The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

Good Sunday to you,Before we go to today’s piece, let me flag this week’s commentary - on the action in the gold and silver markets, in case you missed it. A blip or the start of something more significant?So to the osteopath who isn’t an osteopathI first met Michelle Davies at a James Delingpole event. She was buying one of my books and wanted to pay in bitcoin, which got her an immediate gold star. She mentioned quite matter-of-factly that she was an osteopath who had been struck off and, “would I like some treatment?”.As a man with many ailments accumulated over the decades, a large portion of which I have given up trying to heal, I couldn’t see much downside to the offer. She might even be able to cure one of the incurables. “Why not?”, I thought.A few days later, in a studio near Worcester, she placed her hands behind my head, went still for a moment, announced that my energy channels were “terrible - blocked, nought out of ten,” manipulated my neck and head for a bit, muttered to herself, sighed, told me off for swearing, got me to speak into a microphone, and then began “sending me frequencies.” I left feeling oddly lighter.So I went back.“I’m trying to have a lucid dream,” I told her. “But I’m not making much progress.”I explained the difference between a vivid dream, which is what it says on the tin, and a lucid dream, which is a dream in which you know you are having a dream, while you have the dream. Keener readers will remember to “get better at lucid dreaming” was one of my ambitions for 2025.“Oh,” she said. “I might be able to help with that.” And she went to work on my channels again.That night, I had nine dreams. Nine. Normally I’d be lucky to remember one or two. None were fully lucid, but still - progress.I went back again. “Can you help me with my ankle?” I’ve got flat feet and my ankles are very stiff as a result. I’ve broken my right ankle five times.She held it, paused, and began to cry. “There’s so much pain here,” she said. “I can’t fix it completely,” she declared, “but I can make it much better”.My ankles are one of the many banes of my life. I still play football, but I am incapable of “putting my laces through it” - that is shooting with my instep. I’ve not been able to shoot properly since I was in my early 20s. It hurts so much - my foot involuntarily winces moments before I strike, so my whole game is little passes with the inside of my foot. It’s limiting. I might get one goal in a game of six-a-side, maybe two if I’m lucky. Usually I don’t score.“When are you playing next?” she asked.“Tomorrow.”“I’ll broadcast to you,” she said.The following night I scored six goals. SIX.“Have you been having shooting lessons?” one of the other players asked, both miffed and baffled.“What is your biggest goal in life? Michelle asked at another session.“To get Kisses on a Postcard made,” I said.I explained what it is. We came up with a mantra, which I recorded and she layered with one of her frequencies. I began playing it each morning while doing the gentle stretches, which she told me to do, in bed. Three weeks later, I closed the seed funding round I had up to then been struggling with - oversubscribed, no less. All coincidence, I’m sure. But Kisses on a Postcard is finally moving forward.Osteopath No MoreMichelle Davies was a local osteopath in Worcester who had been practising for 25 years. Among the many things she found she was good at treating were sinusitis, asthma, anxiety, depression, baby colic & reflux, sleep issues and infections. The patient testimonials on her website confirmed as much.However, in 2016 the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC) got in touch. In case you are not familiar, GOsC is osteopathy’s contribution to The Blob, the army of unaccountable regulators which runs, if that’s the right word, Britain, answerable to no man. (If you think the government is in charge, you’re deluded).In the great British tradition of unelected bureaucrat, GOsC has discovered the elixir of Blob: a toxic mix of arrogance, incompetence, paperwork and regulatory overreach, which will satisfactorily obstruct any attempt at progress. GOsC explained to Michelle that osteopathy can only cure 12 things, and these do not include the items which Michelle had found she could treat. Unless she removed the 75 patient testimonials, she would face a Fitness to Practise case. She did as she was told and removed the lot.“But I can and have treated these things,” she thought. “I’ve got 75 testimonials to prove it”.So, in 2021, she brought a claim against GOsC for damages, arguing that their actions had limited her professional scope and censored the public’s voice. GOsC questioned her fitness to practise, demanded a psychiatric assessment and access to her medical notes. She refused and was struck off. She could no longer call herself an osteopath. In fact, she eventually got a criminal record for, checks notes, “impersonating an osteopath”. (Read her google reviews, if you want the patients’ side of this)BTW I know nothing of GOsC and I haven’t researched their side of the story, nor do I care to. They’re regulators, so my default position is biased against, and unless they can demonstrably prove they warrant a better opinion, that will remain my position. So Michelle began marketing herself as the osteopath who was stuck off. Three years on she has a practice in Harley Street, charging several times her old rate.Note to any osteopaths reading this: get yourself struck off. It’s great for business.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.A Healing WeekI later discovered she also offers “healing weeks.” She comes to stay with you and your family for seven days and treats everyone daily. I thought we could all use a tune-up, and to my surprise when I proposed the idea, the Frisby household agreed: my eldest son (24), his heavily pregnant girlfriend (23), and my eldest daughter who lives nearby (22).Each of us had 60–90 minutes of treatment every day - osteopathic manipulation, cranial work, red and blue light therapy, terahertz wand, frequencies, castor oil packs, and more.My pregnant daughter-in-law was having problems with acid reflux and carpal tunnel numbness. Michelle got rid of the former in one session, the latter took a couple. My son’s hips and ankles loosened up, and he started sleeping better. My daughter’s pelvis, inflamed from a childhood incident involving a pillowcase and a staircase (news to me), finally began to settle, and she has reported improvements to her PCOS. I also sent Goat, my bassist and who makes many of my videos, for some treatment (in exchange for filming the video below). He’s had a heavy stammer all his life, After three sessions, you can actually have a normal conversation with him. Meanwhile, I have become an even more astounding human being. We’re all still flawed humans, but by the end of the week everyone felt lighter, happier, and healthier, and the house had a different atmosphere.Maybe I’m a sucker. Maybe it’s all placebo. Does it matter? I narrated a documentary once about the placebo effect: it is real. If it works, that’s all that counts, surely.Imagine a regulator approving placebo treatment …If you fancy a healing week with Michelle, find out more at www.healingwithmichelledavies.com. Just don’t tell the GOsC I sent you. And if you live abroad, don’t worry: one of the reasons she has started offering these weeks is that she wants to travel more. I gather she has just been booked to go to Singapore.Here’s the vid: If you enjoyed this, please tell a friend.Full disclosure: Michelle gave me a discount in exchange for helping her with above vid and for a review. I insisted the review be impartial, which it was, though if my experience had been negative, I probably wouldn’t have published it.Until next time,DominicPS Here, again, is this week’s commentary. 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.comWe worried it would come, and now it has.The dreaded correction.Silver and gold have been clobbered, hit for something like 6 and 9% from their highs at one point. The miners have been hit for more. GDX is down 15% from its Friday highs.This is quite the slap down, the biggest I can remember for years.What can I say? It was coming.How cruel a mistress is silver! She did exactly what she needed to do to suck everyone in, even the doubters like myself: went through $50 to $54, persuaded everyone that this time it’s different, sucked them in and then slapped them down. Oh, silver!Today we consider what to do next, and we’ll start with the big picture.There are several possible scenarios. Here are three of them:* That’s it. The bull market’s over. Silver reached $50, as it did it 1980 and 2011. Now it corrects, and it’ll be another decade or more before it gets there again. Batten down the hatches: we are going into another bear market. What we saw in the miners was just a 9-month relief rally, much as we got in 2016. Normal gold mining behaviour - relentless declines, in other words - will soon resume.* You don’t understand, gold is being remonetized. This is a new paradigm. Buy the dips. We’ll be back at new highs before you know.* Nothing goes up in a straight line, not even gold when it is re-entering the money system. Bull markets shake you off. We are going into a sideways correction that is going to last as long as a year. Possibly longer. It is going to frustrate everyone, bull and bear alike. The weak, hot money needs to be purged, the system cleansed of excess, before this thing can get going again. It’s a mid-cycle shake out.Which of these is it?And, most importantly of all, what do we do now?I’m going to give you my opinions on gold, silver, the miners, and the speculative positions in which we own stock.I’m also going to give you some target prices.This is what I think happens next.

Two items on the agenda today.First, my interview with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster for Triggernometry has been released. Here it is on YouTube, Spotify and Apple PodcastsSecond, using a different methodology to that which I used in Secret History of Gold (have you read it yet?), I am going to estimate China’s gold reserves.I was planning to take a look at top silver pick, Sierra Madre Gold and Silver (TSX-V:SM) today, after my meeting with CEO Alex Langer last week, but I will leave that till tomorrow now, meaning you get an extra piece this week you lucky things.China’s Hidden Gold Empire: How Much Does Beijing Really Hold?I regard this as one of the most important subjects in geo-politics, which is why I repeatedly come back to it.It doesn’t matter if you issue the global reserve currency, if you don’t make anything you are in the doo-doo, and this is something the Trump administration is attempting to address with tariffs, a weaker dollar and, more subtly, the managed decline of the US dollar as global reserve currency. It’s all part of Triffin’s Dilemma. As a result, neutral gold’s role as global reserve asset is re-surging.History’s “golden” rule will soon apply again: he who has the gold makes the rules. (If you are interested in the origins of the phrase by the way, it’s all here).This different methodology only came to me overnight, and I don’t know what the conclusion will be yet, though I suspect it will arrive at a figure which is more conservative than what I have argued previously. Here we go.Here, for context, are world central bank holdings, as officially stated.My argument has long been that China has considerably more than the 2,300 tonnes it says it does.The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), by the way, is the main custodian, but other state entities, such as China Investment Corporation (the sovereign wealth fund), State Administration of Foreign Exchange and the army also own gold.Remember China is the world’s largest importer of gold, the largest consumer and the largest producer. it’s been that since 2007 when it overtook South Africa.I am going to use round numbers, as they are more digestible, and when there is a spread - eg 500-1,000 tonnes, take the middle number, ie 750 tonnes.It is impossible to know just how much gold China has imported, because so many transactions are private, particularly those which go through London, Switzerland or Dubai. The Hong Kong gold is better disclosed.However, most - though not all - of the gold which goes to China goes through the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE). SGE withdrawals from 2007 to mid 2025 total 29,500-30,000 tonnes, based on aggregated data from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) and World Gold Council (WGC) reports.However, the SGE is just a flow metric. It does not represent total consumption. Some of that gold which passes through will have been double counted, either as a result of re-selling and re-cycling, or because of China’s booming money-laundering business and the circular trade with Hong Kong. Estimates for double-counting range from 10% (World Gold Council) to 30% (analyst Koos Jansen). Let’s take the middle 20% figure - 6,000 tonnes - and that leaves us with 23,250 tonnes of SGE gold.Undisclosed goldThe PBOC likes 400oz bars, as traded in London, and these do not trade on the SGE, which uses smaller kilo bars, 3kg or 12.5kg bars. 400oz is about 12.4kg by the way. So a lot of those London imports will not go through the SGE, and so are in addition to the numbers above.Analysts mostly concur that, while reported imports via London, Switzerland and Dubai total 3,500-4,500 tonnes, another 2,000-3,000 tonnes (mostly post-2009, accelerating since 2022) have gone unreported.2,500 tonnes is the middle figure, then. Add that to the 23,250 tonnes of SGE and our total is now 25,750 tonnes.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.Chinese gold productionAround 55% of Chinese gold production is state owned, and this century China has mined roughly 7,500 tonnes.70-80% of Chinese production is sold through the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) - so we have already counted that - the other 20-30% goes to the state.Using estimates from the mid-range. 25% of those 7,500 tonnes, therefore - 1,875 tonnes - has gone to the state. The rest has been sold through the SGE.Add 1,875 tonnes to the total and we are at 27,625 tonnes.By the way, I have not included overseas Chinese gold production, of which there is a lot. Some of this product is sold on international markets and never actually reaches China. But what does reach China gets sold through the SGE and so has already been counted.Finally, we have to add in gold held in China, whether as bullion or jewellery, prior to 2000. The World Gold Council estimates a figure of 2,500 tonnes in privately-held jewellery. Added to domestic mining and official reserves, you get a figure of around 4,000 tonnes.This brings our grand total to 31,625 tonnes of gold in China.Putting it all togetherPreviously, I have argued that 50% of that gold would go to the state. That would mean roughly 16,000 tonnes. Almost twice as much as the US’s reported 8,100 tonnes! When audit?My thinking has changed.Let me propose another methodology. And this has come as a result of my conversation with Konstantin (see above).Annual gold demand last year was roughly:* Jewellery 47%* Investment 25%* Central Bank 23%* Industry 6%This obviously varies from year to year, with investment and central bank demand being the big variables. But if we assume Chinese demand roughly matches global demand (this is an easy argument to challenge), that would mean that of the 31,625 tonnes:* 14,864 is now jewellery* 7,910 is now bullion held by investors* 1,900 tonnes went into manufacturingAnd, drum roll for the Big KahunaThe Chinese government has 7,294 tonnes.Obviously, it’s easy to make the case that since China is such a big manufacturer, Chinese industrial demand is likely to be higher than 6%. It’s also easy to make the case that, because the Chinese like gold so much, and the state has been encouraging them to invest since 2007, that both Chinese jewellery and investment demand is higher than 47% and 25% respectively.It’s also easy to make the case that, because of de-dollarisation, PBOC demand is higher than 23%.In any case, I have been transparent about my methodology. You can make up your own minds. You’re all grown ups.Maybe my 20% estimate for SGE double counting is too low, for example.Regardless, China’s stated reserves of 2,300 tonnes are laughingly lowball.In a funny kind of way, it’s actually better for investors if China has less gold - because it means they have more buying to do and that should help drive prices higher.Its stated 2,300 tonnes only account for 7% of its US$3.4 trillion reserves. To get above 70% and match the US, Germany, France and Italy, at $4,200/oz gold, it would need something like 18,000 tonnes. That’s a lot of buying yet to come.Why does China understate its reserves? Softly, softly catchee monkey, and all that: we must not shine too brightly. It doesn’t want to rock the boat, particularly while it’s still accumulating.This is where we are going, folks.You want to own gold. 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.comThis might mark the top of the market, folks.The BBC just invited me on to talk about the gold price.Though it was the World Service, not BBC 1, so maybe this is just an interim top.Here’s the interview, in case you want to listen:Another danger sign. Jim Cramer, the world’s greatest contrarian indicator, to everyone’s surprise, is all of a sudden a “confirmed gold bug.”Gold is at $4,000. Silver is at $49.Many of the miners are spiking. Capital, so hard to come by for a mining company barely six months ago, is now being thrown at them. And it’s being taken. Who is going to buy all this paper in four months’ time when it comes free trading?‘The whole population are going crazy . . . Old as well as young are daily falling victim to the gold fever.’That was an old man in 1849 talking, quoted in the Secret History of Gold. It could just as well be now.By the way, folks, with gold at record highs, The Secret History of Gold should surely should be the next book you read.I must confess, folks. I am torn.There is just too much hot money sloshing about. Everyone’s talking gold. That is usually time to take cover.Then again, this market has the potential to go a lot higher. There is a very real chance both the silver and gold price could double before this is over. What that would do to the mining companies …Today we offer eight reasons this market could go a lot higher.And, in the interests of balance, we offer five reasons it is peaking right here, right now.We will start with eight reasons it is going higher.1. Institutional Money Is Still on the SidelinesThe investment world is under-allocated to gold. In the last bull market we reached 8% allocation. Today we are only at 2%.Even gold ETF holdings themselves are below 2021 levels.We are even more under-allocated to miners.2 The 60/20/20 Revolution: Gold Gets Equal Billing with BondsTraditional portfolio allocation Is m hanging. It used to be 60:40 equities to bonds. But, with the generational secular bull market in government bonds now over, Morgan Stanley’s Chief Investment Officer, Mike Wilson is advocating instead for a 60/20/20 mix. Where one leads, others follow. Gold would have equal status to bonds, as it should. Funds the world over 20% allocated to gold! This one is potentially huge.3 Bull Markets Last a Decade -We’re Only a Few Years In1971 to 1980, 2001 to 2011. When did this one start? Late 2018? Late 2022? We might only be three years into this one.Higher prices beget higher prices.4 The Debt Monster Has Barely Woken UpThis debt crisis has barely got going. Further fiat debasement is inevitable. Your pound, euro or dollar is going to buy you a lot less 10 years from now. That is INEVITABLE. It’s inherent to the system.You don’t want to be storing your capital in fiat.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.That’s four strong reasons already - and we have another four to go. Followed by five warning signs we could be at the top right now. 5 Central Banks Are Re-M onetising Gold (unoffically)

Good Sunday to you,With bitcoin breaking out to record highs overnight, what a good morning it is indeed.Below is this week’s commentary in case you missed it. Gold keeps on going up. So does silver. So do miners. When does the party end?On the subject of which here are the results of my twitter poll, which make for interesting reading. General consensus is, as I argued, that gold is in innings 6 of 9.But silver is only in innings one, apparently, even if breathing down the neck of $50. Gotta to love those silver bulls!Mining too is early. \We shall see.For you consideration today, I thought I would share this podcast I recorded with Aussie Josh Szeps earlier in the week, talking about everything, really.Enjoy!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.Until next time,DominicPS Secret History of Gold is going great guns. If you haven’t got your copy, here are links to get it on Amazon and Waterstones and all good bookshops. I hear the audiobook, read by me, is excellent.Amazon is currently offering 20% off.It might be, as Merryn Somerset webb says, “the best timed book" ever. 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.comNB I have further thoughts on the Semler Scientific deal (NASDAQ:SMLR) which you can read at the end of today’s piece.It’s hard, nigh impossible to call the top in a bull market.If you can get out within 10% of the top, you have done very well. Most don’t.We have been waiting a long time, but we are in a bull market now: not just for gold, but for silver, platinum and the companies that mine these precious metals.It feels very frothy.But is this just a rush before an interim top early in a secular bull market?Or are we nearing the top?Where are we in the cycle now? Which innings of nine, to use the baseball analogy?The other day I suggested we were in innings six - for gold at least. I got a lot of stick for saying that, which probably means I’m right.But I put some polls up on my various WhatsApp chats and the general consensus was 6 for the metal, 3 for the miners.I also have this poll running on X, so you can see current consensus. It’s far from conclusive.It’s important to remember that a bull market in gold and a bull market in gold mining companies are not one and the same. Of course, there is a lot of crossover between the two, but it is possible to have one without the other.From 2022 to 2024, for example, as gold climbed, mining stocks were largely flat or falling. The reverse can also happen. Gold can be going nowhere, while mining stocks can rise. In fact, this is not uncommon, because when gold is flat and volatility disappears, investors get a clearer idea of what the price of the final product is going to be, what the profitability of a mine will be, and that security can enable investment to flow.As you know I have a target of $7,000 gold by the end of this decade, maybe even $10,000 if we get a proper blow-off top.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.We’re closing in now on $4,000. But just because I have a target of $7,000 gold doesn’t mean we will get there. Anything but.Another target I’m looking for is for central banks around the world to hold roughly 40% of their reserves in gold. We’re currently just above 25%. We were at 20% barely a year ago. A combination of higher gold prices and increased reserves through accumulation will mean we get to 40% pretty quickly.Central banks’ total gold holdings are currently 36,000 tonnes, according to the ECB. For some context, all the gold that has ever been mined - and of course still exists - amounts to 216,000 tonnes. 36,000 tonnes is quite the share.Central banks are currently accumulating at a rate of 1,000 tonnes per year, says Reuters, which has been the case since 2022 and the freezing of Russian US dollar assets. Annual gold supply is 3,600 tonnes or thereabouts. Given that half of that is taken up with jewellery, that doesn’t leave a lot left over for everyone else (only about 800 tonnes - hence this bull market).Central bank holdings have already overtaken US debt, as you can see from the chart above, and the euro. Next stop is to exceed their US dollar holdings (currently 48%). We’ll get there soon enough, as they accumulate gold, the gold price rises and the relative value of the US dollar holdings recedes.$7,000 gold would take us there near enough.Another target is a Dow-to-gold ratio well below 10, perhaps at 5 where it reached in 2011. (Some have a target below 2 for this one, as we saw in 1929 and 1980, which would mean a gold price in the tens of thousands. Unlikely, I would have thought, but not impossible: it has happened before).With the Dow currently at 46,400, and gold at $3,900 we are currently at 12.Note that the gold to oil ratio has never been this low ever, barring the insanity of Covid when oil went negative. Does that make oil a buy and gold a sell? Probably.This is a key reason mining companies are starting to do so well. Energy is their biggest input cost. Gold is their output. If they can’t make money now, they won’t ever make money.I have lived through a long and painful bear market for mining. It began in 2011. It’s been over a decade, with brief respites in 2016 and 2020, almost relentlessly down. It’s made me extremely cynical. Maybe I’ve got too much recency bias.But the HUI, the index of unhedged gold producers, is butting up against its old 2011 highs, rather like silver, which we will come to in a moment. I know this chart is not adjusted for inflation, but even so it is a concern. Then again, if it goes through, there is no overhead resistance. It would be a proper, mega breakout.Either way, these last few months have been nuts.I remain of the view that for gold, the metal, as I said the other day, we’re in innings six. Mining I’m not so sure.I stole these pictures from Winston Miles of Stifel Wealth Management. They were taken at the Denver Gold Show a few weeks ago. The place is dead. That is not end-of-a-bull-market behaviour“There were hardly any new generalist investors” he says. “Zero retail, everyone was a specialist, and occupancy at the main stage was literally 10% full for most of the presentations.”Then again the Munich gold show - Edelmetallmesse, which ran from 2006 but ended in 2019 with the bear market effectively putting it out of business - is reopening this year and something like 120 mining companies have signed up to attend. That’s quite the reversal.It’s because mining companies are finding investment again. That means they’re issuing paper. Will there be buyers for it?Capital is flowing. Share prices are multiplying in some cases. Animal spirits are high.So many contradictions and mixed signals. Such is the bull market wall of worry. What to do? What to do?

Good Sunday to you,I have a short announcement today, one I’m very excited about, as this week’s thought piece.Please feel free to comment, share, or get in touch if it sparks your interest.Thank you for being a subscriber to the Flying Frisby.Until next time,DominicHere, ICYMI, is the week’s commentary: 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.comBefore we begin today’s piece, let me flag this video I made based on my recent article about Triffin’s Dilemma. 13 mins long and hopefully worth the effort. Might be the most important thing you watch this week.With all the narratives that come with a gold bull market - and also a bitcoin bull market - that we're heading to some kind of money reset, the dollar or the pound is going to collapse, we are going to end up on a gold or bitcoin standard and so on - you have an end goal. The bull market will continue until we reach that eventuality.However, I doubt very much we go back to a gold standard. Yes, gold's role as reserve asset increases, ditto bitcoin, but I don't see a return to the gold standards of the 19th or 20th century. Much more likely is a Hayekian world of competing currencies.The 20th century gold standards were bogus anyway - which is why they failed. There was no gold in circulation. Americans weren't allowed to own it. When Britain returned to a gold standard in 1925, the British government ensured there was little gold actually circulating. It minted zero gold coins, while the Bank of England hoarded what it already had. ( It's all in the book, if you're interested).The Secret History of Gold is available to at Amazon, Waterstones and all good bookshops. I hear the audiobook, read by me, is excellent. Amazon is currently offering 20% off.There was plenty of gold in circulation under the gold standards of the 19th century, but we are not going back to them because we barely use physical cash any more. We are not going to pay for physical things with gold or silver coins in the way we once did.It might be that China gives the yuan some gold backing, and makes its (digital) notes interchangeable with gold, but I find that unlikely. It might also be that gold backing is used to make US Treasuries more attractive, as economist Judy Shelton, former advisor to Donald Trump, has proposed.Again, though possible, I would give it a low probability.The gold bull markets of the 1970s and 2000s did not end with gold standards. I doubt this one will. A gold standard is a political ideal. Real life is a lot more mucky.Unlike gold, gold bull markets do not last forever, any more than tech or any other kind of bull markets do.And this bull market is getting hot. That's for sure. Gold is at $3,700/oz. While the mainstream press are not really covering it, there has been a definite change in tone online. Silver is starting to lead. Gold miners are starting to deliver.Towards the end of previous gold bull markets, I usually get invited on to the BBC to talk about gold. Massive name drop, I was actually fraternising with BBC Director General, Tim Davie, this week - enough to get a selfie at least - but I am currently so far from being invited on to the BBC, whether for my satirical songs or for my market commentary - even with a new book on gold just out - that I believe we are a way from that.(In another age, I would have been a fixture on BBC radio. I have got the voice. I have got the intellect. But obviously, wrong age, wrong sex, wrong colour and all of that. Wrong views too).Anyway, back to more important matters.Things got hot and spicy with gold in the spring, as we warned, not unlike now. But we didn't feel it was the top. We just needed to go sideways for a few months, which we have.With physical gold, especially if you live in a Third World country like the UK, there is a strong argument never to sell. Even during gold's bear market (2011-2020), gold was a brilliant hedge against woeful sterling.If you buying gold or silver to protect yourself in these “interesting times” - and I urge you to - as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.You could just hold your gold and then pass it on to your heirs. Bitcoin's the same. But then again you might want the money for something else.In the 1970s gold went from $35/oz (an artificially low price due to US suppression) all the way to $850/oz.But that $850 mark was just as much an illusory price. Though it has been logged in people's minds for decades ever since, the reality is it reached that price during one spike on one afternoon. The Cold War was looking grim: the Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan a month before. The Iranian hostage crisis was making everyone panic (the hostages were released the day before the spike). It was the day after US President Ronald Reagan had been inaugurated. Nobody yet knew what a success he was going to be. There was an ongoing and severe crisis in the US bond markets, which had sent interest rates above 10%.In other words, there was a lot going on. And yet gold only hit $850 for an afternoon. Hardly anyone sold the top of that spike.The launch to $850 gold began in December 1979 with that Soviet invasion. Gold broke above $450. The day after the spike, gold collapsed like a stone. By March it was below $500.Gold then did something you commonly see at the end of bull markets. The Nasdaq did something similar in 2000. Silver did it in 2011. It rallied. That rally persuaded people the bull market was still on. It was a suckers’ rally.But the retest did not even make it back to the old high. It was a lower high, in other words.Then the relentless declines kicked in. By 1982 - 18 months later - gold was at $300/oz. It then spent the next 20 years - 20 years! - trading between $300 and $400, before eventually hitting a low in 1999 at $250/oz, when Gordon Brown sold. Idiot.My point is that in 1980 it looked to some like a return to gold standards was coming. The US had only abandoned gold 9 years earlier - and, in President Nixon's words, temporarily. Gold was still normal in people's minds. But the gold standard never came and gold was a rotten investment for 20 years.2011, by the way, was not of 1980 standards but the price still shot from $1,500 to $1,920 in a couple of months with the Greek debt crisis. There followed another gruesome bear market which saw gold go all the way back to $1,050.There is so much anti-dollar sentiment out there now, it might be that everything turns on its head - as things are wont to do - and we get a dollar rally.I recognise that things are looking frothy. Anytime silver starts doing well, that is usually a warning sign.A lot of American commentators like to use the baseball analogy. I would suggest maybe we are in inning six of nine. Something like that, possibly.So when to sell?

I'm not an Angela Rayner fan. Not for a second. I think she is a button-pushing hypocrite who is the living embodiment of the socialists George Orwell described in Animal Farm. But I also rather suspect she is not nearly as monstrous as she is depicted by those on the other side of the political argument. I also don't think we have seen the last of her and she'll be back again within 18 months.However, I do not buy this narrative that she took bad advice. She's no different to the rest of us. She doesn't like paying tax. She wants to minimize what she has to pay.I've taken advice many times on all matter of subjects. We all have. Often I've been given advice I didn't want to hear - and as a result I've chosen to ignore it. Instead, I've listened to the advice that was what I wanted to hear, even if it was bad.Trying to fob this off on bad advice is both disingenuous and a deferral of responsibility.We all know what is or isn't going to be our main home. It's only when confronted with the option of paying £70,000 or £30,000 that we start mentally to fudge things and get into grey areas and legal niceties.Of course, she knew she had to pay the full £70,000. But like anyone faced with an OTT £70 grand tax bill, she's thinking "Shoot, that's a lot of money. I don't want to pay that." I don't blame her for thinking that. The reason most people in this country who would otherwise be moving are not is that same cost of Stamp Duty.It's patently an awful tax. It punishes people for moving, and so creates immobility. It gums up the housing market. It gets in the way of all the knock-on economic activity that stems from people moving. It taxes transactions not wealth: two people with identical houses pay totally different amounts of tax depending purely on whether they've just moved. It hurts the young and mobile most. It disincentivises downsizing. And on and on and on.Now this "house tax" has undone, of all people, the Housing Minister. Surely that in itself should tell the powers that be that it needs doing away with, as, more generally, the complexities of almost all UK taxes. But there is no chance of that happening, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves and those who advise her will go on wondering why they can't get Britain's economy moving.If you are buying gold or silver to protect yourself in these “interesting times” - and I urge you to the way things are going - my recommended bullion dealer 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.I used to go out with a tax lawyer once upon a time and she would always say, “Don’t try and evade taxes. It’s not worth the agro”. Here we have a case in point. Now Rayner not only has to pay the full amount, plus fines, she has lost her job and a large chunk of the income by which she would pay it with the result that, not only has trying to dodge forty grand cost her her career, she might lose her new flat to it as well. And - do you know what? - given the way the housing market is going, because, in part, of Stamp Duty, I bet she won't find a buyer who'll pay the £800 grand she paid for it.After all the times she has called out others for not paying taxes, and nastily, there is a lot of karma here. Whatever. The more important message is that for umpteen reasons Stamp Duty needs abolishing.Until next time,DominicPS If you missed my midweek commentary here it is:PPS And if you haven’t yet bought my book, WTF?!The Secret History of Gold is available to at Amazon, Waterstones and all good bookshops. I hear the audiobook, read by me, is excellent.Amazon is currently offering 20% off.It had a great review in Moneyweek this week from Dr Matthew Partridge - “this book is destined to become a classic that should be at the top of your reading list.” You can read that review 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

The Secret History of Gold comes out this week. Here for your viewing pleasure is a fim about gold based on the first chapter.“Gold will be slave or master”HoraceIn 2021, a metal detectorist with the eyebrow-raising name of Ole Ginnerup Schytz dug up a hoard of Viking gold in a field in Denmark. The gold was just as it was when it was buried 1,500 years before, if a little dirtier. The same goes for the jewellery unearthed at the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria in 1972. The beads, bracelets, rings and necklaces are as good as when they were buried 6,700 years ago.In the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, there is a golden tooth bridge — a gold wire used to bind teeth and dental implants — made over 4,000 years ago. It could go in your mouth today.No other substance is as long-lasting as gold — not diamonds, not tungsten carbide, not boron nitride. Gold does not corrode; it does not tarnish or decay; it does not break down over time. This sets it apart from every other substance. Iron rusts, wood rots, silver tarnishes. Gold never changes. Left alone, it stays itself. And it never loses its shine — how about that?Despite its permanence, you can shape this enormously ductile metal into pretty much anything. An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long or plate a copper wire 1,000 miles long. It can be beaten into a leaf just one atom thick. Yet there is one thing you cannot do and that is destroy it. Life may be temporary, but gold is permanent. It really is forever.This means that all the gold that has ever been mined, estimated to be 216,000 tonnes, still exists somewhere. Put together it would fit into a cube with 22-metre sides. Visualise a square building seven storeys high — and that would be all the gold ever.With some effort, you can dissolve gold in certain chemical solutions, alloy it with other metals, or even vaporise it. But the gold will always be there. It is theoretically possible to destroy gold through nuclear reactions and other such extreme methods, but in practical terms, gold is indestructible. It is the closest thing we have on earth to immortality.Perhaps that is why almost every ancient culture we know of associated gold with the eternal. The Egyptians believed the flesh of gods was made of gold, and that it gave you safe passage into the afterlife. In Greek myth, the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, which Hercules was sent to retrieve, conferred immortality on whoever ate them. The South Americans saw gold as the link between humanity and the cosmos. They were not far wrong.Gold was present in the dust that formed the solar system. It sits in the earth’s crust today, just as it did when our planet was formed some 4.6 billion years ago. That little bit of gold you may be wearing on your finger or around your neck is actually older than the earth itself. In fact, it is older than the solar system. To touch gold is as close as you will ever come to touching eternity.And yet the world’s most famous investor is not impressed.‘It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or some place,’ said Warren Buffett. ‘Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.’He’s right. Gold does nothing. It does not even pay a yield. It just sits there inert. We use other metals to construct things, cut things or conduct things, but gold’s industrial uses are minimal. It is a good conductor of electricity, but copper and silver are better and cheaper. It has some use in dentistry, medical applications and nanotechnology. It is finding more and more use in outer space — back whence it came — where it is used to coat spacecraft, astronauts’ visors and heat shields. But, in the grand scheme of things, these uses are paltry.Gold’s only purpose is to store and display prosperity. It is dense and tangible wealth: pure money.Though you may not realise it, we still use gold as money today. Not so much as a medium to exchange value but store it.In 1970, about 27 per cent of all the gold in the world was in the form of gold coinage and central bank or government reserves. Today, even with the gold standard long since dead, the percentage is about the same.The most powerful nation on earth, the United States, keeps 70 per cent of its foreign exchange holdings in gold. Its great rival, China, is both the world’s largest producer and the world’s largest importer. It has built up reserves that, as we shall discover, are likely as great as the USA’s. If you buying gold or silver coins to protect yourself in these “interesting times” - and I urge you to - as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Ordinary people and institutions the world over use gold to store wealth. Across myriad cultures gold is gifted at landmark life events — births and weddings — because of its intrinsic value.In fact, gold’s purchasing power has increased over the millennia, as human beings have grown more productive. The same ounce of gold said by economic historians to have bought King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon 350 loaves of bread could buy you more than 1,000 loaves today. The same gold dinar (roughly 1/7 oz) that, in the time of the Koran in the seventh century, bought you a lamb would buy you three lambs today. Those same four or five aurei (1 oz) which bought you a fine linen tunic in ancient Rome would buy you considerably more clothing today.In 1972, 0.07 ounces of gold would buy you a barrel of oil. Here we are in 2024 and a barrel of oil costs 0.02 ounces of gold — it’s significantly cheaper than it was fifty years ago.House prices, too, if you measure them in gold, have stayed constant. It is only when they are measured in fiat currency that they have appreciated so relentlessly (and destructively).In other words, an ounce of gold buys you as much, and sometimes more, food, clothing, energy and shelter as it did ten years ago, a hundred years ago or even thousands of years ago. As gold lasts, so does its purchasing power. You cannot say the same about modern national currencies.Rare and expensive to mine, the supply of gold is constrained. This is in stark contrast to modern money — electronic, debt-based fiat money to give it its full name — the supply of which multiplies every year as governments spend and borrowing balloons.As if by Natural Law, gold supply has increased at the same rate as the global population — roughly 2 per cent per annum. The population of the world has slightly more than doubled since 1850. So has gold supply. The correlation has held for centuries, except for one fifty-year period during the gold rushes of the late nineteenth century, when gold supply per capita increased.Gold has the added attraction of being beautiful. It shines and glistens and sparkles. It captivates and allures. The word ‘gold’ derives from the Sanskrit ‘jval’, meaning ‘to shine’. That’s why we use it as jewellery — to show off our wealth and success, as well as to store it. Indeed, in nomadic prehistory, and still in parts of the world today, carrying your wealth on your person as jewellery was the safest way to keep it.The universe has given us this captivatingly beautiful, dense, inert, malleable, scarce, useless and permanent substance whose only use is to be money. To quote historian Peter Bernstein, ‘nothing is as useless and useful all at the same time’.But after thousands of years of gold being official money, in the early twentieth century there was a seismic shift. Neither the British, German nor French government had enough gold to pay for the First World War. They abandoned gold backing to print the money they needed. In the inter-war years, nations briefly attempted a return to gold standards, but they failed. The two prevailing monetary theories clashed: gold-backed versus state-issued currency. Gold standard advocates, such as Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, considered gold to be one of the key pillars of a free society along with property rights and habeas corpus. ‘We have gold because we cannot trust governments,’ said President Herbert Hoover in 1933. This was a sentiment echoed by one of the founders of the London School of Economics, George Bernard Shaw — to whom I am grateful for demonstrating that it is possible to have a career as both a comedian and a financial writer. ‘You have to choose (as a voter),’ he said, ‘between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government… I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.’On the other hand, many, such as economist John Maynard Keynes, advocated the idea of fiat currency to give government greater control over the economy and the ability to manipulate the money supply. Keynes put fixation with gold in the Freudian realms of sex and religion. The gold standard, he famously said after the First World War — and rightly, as it turned out — was ‘already a barbarous relic’. Freud himself related fascination with gold to the erotic fantasies and interests of early childhood.Needless to say, Keynes and fiat money prevailed. By the end of the 1930s, most of Europe had left the gold standard. The US followed, but not completely until 1971, in order to meet the ballooning costs of its welfare system and its war in Vietnam.But compare both gold’s universality (everyone everywhere knows gold has value) and its purchasing power to national currencies and you have to wonder why we don’t use it officially today. There is a very good reason: power.Sticking to the discipline of the gold standard means governments can’t just create money or run deficits to the same extent. Instead, they have to rein in their spending, which they are not prepared to do, especially in the twenty-first century, when they make so many promises to win elections. Balanced books, let alone independent money, have become an impossibility. If you seek an answer as to why the state has grown so large in the West, look no further than our system of money. When one body in a society has the power to create money at no cost to itself, it is inevitable that that body will grow disproportionately large. So it is in the twenty-first century, where state spending in many social democracies is now not far off 50 per cent of GDP, sometimes higher.Many arguments about gold will quickly slide into a political argument about the role of government. It is a deeply political metal. Those who favour gold tend to favour small government, free markets and individual responsibility. I count myself in that camp. Those who dismiss it tend to favour large government and state planning.I have argued many times that money is the blood of a society. It must be healthy. So much starts with money: values, morals, behaviour, ambitions, manners, even family size. Money must be sound and true. At the moment it is neither. Gold, however, is both. ‘Because gold is honest money it is disliked by dishonest men,’ said former Republican Congressman Ron Paul. As Dorothy is advised in The Wizard of Oz (which was, as we shall discover, part allegory), maybe the time has come to once again ‘follow the yellow brick road’.On the other hand, maybe the twilight of gold has arrived, as Niall Ferguson argued in his history of debt and money, The Cash Nexus. Gold’s future, he said, is ‘mainly as jewellery’ or ‘in parts of the world with primitive or unstable monetary and financial systems’. Gold may have been money for 5,000 years, or even 10,000 years, but so was the horse a means of transport, and then along came the motor car.A history of gold is inevitably a history of money, but it is also a history of greed, obsession and ambition. Gold is beautiful. Gold is compelling. It is wealth in its purest, most distilled form. ‘Gold is a child of Zeus,’ runs the ancient Greek lyric. ‘Neither moth nor rust devoureth it; but the mind of man is devoured by this supreme possession.’ Perhaps that’s why Thomas Edison said gold was ‘an invention of Satan’. Wealth, and all the emotions that come with it, can do strange things to people.Gold has led people to do the most brilliant, the most brave, the most inventive, the most innovative and the most terrible things. ‘More men have been knocked off balance by gold than by love,’ runs the saying, usually attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. Where gold is concerned, emotion, not logic, prevails. Even in today’s markets it is a speculative asset whose price is driven by greed and fear, not by fundamental production numbers.Its gleam has drawn man across oceans, across continents and into the unknown. It lured Jason and the Argonauts, Alexander the Great, numerous Caesars, da Gama, Cortés, Pizarro and Raleigh. Brilliant new civilisations have emerged as a result of the quest for gold, yet so have slavery, war, deceit, death and devastation. Describing the gold mines of ancient Egypt, the historian Diodorus Siculus wrote, ‘there is absolutely no consideration nor relaxation for sick or maimed, for aged man or weak woman. All are forced to labour at their tasks until they die, worn out by misery amid their toil.’ His description could apply to many an illegal mine in Africa today.The English critic John Ruskin told a story of a man who boarded a ship with all his money: a bag of gold coins. Several days into the voyage a terrible storm blew up. ‘Abandon ship!’ came the cry. The man strapped his bag around his waist and jumped overboard, only to sink to the bottom of the sea. ‘Now,’ asked Ruskin, ‘as he was sinking — had he the gold? Or had the gold him?’As the Chinese proverb goes, ‘The miser does not own the gold; the gold owns the miser.’Gold may be a dead metal. Inert, unchanging and lifeless. But its hold over humanity never relents. It has adorned us since before the dawn of civilisation and, as money, underpinned economies ever since. Desire for it has driven mankind forwards, the prime impulse for quest and conquest, for exploration and discovery. From its origins in the hearts of dying stars to its quiet presence today beneath the machinery of modern finance, gold has seen it all. How many secrets does this silent witness keep? This book tells the story of gold. It unveils the schemes, intrigues and forces that have shaped our world in the relentless pursuit of this ancient asset, which, even in this digital age, still wields immense power.That was Chapter One of The Secret History of Gold The Secret History of Gold is available to pre-order at Amazon, Waterstones and all good bookshops. I hear the audiobook, read by me, is excellent. The book comes out on August 28.Hurry! Amazon is currently offering 20% off.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