The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

The inaugural CPAC UK runs from July 16-18 in London. Speakers include the former PM, Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees Mogg and Yours Truly . No Count Binface as far as I’m aware. Flying Frisby readers can get 25% off with this link. A few weeks ago Josh from the Pure Gold Company asked if I'd be interested in recording some long-form interviews. It sounded like a good idea, so at ARC a fortnight ago we s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com The S&P 500 is close to all-time highs, but it’s looking wobbly. After magnificent runs, gold and silver are both washed out and trending lower. Bitcoin is all but dead and buried. Rates are rising the world over so you can forget about government bonds - that particular bull market is over. Oil and gas have turn...

I was on a panel with veteran geologist Brent Cook earlier in the week and something he said rather struck me. “It’s shaping up to be a brutal summer for mining companies.” Brent Cook Looking at the chart below, it’s hard to disagree. The Gold Miners Bullish Percent Index has fallen to zero. Not 5 or 10, but zero. That’s lower in the in the crash of 2008 and during the Covid panic. It has only eve...

Imagine you are in the circus, watching a tightrope walker who’s been on the sauce. He sways, the crowd gasps, he sways again, more gasps, and yet somehow he doesn’t fall. This goes on and on and eventually you get bored watching. That, it seems to me, is Britain. Public debt is now knocking on £3 trillion. (Remember you could have spent a million pounds every day since Jesus was born and still no...

Hello, A quick note about The Flying Frisby. For several years I’ve offered a Lifetime Membership. The idea was simple: make a one-off payment and never have to think about subscription renewals again. A surprising number of readers have taken me up on it. However, I’ve decided to withdraw that offer permanently at the end of June. The timetable is as follows: • Lifetime Membership remains availab...

Let’s start with a quick market update after Friday’s brutal action The last few days have not been pleasant for owners of gold , silver, miners or indeed bitcoin. Friday saw on 8% fall in silver. How January’s euphoria has reversed. That’s silver for you. My ongoing thesis that gold, silver et al go nowhere for a year remains in place. The structural backdrop for gold’s bull market also remains:...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com I was going to write about money transfer company Wise (WISE.L/WSE.US) this week. The company recently listed on the Nasdaq, demoting its London listing to secondary, and the prospects looked rosy. UK-listed companies trade at lower valuations because they are listed in the UK. America not only has greater depths...

Following on from last week’s piece about the extent to which I use AI , I’ve had a surprising number of messages asking which AI I actually use and what for. I should immediately stress that I am not some sort of AI guru. I know people use Claude to write code, automate businesses and build entire internal operating systems. That is beyond me. I can’t code. I’m a one-man band, who occasionally hi...

Following my recent pieces on Namibia , several readers got in touch asking pretty much the same question: Fine. But how do you actually invest there? Frontier markets are notoriously difficult to access. Interesting companies are privately owned, illiquid, unlisted or buried on obscure exchanges your broker has never heard of, or they carry their own small company risk that does not reflect the b...

My youngest daughter, who is supremely intelligent, refuses to use AI. She doesn’t want it plagiarising her, she says, and she doesn’t want her mind to get lazy. She’s currently taking her finals at Cambridge, where, she tells me, almost everybody is using it for everything. But she won’t. And good for her. Another friend won’t touch it either, because she is so fiercely protective of her privacy...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com There’s a lot more to AI than software. AI requires electricity, transformers, substations, cooling systems, data centres and more. That all means copper. Lots and lots of copper. Right on cue, the copper price hit fresh highs last week at $6.68/lb, before pulling back. So today I am going to take a long overdue...

Namibia sits on the south-west coast of Africa. Below Angola, above South Africa, with Botswana to the east. Portuguese explorers first reached the coast here in the 1480s. No natural harbour, brutal surf, cold Atlantic fog, the Namib Desert running straight into the sea, little access to fresh water. They planted crosses to mark their claims, turned around and went home again, never to return. To...

As I’m sure you know, it is all but impossible to destroy gold. Yes, yes, nuclear explosions, blah blah, mercury, aqua regia, but to all intents and purposes gold is permanent. It’s been here since before the earth itself, and it’ll be about long after it’s gone, shining away. That also means that all the gold that has ever been mined still exists. Some of it has been lost, of course, but it’s sti...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com It is always nice to be a national of a country that is leading the pack. It makes one proud to be a world leader. When it comes to cracking sovereign debt markets, however, you do not want to be leading the pack. But that is where we are in the UK. Even Mohamed El-Erian is tweeting about it. Yields on 30-year gi...

Something of a thought experiment today, motivated by the fact that I don’t want to go through another bear market in mining. I’m done with them. The false dawns, the endless grinding declines, the frustration. You might remember me saying, mid bear market a few years ago, “One more bull market and I’m done.” So the question I’m asking today is, “when can we expect this bull market to end?” It mig...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com This weekend, on the advice of ChatGPT, I visited Constable country. That is Essex, the villages of Dedham and East Bergholt, by the River Stour, which John Constable so famously painted. Having just spent a fortnight in Namibia, I’ve become attuned to stunning landscapes. Even so, I was blown away by the beauty...

Happy St George’s Day to you. My apologies for the late arrival of this week’s missive but I found myself without electricity this morning due to, and I quote, “a fault with the electricity”Never mind. Here we are. Everything seems so headline driven and yet contradictory at the moment. With every change in circumstance, especially at the Strait of Hormuz, a different narrative seems to emerge onl...

Good Sunday to youI’m still finding my feet having just got back from Namibia. I’ve got a full country report coming, as well as a portfolio piece. But I’ve been thinking further about the country’s potential since Wednesday’s note . Namibia has almost everything. Resources. Location. Roads. A small population. On paper, it should work. And yet. Driving through Windhoek, the capital, my guide poin...

I’m travelling, so this week’s note will be brief. What a country Namibia is. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere with so much potential. But also what a mess. Official unemployment is 37%. Real unemployment is likely over 50%. Can you imagine? Per capita GDP is about $4,200. That puts it at 119th the global rankings. The countries that top the list include the likes of Luxembourg, Switzerland,...

Good Sunday to you, It seems Iran is planning to turn the Strait of Hormuz into the marine equivalent a toll road, or so at least the Financial Times among others is reporting. Ships wishing to pass through the strait must pay a fee of $1 per barrel of oil. Here’s the clincher: the fee must be paid in bitcoin. Why bitcoin? It’s the best money for the job. As it is “permissionless”, no government c...

Good Sunday to you, And Happy Easter. Today’s missive comes to you from Namibia, where I am giving a talk on gold at the Cirrus Investor Conference next week. I’m right out in the Styx at the minute and internet is patchy so I’m keeping this brief. Here’s the view from my window, if you don’t believe me. Coming to America Meanwhile, just as I was setting off, the US copies of the Secret History of...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com You’ve probably heard: gold has just had the worst month in its history. Given that gold is older than the earth itself, that’s quite a long history. What headline writers actually mean, even if they don’t know it, is that: in US dollar terms, gold just had its worst month since 1971, at a stretch 1789. But the U...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com Never mind the dodgy mortgages, oil spiking to $150/barrel in July, 2008, just before the panic set in, was as big a cause of the Global Financial Crisis. The price rise was like a sudden, unexpected liquidity drain on the economy. The US economy is built on oil. Costs suddenly rose across every supply chain. Dis...

Bull markets don’t last forever. When you’re in the throes of one, it can feel like they do. But they don’t, and at a certain point you have to sell. Gold bull markets can feel even more eternal. Not just because the metal itself is eternal, but because the story comes along that we are going back to a gold standard, or that the Great Purge, which many economists of the Austrian school say is inev...

Good Sunday to you, You’ve no doubt seen the videos of Iran’s largest oil facilities burning. How much destruction does war cause? To the environment, to wealth, to people’s lives. And governments lecture us about the environment. 15% of China’s oil comes from Iran. Not any more. I bet they’re delighted. No surprise, oil futures have spiked again. WTIC has gone to $94 in weekend markets, Brent to...