The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comBefore we come to the main thrust of today’s piece, there is something I need to flag. We are just coming into North American tax loss selling season, and a number of you have asked if I will be putting together a portfolio of tax loss trades this year.The answer is, “maybe”.I’m not sure how well it will work this year for reasons you are about to find out, but it’s something I am still considering, and I will I try to have a list of options for next week’s missive. By my reckoning the dates when you’ll find the biggest bargains this year will be Friday December 19, Monday December 22 and Tuesday December 23, though the window stretches from next week all the way to New Year’s Eve.What am I talking about?At the end of the year in the US and Canada, investors (both retail and institutions) sell their worst performing stocks in order to realise losses to offset against gains elsewhere in order to reduce their tax bill.This selling tends to climax in the last two or three days of trading before Christmas and it means badly performing stocks, particularly illiquid ones, get way oversold only to experience something of a rally in the first few weeks of the following year as the selling dissipates.So the trade is simple: buy as the selling climaxes and then flip sometime in February (my Canadian broker says March and last year this proved very true).Nothing is guaranteed in this cruel world (except the further debasement of your national currency), but it is a trade with a remarkably successful hit rate, and a clear timescale. It also becomes apparent pretty quickly if it isn’t working, enabling you to exit any losers early.If you live in a Third World Country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound is going to be further devalued. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.By all means go back and audit me, but last year I believe 8 of the 9 ideas worked.Some picks work better than others. Some years work better than others, but gains of 20-50%, even doubles sometimes, are not uncommon. The trade works particularly well in smallcap Canadian resource stocks, as, when they are bad, they are really bad, and can get hugely oversold. However, this year Canadian resource stocks, particularly gold and silver miners, have had a bonanza year, so there won’t be much tax selling there. In fact, markets more generally have been strong, so there is not the normal flood of dogs to be sold. However, I have some ideas. Crypto Treasury Companies, for example, could be big winners because of the huge losses they have generated. So keep an eye out and I will try and have something for you this time next week. Be ready to move quickly, as well, so have some cash to play with.Right. Changing the subject. Why both legal and illegal immigration is set to increase I can’t go online now without seeing something about uncontrolled immigration. Yesterday saw the sentencing of two Afghan 17 year olds for raping a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa. (Spoiler: they weren’t 17. They’ve lied about their age, on that I’ll bet the house. Not that anyone in authority will have noticed). And it’s not just online, it’s in the world around me. I live in south London, so I see it all the time. I travel a lot around the country doing gigs and the changing demographics of the UK are everywhere, even in the remotest parts of the country. I think a little bit of immigration is a good thing, but this is happening too fast and on too big a scale.When a business messes up badly, it goes bust and another, better run business comes along and does the job better. When a state body messes up badly, a load more money gets spent on an inquiry - in the case of the rape gangs £65 million - usually headed by a Blob insider (in this case Starmer appointed peer Baroness Anne Longfield). The mess gets whitewashed as much by time as anything, and the state body continues as before, dysfunctional as ever, if not more so.Unlike those operating in a free market, the state as it currently functions, is incapable of reacting to the new realities of the world around us. There are more people than ever before in the world, and more of them than ever are on the move. Thanks to better planes, trains, boats and cars, they are able to move further and faster than ever before. Thanks to smart phones, which over 90% of the world’s adult population now has, better information about how and where to go gets spread. Smart phones also create FOMO - you gaze at the life you could have - so there is more desire to move than ever before. And the fact that 3 billion people earn less than $40/day means there is a greater urge to move than ever. This is the reality of the world in which we live. It is patently obvious mass migration of people is going to increase. And yet the British government, nor most Western governments, have no plan in place to deal with it all. They can’t even deal with current levels of migration, let alone illegal migration or future migration. There has been no debate or agreement on what the right levels of migration should actually be. With no clarity, policy is, inevitably, both incoherent and inadequate. Promises by every government since Cameron’s coalition have been broken. The courts and legal system were designed for a different people in a different age and are no longer fit for purpose. This all assumes, of course, government could actually lower migration levels if it wanted, which I don’t believe it actually can because of sheer weight of numbers. Thanks to the ECHR and a general unwillingness within the Blob to address this, there is not even the ability to properly tackle this issue anyway. State institutions and infrastructure - from roads to health to education to welfare - cannot cope with the increased numbers and are crumbling. Wealth creators are leaving to be replaced by net takers, resulting in an increased tax burden and eventual likely bankruptcy of the country. Trust has gone and we are accelerating along the road to ruin.Such repeated failure by a business over many years would result in the extinction of that business. But the state operates by a different set of rules, and the only thing that can end it is the destruction of the currency itself. Hence why I say own gold.So that’s where we are. Exploiting the end of Britain: blood money and crony capitalism You can rant and rail and make a noise. But I don’t see what you or anyone can actually do about it. A Reform majority at the next election is what many are pinning their hopes on, but a hung parliament looks more likely. Would even a runaway win for Reform at the next election change much? I doubt it, myself. There’s too much opposition within the system. Liz Truss only tried to slash government spending by 2.5% and look what happened there. As investors our job is not to pass moral judgement on the rights and wrongs of all this. Many think it’s a good thing the West gets destroyed! Our job is to navigate the waters as best we can. As you know I urge readers to own non- government currencies, money they can’t debase - gold and bitcoin. But having just said our job is not to pass moral judgement, I do pass moral judgement when I invest. I shouldn’t, but I do. I don’t buy government bonds, especially gilts, for example, because in doing so you enable government, when government is the problem. Starve the monster is my take. I’m also not participating in the trade I am about to outline here, because it would make me feel dirty. But the more ruthless of you will be fine with it, and you’ll get no flack from me. I hate getting ripped off at airports and train stations, so I have a bit of WH Smith in my portfolio as an offset. This is a little bit like that.There are companies making an absolute fortune from illegal migration. And while this situation continues, they are going to continue making money. Why shouldn’t you as well?Their customer, the government, is a bureaucrat spending somebody else’s money so will pay pretty much whatever. Demand for their services is only going to increase as migration increases. There is no competitive marketplace - you’re not having to compete with other hotels, for example. These companies are all paid by the government - you in other words - to provide facilities for asylum seekers. The contracts are juicy, and those bureaucrat fingers are fat with taxpayer cash. Here’s how to profit from illegal migration in the UK.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comI found myself at a very VIP event last night at the home of a well-known politician. There was a heck of lot of money, age and experience in the room. I felt like I’d gone back in time to the City of the 1980s.I got talking to an old boy who, it turned out, had made his money in mining. He had worked at one point for the Hunt Brothers (who famously tried to corner the silver market in 1980). He had speculated in Australian’s Poseidon bubble (1969-70), one of the mothers of all speculative mining frenzies. He recalled a stock he had bought at 10c, offloading his final shares at A$120, only to watch it go to A$280. (50 years on, he was still cross with himself for selling too soon, even though it soon went all the way back to 10c).“Are we in a secular bull market for mining stocks now?” I asked him. He didn’t seem to think we are.“What about gold and silver?” “Silver’s at $53,” he smiled.“$58,” I corrected him.“$58!” he said. “Gosh. I must go home and sell the cutlery.”There was a photograph in a large silver frame on the sideboard. We discussed the merits of selling that.I tell this story for a reason. Bull markets like this one in silver do not come along very often. The old boy know that - and he knew what to do. Because silver bull markets don’t last forever.And when they end, they really end. You can make informed and educated guesses where the top will be. Getting out at the absolute top can be done but it requires so much good fortune that it is near impossible.In the Poseidon bubble, the old boy was selling on the way up, only to see his stock double and more again after he’d unloaded his final tranche. He made money. A lot of money. He didn’t make as much as he could have made - and is still, more than fifty years on, cross with himself.Yet he also didn’t lose anything when the bubble popped.Is that not more important?Yet, bizarre thing the human mind is, we seem to get more cross with ourselves for selling too early than we do for overstaying our welcome and riding the collapse all the way down.If you live in the Third World Country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound is going to be further devalued. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.That amazing cup and handleSilver has now broken out of that incredible cup-and-handle formation that has been building since the 1970s. We have spoken about it before. The standard view is that, in a cup-and-handle pattern, the distance from the rim to the bottom of the cup will be your target to the upside. In this case, $3.50 was the low in the early 1990s. The distance from $50 to $3.50 is $46.50, giving us a target of $96 or thereabouts.$96.50 then. It could get there. I don’t say it will, but it could.You can argue that based on logarithmic charts and percentage falls, the targets should be even higher. I’ve read some as high as $700/oz. It’s possible. $50 in 1980 was a similarly elevated figure.

Good Sunday to you,A bit of admin before we come to today’s thought piece.First, in case you missed it, here is this week’s commentary, mostly ranting about the budget, the UK’s inept leadership and what actions you, as an investor, should take:And this week I also appeared on comedian Geoff Norcott’s podcast, What Most People Think. Here are the links to the show on Apple and Spotify, if of interest.But for your thought piece today, we have another great little World War Two gold story which didn’t make the cut. The farcical journey of Albanian and Italian gold (NB: a tonne of gold is about a medium-sized suitcase full).As the Nazis took both Austria and Czechoslovakia with ease, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini grew anxious to flex his own muscles.Albania would be his target. Geographically, culturally and historically, it made sense: Albania had been part of the Roman Empire even before northern Italy.In April 1939, Italy invaded with a force that contained 400 planes, 300 small tanks, 12 warships, and 22,000 men. But some untrained Albanian locals with the help of a few soldiers managed to drive them back into the sea. Such was 20th century Italian warfare.The Italians made it on the second attempt, however, and the capital, Tirana, fell.The Albanian King Zog gave an impassioned speech on the radio, urging resistance, but nobody heard it because Albania at the time had fewer than 2,000 radios, and the Italians soon managed to jam the airwaves anyway. Shortly after giving the speech, like the true patriot he was, he fled the country, taking enough gold with him to lead a long life of luxury in exile, eventually ending up in Egypt as a guest of King Farouk, to whom he had to pay $20 million for refuge.Albania's founders believed in gold, and their currency, the lek, was based on it. Inflation, as a result, had been nonexistent. The central bank was established in the summer of 1925, and it had worked hard to build up its gold holdings. At home, it had encouraged citizens to swap their jewellery for paper money. That private gold was then added to the nation's gold holdings. Whenever possible, the country increased its gold holdings in London.But by the time of the invasion in 1939, most of Albania's 2.3 tonnes was in Italy anyway, where it had been sent for safekeeping. The Italians managed to confiscate quite a bit more in coins and jewellery from citizens.We fast forward four years.The Italian dilemma: give their gold to the Nazis or the Allies? In 1943, Allied forces moved north from Africa into Sicily and then Italy: the invasion of the soft underbelly of Europe had begun.Hectic days followed the ousting of Mussolini in July. The Italian Fascists were still nominally in charge. They declared Rome an open city in the hope of avoiding Allied air attacks. But by September 1943, the Nazis had control of the capital and central Italy, and they wanted Italy's gold moved to Berlin, while they still had control of the area.They began confiscating the gold of Italian citizens in Rome, especially Italian Jews. The amounts demanded were unrealistic, but Roman Jews reached into their family treasures, their synagogues and institutions to turn in what they had. The Pope, Pius XII, heard about the demands and authorised Catholic churches to lend Jews gold so they could reach the quota.But the big prize was in the Italian Central Bank, and several Nazi organisations had their eyes on it: Himmler's SS, Göring's Four Year Plan, von Ribbentrop's Foreign Office, and Funk's Reichsbank. Even the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), which was worried about its investments in Italy, started making demands that Italy send it gold. Initially, the governor of the Italian bank, Vincenzo Azzolini, made out that he was offended by the idea, but he soon realised the BIS was a better option than Berlin, whichever Nazi department received it.The Italians did not know what to do. On the one hand, they did not want the Nazis to have their gold, but nor did they want the invading Allies to have it either. They thought of sending it to Sardinia, they thought of sending it to the Swiss border. They sent small amounts of gold to branch offices around Italy, but the Bologna gold went missing, as did much of the Milan gold - now supposedly in Turin, but actually hidden in a well. They even sent some to colonial outposts in Benghazi, Rhodes and Addis Ababa.The Albanian gold Italy had stolen was still sitting in the Italian bank's vault, so, under pressure from the Nazis, they sent that up to the Reichsbank in Berlin, while they tried to come up with a solution.The following day, Niccolò Introna, the Italian bank's deputy general manager, had his plan: to build a false wall in the bank's underground vaults. He would then backdate documents to show the gold had been moved to Potenza, a town in the Italian south that was about to fall into Allied hands, but hide the gold behind the wall.Bank governor Azzolini approved the plan, but then ruled that only half the gold should be hidden. The next day the wall was built. The day after that, the official order to ship the gold to Berlin came in from the German ambassador. If the bank did not agree, the Germans would simply seize it. At this point, Azzolini learned that the Germans had seized government records, from which they would know the size and location of the country's gold. Azzolini lost his nerve and had the wall torn down.The next day, the German military unit arrived at the bank with orders to move the gold north by air. Azzolini stalled them, saying it would be safer by train. The Germans sent 5 tonnes by air, the rest - 119 tonnes - was sent by train to Milan. From there, it was shipped to Fortezza, Bolzano, close to the border with Germany and under their control, where it stayed for several months. The now-ousted Mussolini even signed his approval that it be sent there.The following spring, Azzolini, who above all wanted to stop the gold going to Berlin, struck a deal with Swiss and German representatives that would see 26 tonnes sent to Switzerland, some to the BIS and some to the Swiss National Bank.Göring, however, insisted he needed money and suggested giving Italy Reichsmarks for its gold. The deal was signed without the Bank of Italy knowing about it. 50 tonnes left Fortezza, which included 8 tonnes Italy had stolen from Yugoslavia earlier in the war in "restitution" (that’s another story). The delivery arrived in Berlin a tonne light. As almost always by this point in the war, someone had their hands in the till.The process of shipping the next batch of Italian gold - some 22 tonnes - went on for months, as some (but not all) Italian officials tried to stall. But eventually, that too was dispatched. That too arrived in Berlin a tonne light.When American forces eventually liberated Fortezza, they found 25 tonnes. It was handed over to the Bank of Italy.What a mess.Stories like this fill the pages of The Secret History of Gold (although this one didn’t actually make the cut).The Secret History of Gold is available at Amazon, Waterstones and all good bookshops. I hear the audiobook, read by me, is excellent. And it would make a wonderful Christmas present! 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

There will be no growth in the UK.Chancellor Reeves’ budget was designed to placate left-wing back benchers, who want greater spending, and the bond markets. In that, it has succeeded. For now.The ever-shrinking part of the country that actually builds wealth (and remember there are only 3 ways to build real wealth: you grow stuff, you mine stuff or you make stuff. Everything else is just pushing it about) is being further taxed to pay for it all. There are now extra taxes on property, dividends and savings, while fiscal drag means more people will pay higher rates of income tax (closing in on 25% of workers by 2030, apparently), further diminishing their chances of improving their lot. Never mind the currency debasement of the money they are being paid in.Stealth taxes, such as fiscal drag, get my goat because they are so disingenuous. But perhaps of greater concern are doors which have been opened to new sources of taxation. The extra levy on high value properties, for example, has been set at £2,500 per year for properties in the £2-£5 million bracket, and £7,500 for properties above.A £2 million house in London is not some decadent billionaire plaything: it is often a mere terraced house built 150 years ago for an ordinary working man and his family.My friend, who is uber successful and very left wing, has an expensive house in Hampstead. She was actually happy about this tax, because she thought it was fair - and because she thought she was going to get hammered for higher taxes elsewhere. What she doesn’t realise is that this is just the beginning. The door is now open to further property taxes and the only way is up.What’s more, as currency gets debased, fiscal drag means more and more properties will fall into this category.Income Tax began as a tax only on higher earners. Within a few decades, ordinary workers were hit. Now they’re paying higher rates. These new property taxes will go the same way.Never mind that you bought the property with taxed income, and then paid stamp duty. It’s endless.Between that, landlord taxes, extra tenant protection, Section 24 and the plethora of petty regulation, the age of the small landlord in Britain is now over. Renting, like so many other parts of the economy, will become the domain of larger corporations. And we will all lose because of it.It also means that real estate is over as an investment. All it really was was a shield against currency debasement, but those days are now behind us.Similarly, the door is now open for local authorities to charge a visitor levy. This tourist tax will start small and then rise, like every other tax in history. We already have the tax on moving that is stamp duty, now we have this. If you tax movement, people will move less. If you have no movement, you have no growth. It really isn’t that difficult.They do not seem to understand that capital flows to where it is welcome. If you tax it, it will not come; it will go. What is the golden rule of the magnum opus? More taxes or higher rates do not equal greater revenue. But the reverse.We are now, as you know, taxed at the highest rate since the Second World War. What is the money going on? You don’t need me to tell you how much is being spaffed. Waste, fraud, incompetence, misallocation. Government is the most inefficient means of spending money there is. As if to prove my point, they couldn’t even make the announcement about how they’re going to spend your money competently. They’ve spent the last few months leaking stuff. Leaking is a tool of government, so when it backfires, at least we have some karma. Meanwhile, the source of the leak, the OBR, rarely if ever gets a prediction right. How much is being drained from the productive to fund that thing? How many bad choices are made as a result of its utterances?The state is already disproportionately large and it is only going to get bigger Where do the salaries of those who work for the state come from? The ever-decreasing sector of the economy that actually builds wealth. Even if you are providing some essential state service and are being well paid to do it, you are still a dependent, because it is the shrinking part of the economy that actually builds wealth that is the ultimate source of your wages.Millionaires and billionaires, assuming they haven’t made their wealth through crony capitalism or government subsidy, are not the problem - they are the solution. We want to attract them here, not frighten them away. They create employment. Our lives are better for likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, not worse. The same goes for investment, profit, saving, trade, growth. We want to attract them not deter them.The opposite applies to deficit spending, money printing, currency debasement, suppressed interest rates, high taxes, tax traps, welfare, dependency, regulation and bureaucracy. You want to deter them not attract them. Yet I am afraid all we are doing is the latter.If you pay people to be unproductive, you will get more unproductive people. If you tax people who are productive, you will get fewer productive people. What is so hard to understand?We can rant and rave. It won’t do any good. This is the path we are on. We are following the template of South Africa. (It was actually me that coined the term “the South Africanisation of everything”, something I am quite proud of). We keep thinking that things can’t get any worse. But they can and will. It is gradual and incremental. We are frogs being boiled while suffering water torture. The country is going to get even more socialist. All you can do is look after yourself and your family.If you are young and reading this, the best thing you can do is leave, as so many are already doing. It is just so hard to build a future for yourself when you are so heavily taxed, and then the money you are paid in is being debased. Leave, travel the world, have adventures, learn, become a Sovereign Individual. The world is a big place. There are better futures to be had elsewhere.It’s all happening just as I said it would in Daylight Robbery, by the way, even the mileage taxMany of us, however, because of our circumstances, do not have the option to leave.So what to do?Real estate, as already mentioned, is now dead as an investment. It’s too easy a target for taxes. UK companies are going to find life that much harder - the rising minimum wage will reduce employment (and thus increase the burden of dependents). It’s also going to mean higher costs for you as this tweet demonstratesIf companies do well, they will face further taxes. Dividend taxes are a deterrent too. We are not quite at the point where UK companies are un-investible (in fact there is a wall of US capital that wants to buy the UK), but the foundations are not exactly enticing.The one compensation for saving in fiat was interest, but taxes here are going to go up too. So cash is crapAs we have long argued on these pages, you need to park capital where governments can’t touch it, tax it or debase it. The best forms of non-government money are gold, if you want something physical, and bitcoin, if you prefer something digital.We are not yet at the point where they try to tax or confiscate your gold and bitcoin, but we are on the trajectory I’m sorry to say.All those horrible bitcoiners crowing about how much money they’ve made - do you honestly think taxing or confiscation of bitcoin won’t meet with public approval? You’re just another one of those loathsome rich people creating inequality.It’s coming, but we are not there yet.Bitcoin is in one of its down seasons. But it is still the best performing asset class of the last 15 years. And if you don’t like it, fine, own gold instead. There is plenty more gas in that particular tank.Reeves may have staved off a tantrum in the gilt markets, and a resulting fall in the pound, but she has created an even bigger problem for her successors.We need fewer taxes, lower taxes and simpler taxes. It all starts there. Reeves has chosen a path in the opposite direction, the road more travelled. And it takes us further along the road to serfdom. If you live in the Third World Country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Sunday’s thought piece has become the most viewed piece in this Substack’s history. Take a look, in case you missed it:Until next time,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

The Romans enslaved 160 million people. The Mughals 112 million. The Mali Empire 57 million. Your Sunday deep dive into the data they don’t teach in schools.We have crunched the numbers across 5,000 years of human civilisation, and ranked the results. What we found will surprise you - and might just change how you think about the past.Substack subscribers see this first, before it goes to X, Facebook, Insta and YouTube next week.Know others who should see this?If of interest, the research for this video can be found here.My thanks go to Goat, for making the video, and to Andy at Red Creative for the studio.If you live in a Third World country, such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Moving onto other matters, ICYMI here is this week’s commentaryMeanwhile, have you read it yet? “Possibly the best-time book ever,” says Merryn Somerset Webb. The Secret History of Gold - Money, Myth, Politics and Power is available at all good bookstores. Finally, I appeared on the Shepheard Walwyn Podcast, interviewed by Jonathan Brown, this week. Here it is - talking gold.Until next time,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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comI don’t mean to get all bearish on you.Bearish copy - it’s all going down, it’s going to crash - gets more eyeballs than “everything’s fine”. Bearish commentators usually have bigger followings. Bad news sells.But bears are usually wrong. They’ve predicted 13 of the last two corrections.The fact is, as human beings progress and economies grow, markets tend to rise. This is doubly so when the underlying unit of account - the pound, the euro, the dollar - is being systematically debased. (Which makes the underperformance of the FTSE these last 25 years even more incredible by the way). Stock markets, especially in the US, have become places to park capital, where you can reduce erosion by inflation.So that’s my disclaimer out of the way.I’m feeling bearishWe’ll start with bitcoin. It’s a leading indicator for the Nasdaq and tech. It’s sold off - from $125,000 in early October to $90,000 a coin on Monday. Remember: I targeted $90,000 a coin a few weeks back.The crypto summer was muted, so we can expect this crypto winter to be similarly muted - no 90% corrections in other words. But we are almost 30% down already.Strip out the noise and HODL is my advice. That’s what I’m doing. There has been no better investment strategy over the last 15 years and I’m sticking with it. But a crypto winter is upon us, it seems. Let’s hope it’s a mild one.Here’s the chart. Look at the 50 day moving average in red. This is the third time in since 2024 that we have been in this situation.One correction lasted most of 2024 - well, March to October - the other took up the first five months of this year. They passed.Also worth noting is how each correction seems to have three spikes down - three drives to the bottom. This time around we have only had one, so maybe a couple more to go. That is not a prediction by the way: just an observation.The corrections in gold and silver have been more muted. But I have to say the silver chart concerns me. Double top or what?I thought the October correction would go deeper than it did, but it held up at the 50 day moving average (red line). That’s a sign of strength. This rebound rally, dead cat bounce - whatever you want to call it - has taken us right back to the old highs, while gold and the S&P500 both made lower highs. That is also a sign of relative strength.But the second high was not confirmed by the silver miners, that is not good. And now we have a double top on our hands, until we don’t.I would think we have one more leg down to get through plus some sideways consolidation to digest the gains of earlier this year. Here is gold, FYI, which has conspicuously made a lower high. This one might want to go into the $3 thousands for a bit.The stock market has this ridiculous Nvidia situation to get through. $4.4 trillion market cap - and that’s after the recent pullback. 40 stocks account for something like 60% of the market cap of the five hundred stocks in the S&P. It needs to rebalance, otherwise it’s an index of 40 stocks with 460 hangers-on. Corrections are how these things happen.So I am feeling über cautious. There is nothing wrong with having cash in times like this - it means you can buy stuff.On the other hand, the year end rally is approaching - so maybe we should just stay long. As with bitcoin, the way to play the stock market since 2009 when the S&P500 reached 666 - it is ten times that today! - has been simply to hold on through. With so many conflicting messages, it’s hard to know what to do. Dolce Far Niente … Italian for HODL.With all that in mind, I want to just skim through some of my speculative positions and give you my latest opinion on them. we are going to look at Metals Exploration (MTL.L), Comstock (LODE.NYSE), Lightbridge (LTBR), Minera Alamos (MAI.V) and more. Time to sell? Time to buy more?Let’s see. A review of the speculative portfolioWe’ll start with Metals Exploration (MTL.L), my largest position.

Good Sunday to you,As your thought piece this week, we have my interview with Kitco News, talking gold, tax, deficits and more with Jeremy Szafron. I’ve ripped the audio so that those who listen to the podcast can hear it as well.These signed copies of Secret History of Gold have proved quite popular, so I have ordered another box. (They make good Christmas presents). If you would like one, please email me - frizzers at gmail.com. Note: they are cheaper via Amazon (via me I have to charge you postage) but you don’t get my signature or a message. Finally, ICYMI is this week’s commentary, in which we check in on the Dolce Far Niente portfolio.Until next time,Dominic I urge you to own gold or silver, especially if you live in the Third World Country such as the UK. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here. 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.comI’ve been writing so much about gold and silver lately, I need to cover something else.But my quick take: as seemed likely, gold and silver have gone into one of their corrective phases. This is likely to last several months, in the humble opinion of this writer. There’ll be false dawns, which catch everyone out, and false deaths too, with the overall trend being sideways.In the event of a broader stock market correction - which is long overdue given the scale of this rally since the Tariff Tantrum™ in the spring - gold and, especially, silver will sell off along with everything else. That doesn’t mean gold isn’t a safe haven. It just means there is a lot of hot money in gold, which quickly gets liquidated in a sell-off.But, yes, this incredible rally we have seen in the S&P500 since the Tariff Tantrum™ is looking exhausted and seems to be rolling over.Bitcoin is taking a hit too - although not as big a hit as the broader crypto space - and bitcoin is what I want to look at today.Here is one crypto trader’s desk, as pictured on Twitter during Tuesday’s sell-off.That’s what happens when you use too much leverage.What do they say about taking the emotion out of trading?Bitcoin - what gives?So many things have happened this year which have blown winds in bitcoin’s favour* A newly elected US administration which very pro crypto* A deliberately weaker dollar and the debasement trade* The launch of the bitcoin ETFs in the US increasing access to much larger flows of capital* Strength in tech stocks generally* A risk-on appetite* The halving cycleAnd moreYet bitcoin feels like it hasn’t quite delivered. A new high of ‘only’ $125,000.The latest narrative doing the rounds is this idea that the launch of the bitcoin ETFs is like bitcoin’s IPO. Just as when a big tech stock IPOs, a lot of early seed money takes the opportunity to exit, so are many early bitcoin investors - so-called OGs - now moving on. That would explain the many coins that have been moved from previously dormant wallets to exchanges over the last six months.Maybe.What can I say?You can either decide that bitcoin’s time is done. It’s game over. Move on.Or you can treat this like another of the numerous shake-outs that have taken bitcoin in the 16 years since its inception. The story was getting a bit tired. It needs a shake-out to ruffle a few feathers and purge.The moral of every previous correction can be summed up in 4 letters: HODL.It looks like we may have got a bit of a crypto winter to get through. If the winter reflects the previous summer, then this one shouldn’t be too bad. But consolidation phases can be frustrating, so the secret is to be quite zen about the whole thing and keep your eye on the bigger picture.Bitcoin bear markets can be painful, but the beauty of them is that, unlike mining bear markets which can go on for a decade or more, they tend to be short lived.Treat bear markets as opportunities. They’re a good time to build positions, build businesses and more. Go and watch some Michael Saylor videos and re-indoctrinate yourself.But on no account lose your position. Bull markets come along when you least expect them.Everything is looking a bit red at the moment - gold, silver, the S&P500, bitcoin. It might be the end of this cycle. but it’s not the end of the world.I don’t know when or where this bitcoin correction ends. My guess is around $90,000 but that’s nothing more than a guess. Perhaps we revisit $75,000 - which is the level we hit during the Tariff Tantrum™ earlier this year.But it’s just as possible that dip below $100k on Tuesday was a fake-out, and the bear market is already done.I thought this graphic was interesting.There is plenty more room for future buying as governments and corporations try to increase their positions.By the way I get that some readers like bitcoin and others don’t. That’s fine. Each to their own. However, if you are in the latter camp, you do not need to email me and tell me bitcoin is not real money/quantum computing is going to destroy it/it is an invention of the deep state/ it is a scam. Please also feel no need to regurgitate Peter Schiff tweets either. (I’m fairly sure he is paid to slag bitcoin off by the way).Turning now to the clusterfook that is the UKBuying bitcoin ETFs in the UK - t he hows, whats and whysIt’s semantics, but you can’t actually buy ETFs in the UK you have to buy ETNs. I’m not even going to bother trying to explain it. It’s regulatory bollocks and not worth wasting time or brain power over.October 8th, the date when the FCA decided UK citizens are allowed to buy bitcoin ETNs is now behind us, but the farce is not.I first found out about bitcoin in December 2010 when it was 22c. I was sent my first coins soon after. I wrote the first book on bitcoin from a recognised publisher in 2014. Yet this morning I just attempted to complete the FCA’s form to get me approved to buy a bitcoin ETN - so that I understand the risks - and I failed it. The “correct” answer to their questions is actually the wrong answer. Absolute farce of an organisation and accountable to no one, so it will continue.In the US, meanwhile, JP Morgan is in the process of enabling bitcoin to be used as mortgage collateral.It’s like being in Spain in 1492, the ship is setting sail to the New World and somebody from the FCA is standing on the gangplank with a clipboard stopping UK citizens from getting onboard.Amongst the plethora of moronic barriers which the FCA has laid down is that bitcoin carries the same risk as any other cryptocurrency - including the latest meme, scam or shitcoin. Bitcoin is not fartcoin, and categorising the two together reveals the scary depths of FCA ignorance.Meanwhile, from next year you won’t be able to buy bitcoin ETNs in your ISA, you will have to get a special ISA. They are trying to kill us with bureaucracy, I’m convinced of it.Which broker and which ETN?In terms of enabling their customers to invest, the UK brokers have ranged from excellent - Interactive Investor, which went live on day 1, as boss Richard Wilson proudly tells me - to totally useless - Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bellend.Hargreaves Lansdown, apparently trying to give the FCA a run for its brainless money, even put out the following statement.“Bitcoin is not an asset class, and we do not think cryptocurrency has characteristics that mean it should be included in portfolios for growth or income and shouldn’t be relied upon to help clients meet their financial goals … Unlike other alternative asset classes, it has no intrinsic value.”Talk about retarded.If you want to be able to invest in these things via your SIPP or ISA, move your account to Interactive Investor is my advice. Use this affiliate link and you get a year for free.I should stress buying bitcoin via a broker negates many of bitcoin’s uses. Yes, you get the store-of-value benefits, but you can’t send and receive it; you can’t use it to make payments or donations; you don’t have sovereignty - the fund manager does - and so there is considerable counter-party risk - the coins could be confiscated, the fund could go bust etc. You don’t have anonymity either.Still it’s better than no exposure at all.But which ETN should you go for? And what about the treasury companies? And, what indeed about Semler Scientific (SMLR)?

Good Sunday to you,I am headed to Birmingham and Huddersfield week after next. If you are in either neck of the woods, come and see the show.Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s goneJoni MitchellBack in the 1980s I remember the newly privatised British Telecom, in its wisdom, decided to get rid of Britain’s red telephone boxes and replace them with things made of glass or was it perspex? The originals were designed, I’ve since read, by one Giles Gilbert Scott, who got the gig as a result of a design competition. (I’ve since learned he also designed Battersea Power Station, so he was quality).British Telecom wanted a rebranding, so somebody at HQ decided to waste lord-knows-how-much money getting rid of however many phone boxes there were around the country - they’re cast iron so this was not an easy job, nor a cheap one - and replace them with something better, which inevitably turned out to be worse.Here’s the iconic before:Here’s what they replaced them with:I barely remember these. You probably don’t either. Because they were soon got rid of and replaced with these. Why did they bother?The glass replacements are just so bland you cannot not even describe them as ugly. They are just characterless nothings. Why people in corporations feel this need to glassify everything - it’s happened to buildings as well, of course - is beyond me. I guess they think it’s “dynamic”. (Indeed, they’ve done something similar to language).BT justified the rebranding by saying existing phone boxes got vandalised: prostitutes and mini cab drivers left their calling cards in them, people pissed in them. All of this is true, but there were other ways of dealing with these issues. (It’s not unlike the many invented problems being cited today to justify hoisting digital ID on us). The bottom line is that the powers that be wanted a rebrand. Good for their egos, I guess. And thanks to the privatisation they now had bucket loads of capital to spend on it.Whatever. They spent a shedload and made it worse. So there I was walking along Parliament Square the other day and what did I see but a this huge queue of tourists lining up to have their photo taken by a phone box. Not one of the glass ones obviously. And I mean huge queue. See for yourself.I would say there are 40 or more people in that queue. If they each take 45 seconds for their photo, that’s a good 30-minute wait.The rest of the world loves the English for who we are. For our history, our culture, our style, our character, our charm, our order, our beauty. That’s why so many tourists flock here. Why are we incapable of appreciating ourselves and loving what we have created? - instead choosing to self-hate and apologise for what we have done.The rest of the world wants the England of red phone boxes, afternoon tea, good manners and Downton Abbey. They don’t want England for its diversity (diversity is not London’s greatest strength, despite what they mayor may tell you - London’s greatest strength is that it is the capital of England, not Diversityland), nor for its gender-neutral toilets, glass fronted buildings, low trust communities or its street crime. They want England for the English.So the point of today’s missive.A few years ago somebody got the no-doubt-very-well-paid gig erecting cycle sheds around the capital. Here was an opportunity to design something iconic, something which added to London - like the old red buses, black taxis, post boxes and, yes, the phone boxes. Things that characterise London, and thus things that people love London for. Here’s what we got. They even put a picture of a bicycle on the side, just in case you’re totally moronic.Talk about a wasted opportunity.They look like budget Anderson shelters.And what’s the shelf life of one of those. Ten years, maybe?Can you see tourists seventy or eighty years from now queuing up for half an hour to get their photo taken next to one?Oh well.If you enjoyed reading this, please share it far and wide.Lots of things to share with you this week* Here ICYMI is this week’s commentary:* Here is a piece from my comedy Substack about Prunella Scales, who died on Monday. It also contains an episode of a 1975 sitcom you’ve probably never heard of but in which she was absolutely brilliant. I urge you to watch it - you will thank me.* I made an appearance on Jeremy McKeown’s new podcast, along with Tim Price, to talk gold.If you live in a Third World country, such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.* And, finally, on Friday morning at 07.34 GMT, I became a grandad. Please welcome Cecilia (name not yet confirmed) to the group.As we are headed into Christmas present season, if you are unable to follow the tradition of the Wise Men and gift actual gold, how about a book about gold instead?I deal for anyone at home or at work. The Secret History of Gold - Money, Myth, Politics and Power is available at all good bookstoresUntil next time,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

You probably saw my post from ten days ago in which I argued that the vast numbers of people queuing up outside bullion stores in Singapore and Sydney to buy gold and silver were not a good sign.As it turns out, they were not. Gold and silver have put in a top - an interim, mid-cycle top, in my view, not the top - and we can now expect many months of sideways, shake-out, frustrating consolidation to generally piss everyone off. It’s important, in such times, to keep your eye on the bigger picture, which in this case is the inevitable debasement of currency, so as not to lose your position.You’ll know, I’m sure, the story of Joe Kennedy’s shoe shine boy. In 1929, so the story goes, the boy who was polishing the celebrated investor’s shoes started giving him stock tips. If the shoe shine boy has bought in, thought Joe Kennedy Snr, who else is left to buy? That persuaded him that the top was close and he famously sold just before the crash.That story is often cited to illustrate the idea that retail investors are sheep. They’re stupid. You should do the opposite to what retail is doing and so on.I don’t think it’s anything like that simple.There are some retail investors who are stupid. There are plenty who are rookies and naive. But there are plenty who are thoughtful, wise and, as a result, very good investors. By the same token, I have met many fund managers, analysts and more from respected institutions who are thick as pigshite. (I have met plenty of geniuses too). Give me the choice between some blogger and an institutional research report, you’ll often get far more insight from the former. I frequently read bulletin boards, or chats on Twitter, as part of my research into a company.It wasn’t institutions who got into bitcoin early, it was retail. Even now many institutions shun it, particularly in bureaucratic banana republics such as the UK. Who were the smart guys? The people that bought earliest. Retail.Obviously, if you start getting investment tips from a shoe shine boy/taxi driver/barber (my Albanian barber is forever shilling me shitcoins) or your nan’s carer’s mate, that is usually a bad sign, but it doesn’t mean that ordinary folk are stupid.With the above in mind, I stumbled across this video from another legend of American investing, Jim Simons. At the time of his death in 2024, the hedge fund manager’s net worth was north of $30 billion, making him the 55th-richest person in the world.He describes January 21, 1980, when, at the afternoon fix, gold went to $850 /oz - a blow-off top that would not be seen again for almost 30 years.I write about that 1980 blow-off top, by the way, and how it was “illusory” in the Secret History of Gold (BTW the audiobook is getting barnstorming reviews).The point I draw from the Simons talk is that retail was selling gold. People were not buying, they were selling.In other words, retail nailed the top of the market. My mum remembers the gold fever - and indeed the silver fever (silver spiked to $50 three days earlier on January 18). Even today, 45 years on, the silver price is lower than it was then - that’s how insane that spike was.She recalls people queuing up to sell their family silver. Not to buy it. To sell it.So that is something I am looking for to tell than this bull market is close to an end: when retail, ordinary people, start selling their physical in droves. We are not there yet.Even towards the end of the last bull market which peaked in 2011, everywhere you went, there were signs saying, “We buy any gold”. Retail was selling.Comedian Gary Delaney and I even wrote a sketch in which a wizard (Gandalf) pulls a ring from the fire, reads the inscription, hands it to a hobbit (Frodo), who nods thoughtfully and says something along the lines of, “I understand what I must do.” We then cut to him going into a shop with a sign outside that says, “We buy any gold.”I still think that sketch is funny, but of course TV didn’t want it. Wrong age, wrong sex, wrong colour - never mind wrong views.If you enjoyed today’s article, please tell a friend..Until next time,DominicIf you live in a Third World country, such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here. 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