The AOCE and WB have moderate overall forecasts for the metals in 2025 inline with IMF forecasts for a decline in economic growth and inflation, although we see the probability of a stagflationary scenario as still reasonably high.Read More

The past year was a difficult one overall for the metals, with the main standouts to the upside being a geopolitical risk-driven gain in gold, a China-driven rise in iron ore and a surge in uranium on broadening global support for nuclear power (Figure 1). A jump in global interest rates to near two-decade highs saw recession fears persist all year, and while one still did not actually eru...Read More

This year the post-global health crisis boom was brought to an end by a surge in inflation to forty-year highs, a major rise in global interest rates in an attempt to curb the rising prices and surging geopolitical risk after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While precious metals held up reasonably well as markets turned to them as a risk hedge, by Q2/22 the higher interest rates put an end t...Read More

Chile is the world leader in copper production, at 28.5% of the total in 2020, and this looks set to continue, with the country having the largest global reserves, at 23.0% of total. It is also the global leader for molybdenum, which is often found along with copper, and is a major lithium player, holding 51.1% of global reserves. Read More

Newfoundland has become a gold exploration hotspot over the past few years, with the sector seeing some of its strongest activity ever. While the province remains a small contributor to Canadian gold production, it has a substantial mineral industry well supported by the government, focused on iron ore, copper and nickel, and the surge in exploration suggests that gold output from the...Read More

Nevada is the core of the U.S. gold output, accounting for by far the majority, at 75.4% on average for the past year. The state looks set to remain a dominant player in U.S. gold, as it accounts for 49% of total U.S. reserves, with Alaska slightly ahead with 51% of reserves, but just 8.6% of current production. The U.S. accounts for 6.1% of global gold output, making Nevada one of the largest gol...Read More

The Golden Triangle in northwestern British Columbia has historically been a major site of Canadian gold production, beginning as early as the mid 1800s. There was a wave of production in the 1990s which cooled as the gold price declined, but larger scale production resumed in 2017, and the area has seen surging exploration interest over the past year, given that the region has some of the largest...Read More

In this report we outline the Quebec gold mining industry, including its major producers, and a survey of many of the junior miners focused on the province. Quebec accounts for 34% of Canadian gold production (second to Ontario, with 44%) and remains a major focus for both producers and junior miners.Read More

Red Lake has been one of the most prolific gold mining districts in Canada and the world, with exploration having started in the 1920s, and production, which began in the 1930s, continuing to the present day. The district is known for the high grade of its gold, its infrastructure, and strong institutional support, given the long history of mining in the area.Read More

It's time to end Biden's foolish war in Ukraine.This conflict has been one of the great tragedies of this century. Two nations who were once brothers turned against each other.Perhaps 700,000 soldiers have died, with another 500,000 wounded.Countless civilians have been displaced, and more than 30,000 have died. Cities and suburbs have been razed to the ground.Beside the substantial humanitarian b...Read More

The new Trump administration is off to a fast start. All of the key nominations for the Trump cabinet and White House staff have been made, the Senate confirmation hearings (where needed) have mostly been held and some of the key positions have already been filled. Trump signed a large pile of Day One executive orders over the course of January 20 and 21 immediately after the inauguration. More ex...Read More

Jim Rickards recently published a compelling article on AI risk for Insider Intel subscribers.In it, Jim discusses a different way in which AI could crash markets. One that is totally separate from the DeepSeek, China, and NVIDIA angle we've been covering for the past week.Today we're going to review his key points and explore them in detail.Here's Jim:"The ultimate danger arises when a large coho...Read More

Ah, the 1980s. I feel bad for people who didn't grow up during that decade.America was the undisputed King of the World.I watched Lawrence Taylor beat up opposing quarterbacks every autumnal Sunday of my youth. Joe Montana won four Super Bowls. Some guy named Bo Jackson was an All-Star in both football and baseball. Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Donnie Baseball were the diamond's elite. Wayne Gre...Read More

In the 1920s, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was the hottest stock in the world.Radio was cutting-edge tech, and RCA was dominant in the sector. The company was the largest manufacturer of radio sets and operated the largest broadcasting company, NBC. They owned key patents and had attracted many of the country's best engineers.In 1921 RCA shares traded as low as $1.50 (split-adjusted). By 192...Read More

American AI firms have rung the alarm bell and all personnel have reported to battle stations (their computers).Yesterday, we got a response from OpenAI (ChatGPT owner) CEO Sam Altman. Here's what he posted on X about DeepSeek:deepseek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price.we will obviously deliver much better models and also itR...Read More

The opening salvo of a hot artificial intelligence battle just dumped a bucket of cold water on the stock market.Big Tech spiraled lower to kick off the trading week after a Chinese AI firm called DeepSeek made huge waves in the industry.The ten-second version of this story is DeepSeek can do everything the other major AI firms can do, and more all for a fraction of the cost, time, and equipment...Read More

American AI companies are feeling the heat over the past month.China is catching up. In some areas, they are even surpassing the U.S. in artificial intelligence. It may seem hard to believe, but it's true.Chinese companies DeepSeek and ByteDance recently released models which are on par with the best models from top U.S. companies OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.Here's what legendary venture capital...Read More

On Friday evening, we covered DeepSeek R1, the Chinese AI breakthrough rattling NVIDIA and broader markets.I wrote the following:The implications are massive. In the long run, this could threaten not just American AI software companies, but also NVIDIA. If cutting-edge models can be trained with 5% of the previous hardware requirements, what does that mean for GPU sales going forward?When I wrote...Read More

In 2004, I imploded my first trading account.I was 24 years old and thought I was hot stuff. You see, I had just gotten my stockbroker and financial advisor licenses.I was young, naive, and ready to take on the world.My journey began trading hot stocks like Research in Motion (RIMM).On my second trade, I made $1,400. Wow, this is easy!That win was the worst thing that could have happened. I ramped...Read More

I lived in Singapore for six years, from 2009 to 2015, and I was married there. So much of what I became happened because of my time in the Lion City. I didn’t appreciate it as much then because it’s hard to love a place when it’s 90?F every day, with 90% humidity and one downpour in the afternoon thrown in for good measure. But now that I look back on it, I can’t believe h...Read More

Crypto insanity is heating up this week as Bitcoin and a couple of fresh Trump tokens enjoy an Inauguration Day head start over the sleepy stock market.While stocks enjoyed a three-day weekend, a fresh Donald Trump-produced meme coin (TRUMP) exploded to a $10 billion market value. Shortly after TRUMP began to run out of steam, Melania Trump launched her own coin (MELANIA), which briefly reached a...Read More

On Saturday morning, I awoke to very strange news.On Friday night around 9pm EST President Trump launched a new cryptocurrency.When Trump first posted the news on Truth Social and X.com, people thought his accounts must have been hacked. But somehow, it was real.Trump's new cryptocurrency is considered a memecoin. This asset class (if you can call it that) is purely speculative in nature. It's sim...Read More

Editor's note: In honor of Inauguration Day, we're sending you today's Daily Reckoning earlier than we typically do. In this article, Jim breaks down all the challenges and opportunities President Trump will face over the next four years. This is must-read material. Enjoy.Today Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. This marks a major turning point in U.S....Read More

Editor's note: For the past week our friends Sean Ring and Byron King over at The Rude Awakening have been breaking down implications of President Trump's second term. In the article below, Sean explains how Trump 2.0 looks from a European perspective. With his boots on the ground in Italy, his perspective is definitely worth paying attention to.Energy: Cheap and SecureGermany, America's chief poo...Read More

 Someone, please tell Joke Biden that no matter what he does before Monday, he'll still go down as the worst President the United States has ever had. The divisive Obama is a close second, but recency bias may be creeping in. After all, those who were cognizant adults in the 1970s swear the worst president ever was America's most famous peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter. (I was around but barely ou...Read More

Editor's note: Today we have another special guest article from Dr. Ron Paul. This editorial was originally published at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.Even though we are two weeks into 2025, I want to suggest some more New Year's resolutions.The Federal Reserve should resolve to stop enabling excessive federal spending by purchasing Treasury bonds, thus monetizing the federal deb...Read More

It feels like a lifetime ago...Trump had just won the election. Bullish momentum thrusts were popping up left and right. Small-caps and the major averages were breaking out. Everywhere you looked, stocks were posting new highs.The small-cap Russell 2000 ETF gapped to fresh multi-year highs, letting loose a barrage of speculative breakouts to post its largest single-day return in more than two year...Read More

The European Union's crony-socialism experiment is not going well.Industrial production has been crippled by bad energy policy. Deindustrialization is spreading across the continent.At the same time, smothering regulations have gravely wounded productivity.For example, in Germany, it's almost impossible for companies to fire employees.Think about the chaos caused by this seemingly well-intentioned...Read More

The past few years have been unusual for gold and interest rates.Both have ripped higher together.Historically, these two are often inversely correlated, meaning when the bond yields are high, gold is weak. And vice versa. But no longer.The chart below shows the price of gold vs. U.S. real interest rates (10y bond yield minus inflation expectations):As you can see, the two traded inversely up unti...Read More