold the gold, to save constantly having to transport it. Of course, Shanghai will have a role in this. Singapore may as well. But I would have thought an extremely likely candidate to play the role of Switzerland will be the United Arab Emirates. It is already the world’s second largest exporter. It’s yet another reason to be long Dubai - as well as gold.If you are looking to buy gold in these uncertain times, let me recommend the Pure Gold Company, with whom I have an affiliation deal. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. More here.Don’t forget my two shows next week on Feb 14th and 15th.If you would like to come, I have two pairs of tickets to give away to paying subscribers for February 14th - Valentine’s Day. The first two people to email - they are yours. So to other business …