"A government-run grocery store? What a disaster!""I know! By the way, I made 2x on Intel after the government bought in!"These quotes summarize recent comments I've heard about government interventions in private markets.The first, of course, refers to NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's plan to open city-run grocery stores. The idea is to eliminate greed and profit from the equation, and give...Read More

Bubble-like behavior?A friend is a builder in Washington, specializing in high-end houses."I've never seen anything like it. There's just so much money in Washington. We're doing 15 different projects. Every one of them is spectacular."Money is everywhere. Everything is going up. Gold, for example. CNBC:Gold could reach $10,000 by the end of the decade, says Ed Yardeni.Which is another way we coul...Read More

Last week, I had dinner with Donald Trump, Jr., and I suspect that at least some readers may be interested. So today, I'll tell you about it.And first, yes... I mean that DJT Jr. (see photo), son of the U.S. President of similar name. And no, I don't mean that we were in the same building at the same time, although that's one way to say it. Nor do I mean that we were even in the same dining room a...Read More

We're obviously living in tumultuous times. If investors sense they're on a financial roller coaster, they're right.Recently, I scanned my market tickers and saw that everything was up. Stocks, bonds, gold, silver, the dollar, cryptos and commodities were all advancing. Of course, that didn't last. The next day cryptos crashed and stocks were down sharply. Even gold suffered its worst day in a dec...Read More

As we wait patiently for this correction in gold, silver, and miners to end, now is an excellent time to review the fundamentals of precious metal miners.This is especially important for those of you looking to start or add to positions during this pullback.Today we're going to explore the three types of mining stocks:ProducersDevelopersExplorers.We'll explain the risk/reward of each stage, which...Read More

The modern world began with a hole in the ground.Around 7,000 years ago, a few clever humans figured out how to work copper into crude, but useful tools and jewelry.Innovation really picked up 5,000 years ago with the beginning of the Bronze Age. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and it's far stronger than either element alone.Bronze was used to make superior weapons, armor, and tools. It was...Read More

Well, we finally got the mini-crash we've been expecting in precious metals and miners.On Tuesday gold plunged 5.7%, its biggest daily fall since 2013. Silver fell a whopping 8%, slipping back under the key $50 level.Miners fell harder, with the GDX gold miner ETF stumbling from $84 to $73 over the past week. The SILJ silver miner ETF fell from around $26 to $23 over the same period.But it's impor...Read More

Traditionally, the defining moment in a man's life arrives when he looks in his shaving glass and finds his father staring back at him; but there is a day so much more terrible we rarely speak of it – when he catches himself in a full-length mirror and sees his mother...Don Paterson, The Book of ShadowsI was living in London when I picked up Paterson's book of aphorisms. I remember laughing...Read More

"What do you expect when you sue the president?" Hearing that comment, some people may guess the comment was made by someone addressing one of President Trump's political opponents who has been targeted for federal prosecution.That quote, though, is much older. It is from an IRS agent addressing officials of a conservative organization that was being audited during Bill Clinton's presidency. This...Read More

A fascinating experiment is taking place.A startup named Nof1 gave 6 top AI models $10,000 each.They gave models access to a crypto exchange, a data feed, and let each model build its own trading and risk management strategy. The "Alpha Arena" competition started Oct 17th and the first "season" will conclude Nov 3rd.The AIs can use up to 40x leverage. With that much juice, a 2.5% move in the wrong...Read More

I was in Minnesota last week, in the storied "Iron Range" north of Duluth. In fact, I was out in the field on Friday, looking at Precambrian rocks, and missed the white-knuckle excitement of the market selloff for gold, silver, other metals, miners and more. It's amazing what happens when I leave town, eh?Good morning from northern Minnesota. BWK photo.I spent all day Saturday traveling home and m...Read More

I opened my portfolio this morning already wincing, knowing an ugly number would materialize.Oof. It's a red day for those of us with beefy allocations to gold and silver miners. Game of Thrones style.Precious metal miners are correcting sharply. The SILJ junior silver miner ETF is down about 8.5% as of 12:40 PM. The GDX gold miner ETF is down about 7.8%. These are my preferred benchmarks for the...Read More

During a conference call with investors last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon made a memorable response to a question from Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo about the collapse of a subprime auto lender called Tricolor that cost the bank $170 million. Tricolor went bankrupt due to allegations of fraud, including double-pledging of collateral, which led lenders to halt financing."Mike, you should assume t...Read More

I remember getting my offer letter from Lehman Brothers in early 1997, a full 11 years before they went bankrupt, I hasten to add. For a whopping $34,000, I was theirs, green as a Granny Smith apple. My job was in a division called Global Corporate Equity Derivatives, and I was going to help the traders keep their trading books reconciled with the general ledger. It was my first, and last, account...Read More

During the dotcom boom, fiber optic cabling was a scorching-hot sector.This is the wiring the internet runs on. The arteries and veins of the data world.Corning (NYSE: GLW) was the darling of fiber optics in the 1990s and into 2000. This classic American company had been a leader in specialized glass and ceramic materials for more than a century.Starting in the 1960s, they invested heavily in the...Read More

There are 'policies' that seem to work…and some that don't seem to work.But the policy that always works best is no policy at all. That is, left alone, people do the best they can with what they have. Only they know what they want and what they have to work with. The feds, who have aims of their own, can make us do things differently; they can't make us do things better.Doing 'better' is dri...Read More

For around 3,000 years, China maintained an airtight monopoly on silk.China's silk empire began in approximately 2400 BC, and the entire process was a state secret. From raising and processing silkworms, to weaving and dying threads.Imperial workshops were vertically integrated and tightly controlled.The punishment for revealing any silk secrets was death. Export of silkworm eggs and mulberry seed...Read More

Legend has it that in November 2004 Taylor Swift was "discovered" in Nashville. A youngster at the time, merely 14 years old, she was playing guitar and singing at the Bluebird Caf? when a music promoter heard her, took a look, and decided that this gal was going places. And as you surely know, today she's a huge mega-star.Taylor Swift in Nashville, but no I didn't see her. Courtesy billboard.com....Read More

It's been a wild ride over the past few trading days...On Friday, President Trump started a mini-crash by threatening China with new 100% tariffs.Stocks slid, crypto crashed, and miners dipped.But yesterday, President Trump strapped on his Superman cape and saved the day. He struck a more conciliatory tone after China replied to his tariff threat with a hard-nosed retort.As a result, markets opene...Read More

Greetings from beautiful downtown Nashville! It's my first time here, and I already love it.Music City is well named. Everywhere you go, talented musicians abound.I'm down here for the Paradigm Shift Summit, our company's big investment conference.More than 700 subscribers made the trip, and I've already met a bunch of them.A fine group of people. And happy, too.The timing for this meeting couldn'...Read More