Podcast
The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more
Hosted by Dominic Frisby · EN
Readings of brilliant articles from the Flying Frisby. Occasional super-fascinating interviews. Market commentary, investment ideas, alternative health, some social commentary and more, all with a massive libertarian bias.
www.theflyingfrisby.com
www.theflyingfrisby.com
38episodes
Episodes
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How AI Became My Production Company
2w ago00:08:52Tap to summarizeFollowing 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 hires freelancers. I’m self-taught. But here’s what I actually use and what for.I stress the best method of all is trial and error. You get results quickly. If you don’t get what you’re looking for, adjust the prompt, or try a different app.Let’s start with the visual stuff.Pretty much every image accompanying my articles, such as the one above, is generated on Midjourney. I’ve experimented with ChatGPT, Grok and other image generators, but I like Midjourney’s images the most. My prompt is often just the article title plus the aspect ratio. Four options appear. I pick the best one.That alone would have seemed miraculous ten years ago.I also use Midjourney extensively for music videos. For example, in this video about the lighter side of hyperinflationary collapse, almost every visual was AI-generated from the lyrics. My editor, Goat, then used Runway to animate the images. We filmed my face against a green screen and plonked it on top afterwards.If Midjourney didn’t produce what I had in mind, I simply kept adjusting the prompt until it did, or I tried another image generator as a last resortEven as recently as five years ago, let alone twenty, to make a video like this would have cost hundreds of thousands, millions even, and taken many months. We would have needed teams of animators, post production specialists, Soho studio space and lord knows what else. That, to my mind, is the genuinely revolutionary part of AI. Democratisation of media and all of that.But on top of it all you still need someone - in this case my editor Goat - who knows what they’re doing.People often argue that AI ia replacing creativity. What it is actually doing, at least in my case, is dramatically lowering the cost of production and making creativity available to all. The possibilities for creative littlemen like me are enormous. I made this video using Grok and Neural FramesAnd this one was generated entirely in Neural FramesIronically, we used no AI in the music itself. We edited the videos either in Capcut or FinalCut.By the way, if you enjoy these videos, the first place I upload them is at my comedy Substack, so sign up to that. It’s free.Writing, research, advice and moreThis next video, about the most prolific slaving civilisations in history, generated millions of views across social media, and became the most viewed page on this Substack. It is an interesting case.Not because of the images themselves, which were generated with Midjourney, but because of the research. AI couldn’t and in some cases wouldn’t do it. Claude flat out refused because of the subject matter. It would not engage. (IN other words it is biased). ChatGPT couldn’t get its head round what I was trying to do. Grok came closest but in the end I worked with a human researcher, Sam, who I knew from my book, who turned out to be much better.I have paid subscriptions to Claude, ChatGPT, Grok and Venice. I cooled somewhat on Claude after the slavery episode. Around the same time I was in a nasty dispute with three former business colleagues and needed some help. Claude kept getting hysterical and calling on me to speak to a lawyer, which I didn’t have the time or budget to do, whereas ChatGPT gave the me the help I was looking for. So between the two episodes Claude has been rather demoted in my office, though I still use it as a sounding board for anything to do with writing - where it is strong - if I want a second or third opinion. I get that the experts think Claude is the boss, but for me it is too captured. ChatGPT has replaced it as my primary all-rounder.In general terms, ChatGPT is the most user-friendly though you have to go into the settings and tell it to stop being sycophantic, as that just gets annoying. (They are all as bad as each other for sycophancy).I’ll use them all for brainstorming, proofreading, titles, summarising transcripts, challenging arguments, evaluating, drafting legal docs and agreements, advice, helping with negotiating. But I tend to go to ChatGPT ahead of the others, especially for anything to do with diet, health, personal development, mentoring, problem solving, advice and so on. It is basically having an extremely fast, but not always reliable assistant. You cannot blindly delegate to it, you have to oversee, because it is not always right, even if it behaves like it is. Grok is the best for anything current. If I am writing a satirical song, for example, and I need an overview of a politician or a news story, Grok is best by far. I think it’s because Grok has X to mine from. Regarding investments, Grok beats most hedge fund managers, apparently. I use it to gauge sentiment around companies and themes: it can quickly tell me whether people are already talking about it or whether almost nobody is. That is very useful. If thousands of people are discussing a company, the hype cycle is probably already fairly advanced. If nobody is discussing it, that is more interesting.For ongoing projects, however, I still prefer ChatGPT and Claude. I find their their folder systems are more user-friendly and easier to organise, particularly for themes I want to keep coming back to. Grok - or is it me - seems to lose conversations between the app and when I use it via X.Grok could quickly become my go-to allrounder, though I have some shares in SpaceX, so I am probably biased. Broadly speaking I have greater faith in Elon Musk’s integrity than I do Sam Altman’s, even if for now I have voted with my usage for Sam Altman.Claude may be the most capable technically, particularly for coding and analysis, but I also found it the most censorious. Venice, by contrast, is the least filtered. And it gives you access to Seedance 2.0 (which is the best of the video generators), but it has other technological shortcomings. None of them are neutral, and you still need to judge what they tell you - which requires a functioning brain. I find AI really suits a one-man band like me, who has some experience, knowledge and who still retains a modicum of cognitive ability. It makes me so much more productive. But you still need a functioning brain.At the same time, I would argue that people who refuse to engage with AI at all - while I admire them - are putting themselves at a disadvantage. The productivity gains are simply too large. AI has not made me less creative. If anything, it has made me more productive creatively. Ideas that were once stuck in my head can now be realised. This Friday I am speaking at the New Culture Forum Literary Festival along with Alison Pearson, David Frost, Bill Cash and many more. It looks to be superb event. Flying Frisby readers can get a discount using the code LITFEST15.If you are a Lifetime Subscriber and fancy it, drop me a line and you can come as my guest without having to pay a single penny. How about that!(By the way I will shortly be ending lifetime subscriptions on June 7, if a Lifetime Subscription is of interest, sign up now)Here is this week’s commentary in case you missed itFinally, this week I appeared on Blue Dot radio in the US talking to Dave Schlom about the book. Was a good interview.Thank you for being a subscriber to the Flying FrisbyUntil next timeDominic 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
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How To Invest In Namibia
2w ago00:56:40Tap to summarizeFollowing 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 broader themes of the country.To try and answer the question properly, I spoke to economist Rowland Brown, founder of Cirrus Capital, the country’s largest stockbroker, to discuss the best ways to invest in Namibia and where he sees the biggest opportunities.The full interview follows, but here are 7 things that stood out to me.1. Namibia’s growth could accelerate dramaticallyNamibia has averaged around 4.5% annual growth since independence in 1990. But Brown thinks the next decade could look very different. The reason is oil.Offshore discoveries by majors such as Shell plc and TotalEnergies could transform the country’s fiscal position. Brown estimates that production of 450,000 barrels per day by 2030 could increase government revenues by roughly 60%, which is quite frankly an astonishing number.Namibia today has a population of roughly 3 million people. It is rich in uranium, diamonds, copper, gold and fisheries. Add large-scale oil production and the country starts to look strategically very important.2. The banks are surprisingly attractiveOne thing I had not appreciated before speaking to Brown was how profitable Namibian banks are. According to him, the major listed banks are producing returns on equity of roughly 20-30%, while trading on earnings multiples of only four to five times.The problem is that these banks are listed only on the Namibian Stock Exchange, meaning overseas investors generally need a local broker to access them.The main players include Standard Bank Namibia, First National Bank Namibia and Capricorn GroupBrown is particularly positive on Standard Bank Namibia because of its positioning for both the uranium and oil industries. Chinese involvement in Namibian uranium mining has also strengthened relationships and financing channels there.3. But there is also a way to buy Namibian government debtThis was another thing I did not know. There is an exchange traded Namibian government bond index called STXNAM, tradable in Johannesburg.Namibian government debt currently yields around 12%, while inflation is around 3%, according to Brown.That obviously comes with frontier-market risk, but Namibia’s debt position is arguably stronger than many developed countries. Roughly 80% of the debt is domestically owned, largely by pension funds and banks.Unlike other countries I could mention, Namibia has not yet completely financialised itself into oblivion. Ahem.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.4. Uranium remains one of the biggest long-term themesNamibia is already the world’s third-largest uranium producer - a lot of that uranium is at the margin. China has a role to play in this. Chinese investors came into Namibian uranium aggressively after Fukushima , when uranium prices were deeply depressed and western capital had largely disappeared.With uranium prices having recovered, those investments are working. We discussed various companies operating in Namibia including Paladin and Deep Yellow, the problem is that many of them are multi-jurisdictional, so you don’t get the pure country play. ASX-listed Bannerman Energy (ASX:BMN) is the closest to being a near-pure Namibia uranium play.5. Oil exposure is harder than you thinkAs with uranium, the oil frustration is that the obvious opportunities are often buried inside giant conglomerates.Brown mentioned Sintana Energy (SEI.V), Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), which holds a near-50% stake in London-based, privately owned Impact Oil & Gas, which owns significant exploration rights in the Venus discovery offshore Namibia, and Reconnaissance Energy Africa (RECO.V). ReconAfrica is a speculative onshore exploration story and Brown was careful to stress that it remains high risk.6. Copper may ultimately become the biggest storyOne company we discussed at length was Koryx Copper (KRY.V), which is now a development story rather than a speculative discovery punt.The project benefits from simple geology and open-pit potential, good access to roads and ports, nearby power and water infrastructure and significant associated goldBrown repeatedly emphasised on management quality, and I actually met the boss too while I was out there - Heye Dawn - an impressive man. Junior mining is littered with “lifestyle companies”. This is not one of those situations, though it remains speculative mining investment and is vulnerable to falling copper prices, being quite low grade. But I am quite bullish about copper, as you know.7. The currency question is fascinatingNamibia’s currency is pegged to the South African rand. The rand is not exactly the Swiss franc.But Brown made an interesting point: without the peg, Namibia’s currency would probably be wildly volatile because of the country’s dependence on commodity exports. So the peg may actually make Namibia more investable, not less.Longer term, if oil revenues become large enough, Namibia could gain greater flexibility, perhaps moving towards some form of trade-weighted currency basket more heavily linked to the US dollar.That is speculative for now, albeit interesting.Anyway, enough from me.The full interview with Rowland Brown follows. For those who want to go deeper into the weeds on Namibia, uranium, copper, oil, banks and frontier-market investing, I recommend you listen. Brown knows his onions. And you can contact Rowland via Cirrus Capital.One thing becomes very clear very quickly. Namibia may still be a small frontier market, but it no longer feels peripheral.Thank you for being a subscriber to The Flying Frisby.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
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I've Outsourced My Judgement to AI. So Has Everyone Else.
3w ago00:07:54Tap to summarizeMy 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 and doesn’t like AI and social media having so much access to our inner lives. But these people are exceptions. Almost everyone I know is now using AI constantly.I am a prime offender.I use it to make trivial decisions. I get it to draft emails and messages that are too sapping to write myself. I’ve used it to draft contracts that would otherwise have cost me thousands in legal fees. I use it to summarise research papers and articles, evaluate investments, plan trips and organise logistics. It’s a great sounding board. It helps me proof read these articles, does the pics and writes all the SEO stuff I can’t pretend to understand.It is my personal trainer, and tells me what exercises to do. Yesterday I got it to analyse my body fat from a photograph. I’ve even had it analyse my stools.Last year (and the year before, and the year before that), I was stuck in a toxic relationship I couldn’t seem to break out of, even after we separated. At one point I thought I was going mad. I eventually uploaded our entire WhatsApp exchanges into AI and asked it to tell me WTF was going on. I discovered I have “fixer bias” she was an “anxious attachment avoidant”, or something like that, and the combination of the two types is highly toxic and addictive. Finally, I understood why I couldn’t break out of the loop, and what I now had to do to move on.My mother uses it non-stop as well, and it has become a brilliant companion to her.My son and daughter-in-law, both of whom I live with, constantly take the mickey out of me because I’ve become so dependent on it.One of my faults, and there are many, has always been that I give my power away too easily, especially in negotiation. I worry too much about upsetting people or creating friction. Using AI has helped me phrase things, removed my stupid ego from the conversation, helped establish boundaries, not made me look needy or arrogant, stopped me saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong moment. As a result I have closed several deals and opportunities over the past year that I simply wouldn't have managed previously. I wouldn't have known what to say. I would have held back, worried about rubbing someone up the wrong way. Instead, everyone walked away happy.But it’s not just me. I’ve noticed many others doing it too. When I travelled to Namibia recently, the trip was logistically complex. I spoke to the travel agent almost every other day. Being lazy, I got AI to write my messages to her, but I saw she was doing it back to me. I knew what she was doing and she probably knew what I was doing. It didn’t matter, the important thing was the trip. Neither of our egos got in the way, and the trip went without a hitch.Which got me thinking.Never mind the looming political and financial crises, or the various civilisational catastrophes currently unfolding, at grassroots level, something quietly significant is happening: more and more people are using AI to advise, negotiate, communicate and make decisions. Outcomes are improving as a result.If more and more people consistently make better decisions, the cumulative effect of all these better outcomes will be enormous. Better decisions, better communication, fewer conflicts, fewer bad deals, fewer toxic relationships dragged out past their natural end. The incremental gains, multiplied across enough people, look genuinely civilisational.Subscribe to this amazing publication.The really profound shift is not that AI writes emails, and makes you generally more productive. We have always “outsourced” cognition. Writing outsourced memory. Calculators outsourced maths. SatNavs outsourced navigation. AI is outsourcing judgement itself.I was actually considering reaching out to somebody recently. AI advised me not to, and when it explained why, I realised it was right. Contacting them would have been selfish and unfair.Now, obviously, there are downsides.By relying on AI, parts of the brain undoubtedly atrophy. I used to remember phone numbers effortlessly. Now I barely know anybody’s number because my phone remembers for me. The same thing happened with memory generally. Human beings once had extraordinary recall because they had to memorise stories, events and oral histories. Writing killed that. I had a good sense of direction, which I barely tap now I have Google Maps et al. AI will also increase manipulation, cowardice and passivity. As individuals we become weaker and dependent. Eyesight was probably better before we invented glasses.There is also something deeply unsettling about a computer programmed by someone anonymous who isn’t you helping make your decisions for you. Part of living is making wrong decisions, suffering the consequences and learning not to repeat them. But frankly, I'm done with bad decisions. I've made enough wrong decisions for one life. I’m 56 now. I just want to make optimum choices and have a really good next three or four decades, or however long I’ve got left.There are also obvious dystopian implications. AI companies now potentially have access to thoughts, fears, fantasies and private conversations that once existed only inside your own head. What happens when AI records become admissible evidence? What happens when the things you've confided to a chatbot are subpoenaed? These are not hypothetical worries. They are coming. Stupid conversations with a chatbot that you thought were just in your head could be used as evidence against you. There are all sorts of dark possibilities.But on balance, and with eyes wide open, I think the impact is going to be enormously beneficial. Not just for individuals but for mankind as a whole. In case you missed it, this week's commentary is on copper. Not the sexiest subject, I grant you, but an important one, and I think it's one of the better pieces I've written in a while. I also have an interview with Goldfinger Capital about The Secret History of Gold, which continues to get extremely encouraging feedback..Thank you, as always, for subscribing to The Flying Frisby.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
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Copper: The Metal AI Actually Runs On
3w ago00:03:45Tap to summarizeThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comThere’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 look at copper. Was last week’s action just a spike that will soon fade away? Or was it part of something much bigger? TLDR - the second one.Let’s start with a 50-year chart to give you some historical context.Copper peaked in the great inflationary blow-off of 1980, before spending the next twenty years doing essentially nothing. The 1980s and 1990s were an age of globalisation, disinflation and cheap commodities. Who cared about hard assets or mining? Then came the rise of China and the supercycle of the 2000s. China urbanised, industrialised and turned itself into a superpower. Copper exploded higher, peaking in 2011. That boom then gave way to a long hangover. The 2010s were dominated by tech stocks. Mining died a death. To survive mining companies cut capex, reduced exploration and focused on balance sheet repair rather than growth. That decade of underinvestment laid the foundations of the shortages being revealed today.Meanwhile, while investors were busy buying software companies and meme stocks, the world quietly decided it wanted to electrify everything.The really striking thing about the chart is the speed of the rallies when they come. Then the amount of time copper spends going nowhere.Now here’s the ten-year chart, with the one-year moving average in red and the 55-day moving average in blue. To my eye, copper appears to have formed a major bottom in 2020 during the Covid panic. The violent correction in 2022 increasingly looks like an early-cycle shakeout.Technically, the chart is undeniably bullish. Copper is trading above both moving averages, both of which are rising strongly. Momentum remains positive.That said, in the short term, the metal does look extended. Sentiment has become hyper bullish. Every investment bank now seems to have a copper supercycle note. Type “copper” into X and see what comes up: we are going to the moon on a copper superjet (powered by electricity natch).Now here’s the three-year chart, to which I’ve added the 50- and 200-day moving averages and the RSI. The trend is your friend, and it is up.Historically, copper tends to be seasonally weaker over the summer months, and this is a spiky chart within its uptrend. I think we see some range-trading and consolidation over the summer months, which will provide something of a buying opportunity. But the charts are only half the story.The more interesting question is why copper may be entering an entirely new structural era.
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Namibia: Africa’s Empty Frontier
May 1300:09:12Tap to summarizeNamibia 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.Today that coast is known as the Skeleton Coast because of shipwrecks and whale bones.Three hundred years later, having decided there was too much tropical disease in Gambia, the British looked at Namibia as a possible penal colony. They decided it was too inhumane.It was Germans and Finns who eventually settled on the coast another hundred years on.Namibia is about three and a half times the size of the UK, and yet its population is only 3 million. It is big and empty. Most of it is desert.I’ve got more endless expanse shots than I know what to do with. Here is just one of them. Plus a short vid shot from a hot air balloon which gives you an idea of the sheer endlessness of the place.Even in the capital city, Windhoek, there is just so much space.The only two places in the world that are less densely populated are Greenland and Mongolia. Namibia beats even Australia and Mauritania, which is mostly Sahara desert.Demographically, the country is roughly 87% black, 6% white and 5% mixed race, with the Ovambo people to the north making up about half the population. I saw a few Asians while I was there too.A country of extremesThere are still bushmen and other ancient hunter-gatherer people living as they have lived for centuries, yet other parts of the country are extremely modern. There are shopping centres to rival our own, good roads (the best in Africa, I was told), great restaurants, commercial farms and more. About half the population is urban. The national language is English, adopted after the country gained independence from South Africa in 1990, but I found that people, black and white, would as often speak amongst themselves in Afrikaans and, up north, Ovambo. On the coast German is widely spoken. (The country was a German colony from the 1880s until World War I, when South Africa, then British, invaded. Hence it has great beer.)The controlling political force is the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), which has governed since independence in 1990. SWAPO is nominally social democratic, but there are still strong liberation-era left-wing instincts, as evidenced by streets in the capital renamed after independence: Fidel Castro Street, Robert Mugabe Avenue and so on.All being said, Namibia functions well.It is a stable democracy with rule of law, an independent judiciary (the government sometimes loses cases), relatively free markets and low crime by African (and European) standards. Immigration law is tight too. Having seen the problems stemming from mass immigration into South Africa, Namibia has taken a more controlled approach.Indeed I heard repeated frustrations from mining companies trying to obtain visas for geologists and mining engineers where the local expertise either does not exist or is employed elsewhere.Official unemployment is 37%, but I heard from several different sources that the real number is above 50%. 50%! Very sad.Nominal GDP per capita sits around US$5,000, roughly double that adjusted for purchasing power, which puts it above most of sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank classifies Namibia as a lower-middle-income country, alongside countries such as Albania, Argentina and Belize. But these numbers are misleading.The country has vast wealth through its natural resources and related industries: uranium, copper, diamonds, fishing and tourism. Spread that revenue across just 3 million people and the averages look impressive.There is also serious rural poverty.Namibia combines first-world infrastructure with third-world unemployment.The currency is pegged to the South African rand, not one I would have chosen. Official inflation sits in the 2-3% range.About 88% of the country’s sovereign debt is held domestically, and there appears to be healthy demand for its bonds. The country has also recently begun a sovereign wealth fund, which is reportedly growing at an impressive 16% since 2022. The central bank has recently also implemented a gold acquisition programme. Kudos.The country has high institutional savings and one the larger stock exchanges in sub-Saharan Africa.Food is cheap, protein in particular. The country has an enormous cattle herd, almost as large as its population. Recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in neighbouring countries are therefore a cause for concern, as you can imagine. (Not my bag, but I reckon there is an opportunity exporting Namibian biltong to the UK, where it is expensive. I brought back loads). Other goods, however, can be expensive because the country relies heavily on imports.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.The main industries - tourism and natural resourcesPorts are expanding. The railways are not great, though I hear they will be improved. The roads, however, are excellent, as I said. Namibia is also the world’s third-largest uranium producer after Kazakhstan and Canada. Chinese interests hold majority stakes in the country’s three largest uranium mines, not to mention other metals.Oil and gas have recently been discovered offshore. Shell plc is one of the pioneers.As for gold, Namibia only really became a meaningful gold player after independence, since when roughly 15 million ounces have been discovered, much of it alongside copper. Among the larger players is B2 Gold (BTO.TO), which is well known in the country. Large parts of the country remain un- or under-explored. And I think that is where a lot of the big opportuities lie.There also appear to be rare earth deposits in some abundance. Kendrik Resources (KEN.L) recently made some progress here. Solar, wind and hydrogen projects are also attracting investment tooChinese money helped build the SWAPO headquarters, and they are investing significantly in mines in the country. Of note is that the USA recently spent heavily developing their embassy. It is big. Former Trump attorney John Giordano is now ambassador, a surprisingly high -profile appointment for such a low-profile country.One theory I heard repeatedly was that, given deteriorating US relations with South Africa, Washington increasingly sees Namibia as strategically important in terms of Atlantic access, energy routes and influence in the south Atlantic. Not quite the Panama Canal or Strait of Hormuz, but it could be something of a chokepoint. Namibia feels like a country at the cusp of something.It has space, resources, energy, political stability and strategic importance.Next week I want to look in more detail at Namibia as an investment destination, particularly its mining sector, where some very interesting things may be developing.My thanks go to to Rowland Brown and Chanel Marais of Cirrus Capital for bringing me to Namibia and for organizing what was a brilliant and instructuve conference.Thank you for reading the Flying Frisby.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
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Gold and Humanity
May 1000:05:53Tap to summarizeAs 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 still there somewhere, even if it’s sitting in sunken Spanish galleon off the coast of Tobago.There are just under 7 billion ounces of gold in the world, and just over 8 billion people, so about 4/5 of an ounce per person. Until the gold rushes of the 19th century, there were roughly 2/5 of an ounce per person.As you can see by the chart below there is now more gold per capita than ever before.What’s really interesting, however, is how closely cumulative gold supply tracks global population growth. The two rise at remarkably similar rates over centuries.Gold supply expands slowly, organically and roughly in line with humanity itself. No central bank planned it that way.Right there is why gold is nature’s money. But there are some changes afoot.Population growth is slowing rapidly. It is actually going backwards in some parts of the world. The Matt Ridley argument is that this is a result of prosperity. Merryn Somerset Webb thinks it’s even more specific than that. She blames smart phones. She may have a point. South Korea is perhaps the most advanced smart phone nation. When I went there in 2015 I remember thinking that, technologically, it was a good 10 years ahead of Western Europe. Recently we learn it has the slowest population growth of the lot.Annual gold mining supply is at record levels, however: 3,600 tonnes last year. Does this mean gold per capita is set to increase?Probably but there is a big but and it looks like this.How about that for a table?No new major discoveries - 2 million ounces or more - in 2023 or 2024. As far as I know there were three in 2025 - in China, in Saudi Arabia and in Iran.But look at the trend. We have been below the 10-discovery threshold since 2009. Discoveries peaked in 1995.The long-term implications of this are enormous. If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.Gold is not like other commodities, copper, oil or wheat, say, where annual production dramatically affects price because so much of what was produced previously has already been consumed. Almost all the gold ever mined still exists somewhere, as i say.But mining supply still matters at the margin.The collapse in discoveries has not yet translated into falling production because it takes such a long time to bring a deposit into production. The average time from discovery to production is now around 17 years.But we are now roughly 17 years on from the late 2000s, when the discovery rate began to fall off a cliff.In other words, we may not be far away from the point where the collapse in discoveries finally starts feeding through into stagnating or declining mine supply.And unlike previous cycles, there do not appear to be dozens of giant new deposits waiting quietly in the wings.(Obviously, a higher gold price offsets some of this because lower-grade ore becomes economic to mine.)Here is the long-term production chart. You can see how supply has largely plateaued over the last ten years .Perhaps that also helps explain why, after 50,000 years of use (yes, that figure is correct), demand for gold from individuals, institutions and central banks remains so strong.Lots of interviews to share with you this weekI’ve been promoting the release of The Secret History of Gold in the US. First up with my US BFF, Tom WoodsOn Financial Sense with Jim Puplava (audio only)On Kitco News with Jeremy SzafronAnd, finally, Clem ChambersLast, but not least, here is this week’s commentary, in case you missed it, looking at the precarious state of the UK’s finances.Thank you for being a subscriber to the Flying Frisby.Until next timeDominic 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
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Gold Waits While Britain Cracks
May 700:05:34Tap to summarizeThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comIt 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 gilts, ie UK long-term government borrowing costs, hit 5.75% this week, the highest level since 1998, and the highest in the G7.It’s local election day in the UK today, one of those events when we are kidded into thinking that a cross on a piece of paper is going to make the slightest iota of difference. This has barely been discussed as an issue, when it should be front and centre.The cost of servicing UK debt is now north of £100 billion, roughly 7% of annual expenditure.All you young folks grinding away at your desks to pay Income Tax, that’s what much your effort is being expended on: servicing debt. It’s not like you are contributing to anything new. As I say in Daylight Robbery, debt is a tax on the future. UK public spending is now £48,000 per household. That’s how out of control things now are.This is only going to get worse. You have to own gold.One reason sterling has held together better than many expected is that UK interest rates remain high.Whether the Bank of England formally raises rates further or not, the market itself is already tightening financial conditions. Happy mortgage day, everyone. The post-2008 era of low rates is well and truly over.So-called yield curve control will have to come, to stop the government admitting they are insolvent. And that means further currency debasement.All the political turmoil that’s coming as Labour tries to get rid of Keir Starmer after today’s rout is not going to help. The next General Election is still three years away. Labour will put that off for as long as possible as half of them are going to lose their seats.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.When the next General Election does come, the result is going to be, as they say in women’s circles, “well hung”. No party has more than 25% of the vote. Reform is currently polling highest on 25% (next are the Tories and Labour on 19%), but thanks to our electoral system Reform’s 25% will not necessarily translate into 25% of seats, unless deals are done. The most likely victor will be a coalition, probably RefCon, but don’t discount the possibility of GreenLab.I should perhaps say this. 5.75% is not “instant crisis” serious, and the yield has come off a little amidst the latest potential for peace in Iran. Today it’s 5.63%. We are now at the “the market is starting to ask questions” stage.For context, in 1992 long-dated yields went to 9% even while the base rate hit 15% on Black Wednesday itself.We can survive 5.75% for a little bit, but as you can see from the chart below: this is a upwards trend and it is going higher.The UK is uniquely vulnerable: large fiscal deficits, persistent current account deficits, high debt-to-GDP, high taxes, high energy costs, heavy state-spending commitments, no political appetite for belt-tightening, low growth, low productivity, a service-sector-led economy much of which can be replaced by AI, financial services suffocated by regulation, short average debt maturity rolling constantly into new rates, the Bank of England now selling gilts not buying. Then there are the demographic issues: an ageing population, the most productive leaving, and a reliance on foreign capital which, at present, is not coming but going.What does this all translate to? Higher mortgage rates, increased government refinancing costs, higher taxes as a result, forced spending cuts, pension funds and leveraged financial institutions coming under pressure, weaker growth and sterling vulnerability.If you are a reader from outside the UK, you can look at the UK and know what is likely coming to you soon after. The government itself will get into a terminal loop: higher yields → higher debt servicing → larger deficits → more issuance → higher yields.
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The Problem with Mining Bull Markets
May 600:08:24Tap to summarizeSomething 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 might already be over, for all I know. Or there might be another five years in the tank.I’m asking this question because I’m finding myself more and more tempted by high-risk mining exploration plays. I’m seeing value in companies that today have a market cap of C$50 million that a year ago I would have been more reluctant to invest in when their market caps were under C$10 million.Last week I bought one. I like it. But the way I bought it ignored all the risk-aversion built up over ten years of bear market.If we are in a secular bull trend for metals, then companies like this will do very well. But come a bear market, they will grind lower and lower, eventually reaching a point where they trade for little more than their cash value.My broad thesis for gold and silver, as you know, is that we trade sideways for a year, while the market works through the excesses of 2025. A mid-cycle pause, so to speak, before we eventually go to the $7 to $10,000 by the end of the decade. At present I feel more bullish about base metals such as copper and zinc. Rising prices here will preserve the bull market in mining more generally.But this is just one writers’ thesis.The mining cycleSo today we are going to study two long-term charts.I have got a fantastic chart of the copper price, adjusted for inflation, going all the way back to 1900. Copper is a good proxy for industrial metals and to some extent gold and silver as well. There is a lot to learn from this chart, some of it quite unexpected.Yes, mining and mining methods have changed over the years. Grades used to be a lot higher (there were higher amounts of metal in the rock) but this is offset by improved extraction methods meaning lower grade rock is now economic. Bottom line the world is consuming more copper than ever before.The mining cycle however still exists. Today, if anything it takes longer than ever before. If there is a shortage of supply of metal resulting in a price rise, it still takes many years and a lot of investment to increase supply from existing mines. Companies, which tend to be risk-averse, have to be persuaded for example that the higher price warrants the extra investment - that the higher price is here to stay. Once the investment is made it can take a long time to build out the mine. Then there are regulators to get past. This can take years too.As for new mines it can take over a decade or more to take a mine from discovery to production. Making the discovery in the first place can take years too.All the while there is a shortage of metal and prices keep on creeping up.Eventually there will be an excess of metal and prices start falling again. Then all the mines need to be shut down. That takes time. Once they’re shut and everyone has lost their shirt, there is considerable reluctance to ever do anything again (see my opening comment)Then the metal price starts going up again.The world may be unrecognisable from the first half of the 20th century. The mining cycle is unchanged however.So what do these cycles actually look like over the long term? And more importantly, where are we now?To answer that, we need to look at two charts. One, as I say, goes back to 1900. The other is the oldest mining index there is.One thing to keep in mind as you look at these charts: the biggest gains in mining don’t come at the end of a bull market. They come early. 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
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Constable Country, the Cracks Beneath and Opportunity
Apr 2600:05:56Tap to summarizeThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comThis 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 of the place.Here are some snaps to get you in the zone.I went with a French friend who wanted to see the “real England”, but not too far from Stansted Airport.As we drove into East Bergholt, I began, as I always do as soon as I see them, to despair at the ugliness of modern buildings. No wonder we have so many NIMBYs, when what gets built around beautiful villages is so bland and ugly. Objection is both rational and natural.But then we turned a corner and everything was suddenly stunning.It’s not a part of the world I knew. I had lazily assumed all of Essex looked like Basildon. It doesn’t. It was glorious. You could really see the Dutch and Flemish influence in the architecture and the colours they were painted - so different to the equally beautiful Cotswolds, where I was last weekend doing gigs.We were only sixty miles from London, but it still felt like an England of old, unblighted.My French companion could not understand what I had been moaning about when I complain about decline. This was the England she knew growing up, and she got excited by everything. Scones. Tea. Churches. Beautiful landscapes. Polite conversation. Phone boxes. Properly kept gardens. Even the beer. “It’s not cold,” she said, before promptly downing it.My oft-cited complaint that the England she knew is disappearing seemed nonsense. There was no evidence of it here.As we walked into Manningtree, the buildings got ugly again. Warehouses and industrial buildings, in particular. Nineteenth century warehouses were often things of beauty. Why can 21st century warehouses not be? (The answer lies in our system of measurement, but that’s for another day).Then we learnt about Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, who operated here, exploiting the social upheaval of the English Civil War to have hundreds of women executed as witches. Among his methods of getting to the “truth” he used sleep deprivation to extract confessions; he tied victims to chairs and dropped them into the estuary. If they floated, they were witches. If they sank, they weren’t. I guess the victims lost either way. He strip-searched women looking for signs of the mark of the devil. If he couldn’t find any he pricked them with knives until he found the signs he was looking for. Just horrible. Maybe the English past isn’t quite so idyllic after all.Here’s what makes it worse. For every witch he successfully hunted down, the government gave him fee. He got very rich. Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome. A lot of innocent dead women. An early gruesome example of the law of unintended consequences. Remind me why I’m a libertarian again.Today, if we are heading into the civil war many think we are, who knows what kind of witch hunts we are going to see in the name of some nuts ideology?We caught a train from Mistley back to Manningtree. More grim modern housing. Lots of it too. More walking then a short river boat tour. We mentioned we were staying at a village up the road, East Bergholt, and one of the locals declared this was the last chance to enjoy it before more new-build goes up. “We need 1.5 million homes,” he said. “The question is, do we have 1.5 million people who are going to buy them?”Articulated right there is the property crisis coming to a town near you.I have long argued that beautiful property will keep its value. Ugly new build won’t. Beautiful is pretty much synonymous with period. It was built using traditional measures, where proportion is intrinsic. No such proportion is inherent to metric. We are already seeing the unravelling of the new-build market in London. That unravelling is coming to everywhere there is ugly new build, whether blocks of flats or houses. We did find one modern close in East Bergholt that was actually beautiful by the way. So it’s possible. But it’s the exception, not the rule.This is one of the reasons I invest so much of my capital outside the UK. I don’t like sterling, so I hold gold and bitcoin, and I don’t like gilts. A weakening property market, which is happening right on cue, will create problems for both.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.Idyllic corners of England do still exist. Many of them. UK shares already offer value. There is a lot to like in the UK, as my French companion kept pointing out. But there are also big problems ahead, with a leadership class that, shall we say, falls short.Opportunities abroad, howeverI sit regularly on a roundtable with Doug Casey and a number of other mining newsletter writers. A company presents. The experts grill them. The company logs off, and then we discuss it.I liked this week’s so much I bought shares while the presentation was still happening. The company is …
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What I’m Doing With My Money Right Now (Mostly Nothing)
Apr 2300:05:20Tap to summarizeHappy 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 only for it to peter away almost as quickly.You’ve got to be long oil and gas. Buy. There’s no point. The strait is open. Sell.With so much geopolitical tension you have to be long gold and silver. Debt, deficits, debasement, de-dollarisation, conflict, central bank buying. But gold and silver aren’t moving. They had their move last year.Equities make even less sense. You don’t want to be long equities. You need to reduce risk. World War Three is coming. And the S&P 500 has just broken out to record highs.So you end up with this strange situation where the stories are compelling, but the price action is inconsistent. Narrative is not confirming price. Price is not confirming narrative.That’s usually where mistakes get made.You feel like you should be doing something. You look for reasons to act. You react to headlines. You convince yourself you’ve spotted an opportunity. And then the move reverses, or fades or never quite follows through.These are the environments that chop people up. False breakouts. False breakdowns. Strong opinions built on weak signals.That’s why I am such a big advocate of the Dolce Far Niente portfolio.Sometimes doing nothing is the best policy. In fact, often.We had a position in oil and gas so we didn’t need to panic when the bombing of Iran began. We had a position in equities, so even though I was arguing this would be a typical second year of a presidential term, with no meaningful movement until the final quarter, we had exposure to this latest (probably stimulus driven)rally in the S&P 500 to new highs. You can also be wrong, as is often the case when you are a commentator - and it doesn’t matter. If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.What am I doing with my own money?Not that much to be honest.I’m looking around and I can’t see any obvious mispricings. There are areas that look interesting. Software looks attractive. Bitcoin, which has increasingly behaved like a proxy for that part of the market, is quietly ticking higher again. Chemicals look cheap.Copper too is looking attractive. The long-term story is obvious: electrification, underinvestment, constrained supply. What is notable is that the miners are starting to behave better than the underlying metal. That is often where these moves begin. Our new copper play is already up 20% in barely a fortnight.There is a Namibian copper story I am looking at too. More on that soon.Nor am I trimming anything.There is no euphoria to sell into. No obvious excess. And equally no panic to buy. So positions are left alone.There is one area where I do have a clear opinion, and that is oil and gas. But my decision is to hold existing positions rather than add new ones.The market seems to be treating the Middle East situation as temporary. I’m not convinced that’s right - at least not the effects on oil and gas, and I’m staying long, despite the temptation to take profits. I think we are in a new bull market. Positioning in the sector still doesn’t look extreme. Sentiment is not euphoric. Oil could drift lower if tensions ease and the market continues to treat events as passing rather than structural. But this feels more like the beginning of a bull market rather than the end.The same goes for gold and silver - mid-cycle pause is my prognosis there. I think bitcoin probably outperforms them over the next 12 months, but If I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter because I own both.Doing nothing feels like inaction. It isn’t. It is a decision not to play a game where the signals are unclear and the odds are not obviously in your favour.Right now, that is where I am.If you’re interested in my three largest oil positions, you can find them here.Until next time,DominicThe latest edition of Atlas Pulse is out now. In my view it’s the best gold newsletter out there and it’s free. Read it 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
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