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

How will future historians come at the 2024 presidential election?It stands every chance of being... historic.One candidate has already endured a shooting. That he lingers on may be considered a miracle of God.Merely three prior presidential candidates in United States history Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Robert Francis Kennedy in 1968 and George Wallace in 1972 were assassins' targets ahead of...Read More

What does it mean to say a politician is a populist? Over 30 years ago, Christopher Lasch observed in his book The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics that populism had been applied to such a wide swath of individuals and causes that it had lost any specific meaning.This definition from Quizlet is a start: A political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that thei...Read More

"I love Trump's VP pick!" writes reader J.P...."He's young but also brilliantly smart and articulate. Something we desperately need these days."Monday, Donald Trump outstretched his arm, unfurled his index finger... and tapped Ohio's Sen. J.D. Vance upon the shoulder.Yesterday, we asked you this question:Were you for Donald Trump's vice presidential selection of J.D. Vance? Or were you against it?...Read More

Credit: @Rothmus You'd be forgiven for thinking the Secret Service drew the above game plan.Such willful incompetence has never seen the light of day. Not since Jim Marshall of the Minnesota Vikings ran into the wrong end zone against the 49ers in 1964 have we witnessed a live television screw-up of this caliber. At least Marshall just got confused; he later turned out to be one of the greate...Read More

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump continues to dominate the news as the Republican National Convention is underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.In a highly charged moment last night, Trump appeared before the crowd with a bandage covering his ear, as Lee Greenwood sang "God Bless the U.S.A." live.Yesterday also marked another key development in the election season.Trump nominated Ohio senator...Read More

We've talked about it for months...Heck, we might have willed it into existence.For whatever reason, the illusive bull market rotation we've patiently waited on is finally materializing.Today, we'll discuss what a bull market rotation entails, how it works, and, most importantly, how we can profit from the inevitable rallies that could power the market higher in the weeks and months ahead.First, s...Read More

You can't deny that "Joe Biden" did his goodest Thursday night facing down a half-dozen pre-selected reporters representing blob-adjacent news orgs such as Reuters and NPR at the post-NATO meetup damage-control event billed as a "news conference."Only a week after he declared himself to be the "first Black woman vice president," he pivoted to correct the record, telling the D.C. press corps that h...Read More

You're receiving today's issue early because it's very important, and I want to make sure you didn't miss it.All Americans should be relieved and grateful that Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.Elections should be decided at the ballot box, not through violence. Of course, there are many on the political left who celebrated t...Read More

There was an oblique message buried in a recent New York Times story on the growing crisis in commercial real estate in cities.Yes, this is exactly the kind of article that people pass over because it seems like it doesn't have broad application. In fact, it does.It affects the core of issues like our city skylines, how we think about urbanism and progress, where we vacation and work and whether t...Read More

We understand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is pursuing fresh initiatives in the fields of artificial intelligence, information management and cybersecurity.Its purpose claims United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is to:Harness the unique strengths of highly capable democracies to address shared global challenges.We are not certain to which "unique strengths of highly...Read More

Some of the best friendships start that way.A knockdown, dragout brawl kicks things off. A brutal beating was taken on both sides. A moment of clarity ensues. The look that says, "What did we start fighting over to begin with?"A shoulder shrug, indicating no one can remember what the catalyst was. A smile. A handshake. And a drunken night out with raucous backslapping and man hugs to consummate th...Read More

Here is the central difficulty of economists:They are not women and men of science.They believe they are. Yet they are not."Science" binds back to the Latin scientia knowledge "to know."The practitioner of the astronomical sciences, for example, is merely out to comprehend the universe he infests.He is not out to change or influence it. He is not out to engineer it. He is merely out to study i...Read More

Myths die hard. Among these is the great myth that China's poised to take over the world. Today I'll debunk that myth.No one seriously disputes the importance of China to the global economy. It's the world's second-largest economy after the U.S. and accounts for 17% of global GDP (or an even larger percentage if one uses an alternative accounting method called purchasing power parity).It has the w...Read More

Instead of a sizzling summer rally, crypto once again finds itself at a crossroads.The year began with hope and excitement. Bitcoin had just led stocks off their lows during the fourth-quarter melt-up rally, gaining more than 60% off its October lows. Crypto bulls were giddy as two big developments appeared on the horizon: the impending Bitcoin ETF approvals - courtesy of the Securities and Exchan...Read More

Everyday Americans and investors in particular are confronted with "narratives" daily. Many include hidden agendas that are politically, ideologically or financially driven.The key for investors is to see the narrative for what it is, avoid the mass psychosis, position yourself for reality and succeed in the end.Following are four reigning narratives.In each case, I sketch these narratives (and wh...Read More

Geopolitical/financial risks are proliferating and becoming more difficult to predict or hedge for a very basic reason:The era of global integration and accord has ended and the era of global disintegration and discord is heating up.In historian Peter Turchin’s terminology, when everyone finds reasons to cooperate, the result is an era of accord; when everyone finds reasons not to cooperate,...Read More

If you’ve got any exposure to gold or other precious metals, congrats! The first half of 2024 has been an absolute thrill ride.You may recall that gold closed the month above $2,000 an ounce for the first time late last year a breakout that'd been a long time coming.This breakthrough cleared the way for gold to soar to its next psychologically important milestone of $3,000 an ounce.Given h...Read More

I did not celebrate the Fourth of July today.This goes back to a term paper I wrote in graduate school. It was on Colonial taxation in the British North American Colonies in 1775. Not counting local taxation, I discovered that the total burden of British imperial taxation was about 1% of national income. It may have been as high as 2.5% in the southern Colonies.In 2008, Alvin Rabushka’s book...Read More

The doom and gloom surrounding the Presidential race is both undeniable and justified.America seems tapped out. It's out of money. It has lost the moral high ground. It resorts to coercion to keep its allies - or rather, vassal states - in line. And it prints money to cover its lies.There's a reason the Founding Fathers wrote hard money into the Constitution. Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitut...Read More

It's no secret that the vast majority of the so-called elites are advocates of climate alarmism and are taken in by the Green New Scam.Whether this preference is based on ignorance of the science, ideological zeal, a willful desire to hurt American growth or simple greed because of their investments in Green New Scam infrastructure varies case by case.The typical upper-income supporter of the clim...Read More