Keep those long oil positions.

I can’t pretend to be an authority on Middle Eastern geopolitics, but the control the Houthi rebels now have over the Yemen Red Sea coast, together with the closure of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, look pretty significant to me, and not in a good way.

Meanwhile, I have lots to share today, starting with this week’s commentary.

We are going into the buy zone for the next bitcoin cycle and, if you haven’t already, I think you should be aiming to have your long positions in place by November-December.

There’s nothing worse than being on the sidelines while bitcoin is going on one of its runs and everyone is crowing about it, and that is not an experience I want readers of this publication to go through. Actually, there are many worse things, but you take my point.

I think bitcoin goes to $200,000 on the next cycle, roughly 2.5x where we are today.

I show you the best way to play it without having to deal with the technical complexities of cold storage or infuriating bureaucratic FCA hoops. I’ll also show you how to outperform bitcoin, so that if bitcoin 2.5xs, my tips should see many times that.

So take look.

How come pineapples are so cheap?

I think you will enjoy this 3-minute video which I posted earlier in the week on my comedy substack - if you haven’t already seen it.

It marvels at how a lucky we are to be able to enjoy fruit grown on the other side of the world at such low prices. How it is even possible?

Dominic Frisby's Comedy News

The Pineapple

A short and gently humorous poem for you today…

Listen now

5 days ago · 94 likes · 26 comments · Dominic Frisby

Here it is on YouTube, if you want to save on clicks:

New Orleans

Let me also plug the New Orleans Investment Conference, which runs from October 28-31. I’ll be there and there is an array of great speakers.

The Liz Truss Show

And finally I appeared on our former PM’s podcast this week talking money and banking. Have a watch.

Thanks for being a subscriber to the Flying Frisby.

Until next time,

Dominic

Bitcoin is both volatile and cyclical.

You get periods of extraordinary gains. But then you get periods of extraordinary losses. But …

If you can buy during low points in the cycle, that volatility can work in your favour.

And the house view is that we are within a month or two of the low point right here and now.

It might be that the very low was on July 1st at $58,000. It might be that we need to give that price one more retest this autumn. Either way you want to be sure that by November-December, if you haven’t already, you have your long position in place, ready for the next run.

There is nothing worse than watching others enjoy a bitcoin bull market while you’re on the sidelines.

I have made many mistakes over the years, but I do get some things right, and last time around, in August 23, I wrote up Microstrategy, now Strategy (NDX.MSTR) close to the lows, and some readers made twenty times their money. It made me very popular.

I am planning a similar coup this time.

Today, I want to explain the bitcoin cycle, where I think we are in it and how I would get exposure.

If you are one of those people who didn’t buy Bitcoin at $500 or $1,000 and have spent the years since telling people how you could have bought it, but missed out, now is your chance to move on from that story.

And if you are one of those people who says, “I don’t understand it,” and uses that as a reason not to invest, I’m going to address that too.

For the avoidance of doubt, I have some history here. In 2014 I wrote what was, as far as I am aware, the first book about bitcoin published by a mainstream publisher. I have been following this thing for a long time.

“Read it and glimpse into the future,” said Sir Richard Branson. Though it’s not clear he did actually read it.

I have a target of $200,000 for the next cycle, perhaps 2.5x where we are today. (Bitcoin currently sits around $78,000

But I am going to show you a simple way to play this where the returns could be much, much greater than 2.5x.

So let’s get into it.

The four stages of the Bitcoin cycle

The bitcoin cycle goes something like this

1. Quiet accumulation.

2. Rampant bull market and blow-off top.

3. Monster correction.

4. Frustrating consolidation.

Then the process starts again.

This cycle is remarkably consistent and quite easy to identify. I think we are currently somewhere between stages 4 and 1, and that is when you want to be getting positioned.

The high came at $128,000 a year ago. Bitcoin was on the front cover of every paper. The US was going to adopt a bitcoin standard and fiat money was on its way out. Something like that. It duly crashed.

Now it’s going to be destroyed by Quantum computing or something. All the talent has left bitcoin for AI. Nobody is talking about it any more. And now, with the Coldcard disaster followed by the Blockstream hack, we have had the requisite failures in major players which mark bear market lows.

The great difficulty with bear markets is psychological. It is easy to buy when it is going up. You get sucked in. It is much harder to buy when everyone is telling you it is finished.

Another simple, but eerily accurate way of playing the bitcoin cycle is the 500-day rule. Buy 500 days before the halving and sell 500 days after it.

A bitcoin halving is when the rewards paid to miners reduces. This happens every four years, and the next one is due around April 2028. We are perhaps 580 days before the next halving.

(One thing I have noticed is that when everyone knows about a cycle, they tend to come earlier, hence my alerting you to this one now and not in 80 days time).

Again it means you want to be positioned before December.

Read more

Time stops.

Absorb the weather, whatever form it takes, but sunny is best. Breathe in the air. Sleep as the boat gently bobs up and down. Contemplate. Talk. Play games. Eat. Swim.

Peace descends and nothing much matters any more.

I’ve done this several times on the Thames and, having just spent a few days in Serbia, I now plan to do the same thing on the Danube. I just had a little taster.

I flew out to Serbia because I was speaking and performing at Liberpulco, the European brother of Anarchapulco, an anarchy meet-up - I hesitate to call it a conference - held every year in Acapulco. The idea is that the European version should take place in Liberland.

Wait! What? Where?

Gornja Siga is a small area of river islands and floodplain in the Danube about three square miles in size (more when the river is low). For some context, it would be about the size of Gibraltar.

The Danube forms the border between Serbia and Croatia. Following the break-up of Yugoslavia, there was no agreement as to who owned this floodplain. It was terra nulla.

Enter Vít Jedlička, a Czech politician and entrepreneur, who declared the territory the Free Republic of Liberland and has been trying to establish his own micronation ever since. “We are building the greatest tax haven the world has ever seen,” I once heard him declare in a presentation.

Jedlička is a wonderful speaker, a great publicist and highly entrepreneurial. For obvious reasons, the project appealed to alienated libertarians around the world.

He began selling passports and citizenship. He appointed various ministers. The nation’s coffers were held in bitcoin. The nation even declares an annual profit.

However, he needs another nation to recognise Liberland, which no one has yet done (despite, I gather, Argentine president Javier Millei being a citizen), and of course the idea has gone down like a bucket of sick at the UN.

You also can’t currently access the island by boat from Serbia without running into the Croatian police. If you should attempt to dock your boat, the police will arrest you. I think the grounds are entering the EU illegally. I swam to within about 5 feet of depth but then lost my nerve as the Croatia police boat approached and swam back into deeper water.

Keeping a boat permanently stationed there is costing the Croatian police millions. Most days nothing happens. The police just sit there bored. What a waste of a life.

You can access Liberland from the Croatian side, and some settlers live there in tents. Might for fun for a bit, but probably not a long-term option except for the most dedicated.

Jedlička has now bought a plot of land beside a lake in the nearby Serbian town of Apatin, called it Ark and declared a government in exile. They have built a campsite, a small conference centre and various other facilities. It feels as much like a holiday resort as a country.

Here is your author by said lake giving his best salmon impersonation.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the whole thing, but the project appeals to me if only because I find its sheer irreverence very funny. And because everyone wants to start their own nation. Who actually does?

So that was what brought me to Serbia. And I am most grateful to the organizers for having me.

Dogs and cigarettes

We flew into Belgrade, which itself is a tricky place to get to (try getting there from the south of France) and from there drove three hours to the town of Sombor and our hotel.

I loved Sombor.

I felt as though I had gone back in time to how European cities used to be: sleepy, friendly and safe. The country is 99% Christian Orthodox, and, from what little I experienced, both there and in Belgrade pretty monocultural. Serbs mostly seem to speak very good English. They are shy, polite, respectful, ambitious, hard working, driven and they take whatever they are doing very seriously.

It’s not like many other countries I could mention where you get accosted everywhere you go. People mostly left you alone to get on with whatever you were doing. But if you needed anything, they couldn’t have been more helpful.

In Belgrade, for example, taxis don’t seem to stop on the street and there is no Uber. It took me more than 24 hours to work this out. But randoms on the street were more than happy to stop, get their phones out and call a taxi for me. If I asked a random in London to call me a taxi, Lord knows where that would end up.

The food was delicious. Lots of trout, catfish and pork. Not particularly cheap.

People looked pretty healthy, I must say. No rampant obesity. Although there were plenty of older men who looked as though they had drunk their fair share of beer over the years.

That was another thing that took me back in time. Everybody smokes. Lots of sitting around in cafés, smoking and presumably discussing existentialism. You go into restaurants and there is a smoking area and a non-smoking area, and the smoking area is often more crowded. I’m so used to non-smoking restaurants that I have to say I didn’t particularly like the smell.

Belgrade was the same. Not particularly cheap. Some excellent food. As good a steak as I have ever eaten.

Av ery high dog per capita ratio too. Everyone seems to own a dog and, what I liked, even in the capital many seemed to walk their dogs off a lead. Like the UK in the 1970s early 80s before pitbulls, health and safety arrived.

Belgrade’s location where the Danube and Sava rivers meet means it has been enormously important strategically. How about this for a stat? It has been fought over in 115 wars and razed 44 times

Lots of splendid Orthodox churches. Look at all that gold leaf.

Quite a bit of graffiti too. I couldn’t understand what it said, but presumably something to do with the war.

It has an unpopular and corrupt government that faces weekly protests. According to one taxi driver, always a reliable source of political opinion, it promises to join the EU and never does. Like somewhere else I could mention, the population is split 50:50 as to whether joining the EU is a good idea or not.

A beautiful central park with a fortress that looks like Helms Deep. Lovely walks along the Danube. Lots of views. Here’s one of them.

I managed to rupture a tendon in my knee playing pickleball a month back, and this gave me an unexpected insight into the Serbian healthcare system. My knee was hurting so I took to google and got an appointment that same day with an orthopaedic surgeon. The clinic was not in the centre of town so we got some insight into ‘the real Belgrade”. What struck me was the relationship between the doctors and their patients. It seemed so good. They all seemed to know each other. There was affection. They seemed to feel part of the same community. It was so good to see.

I then had an MRI the following day, all for about a quarter of what I would have expected to pay in the UK. That was a good experience too.

I liked Serbia and will go back. Next time I am going to get a boat and drift up the Danube for a few days. There is something about being on a river that strips life down to its essentials. For a few days at least, I will drift, gently sway, bob up and down and nothing much will matter any more.

Here is this week’s commentary, in case you missed it.

Until next time,

Happy Sunday,

Dominic

Yes, physical gold is a safe haven, but gold also attracts a lot of speculative capital, particularly the paper markets. Gold futures are among the most traded futures in the world, and there is nothing physical about them. So when there is a panic, gold tends to sell off along with everything else as liquidity dries up and everyone rushes to cash.

The US dollar is actually the safe haven, except that it isn’t, because you are bleeding 7 or 8% of value every year to money supply growth.

I am getting so many messages at the moment asking me what to do “when the collapse comes”, as though the collapse of fiat is a foregone conclusion. I don’t think it is. I think continued depreciation is more likely. Fiat could collapse, of course, but we are in a probabilities game and I’d give it perhaps a 25% probability, while continued depreciation I’d put at well over 50% likelihood.

At present we have three financial storms on the horizon. Whether they actually reach us or not remains to be seen, but we should be aware of them nonetheless, so that we can be prepared if they do eventually close in.

Nasty stock market correction ahead?

They are, first, the fact that US markets are so leveraged to AI. You don’t even need the AI bubble to pop, you just need it to deflate a little bit, and it takes the S&P500 down with it.

It’s not like I, and many others besides, haven’t mentioned this before, but it bears mentioning again: the Magnificent Seven, which are highly AI oriented, currently account for about a third of the combined market capitalisation of the S&P’s 500 companies. Ten years ago the equivalent concentration was around 15%, and that seemed like a lot.

From an asset allocation perspective - particularly with so much passive investing - this is dangerous, to put it mildly. Concentration is fine when markets are going up. If you’re concentrated in the right sector you make a lot of money. But when things unravel you get your backside handed to you on a plate. Diversification spreads risk. The S&P500 “should” be diversified. It isn’t. Passive investing is supposed to be diversified. It isn’t.

But this has been the case for a long time. It hasn’t mattered. It doesn’t matter until it does.

Then there is the fact that every mid-term election years have a tendency to deliver autumn drawdowns. According to some sources, every year.

If we get a significant drawdown in the S&P500, the safehaven that is gold will sell off too.

Wobbly bonds

The second financial storm - is it even on the horizon any more? - lies in the government bond market. It’s worth remembering just how large the bond market is. The global value is estimated at around $145 trillion, so larger than the combined stock market which is closer to $130 trillion.

You have probably seen headlines this week saying bond markets are “on fire” and that governments are “in hock to the bond market”. Government debt across the developed world - and deficits with it - have risen dramatically since Covid, and the bond markets are not so willing to finance that borrowing at the ultra-low rates of the previous decade. Investors want more yield for their risk. Can’t say I blame them.

That basically translates as, “if I am to lend you money for ten years, you are going to have to pay me 5% interest, maybe more. 2% is no longer enough.”

As yields rise, the cost of servicing debt rises with them. Just a small increase can add tens of billions to annual interest payments.

The US has the enormous advantage of issuing the world’s reserve currency, but its huge structural deficits mean it is vulnerable. Japan, Britain, France and Italy are particularly at risk because they combine high debt burdens with fiscal or political problems.

Higher yields mean higher interest payments, which make deficits larger, requiring governments to issue still more debt. Vicious circle time. Governments try to avoid this by issuing shorter-term debt, but that merely increases refinancing exposure. The US Treasury’s increasing reliance on shorter maturities is therefore a concern.

Politicians might promise to spend more, but somebody has to buy their debt. If investors want a significantly higher return, governments may find that fiscal policy is increasingly dictated by the bond market rather than by politicians.

You may see that as a good thing and it probably is. Government spending has to be reined in somehow. But higher interest rates will put pressure on real estate and equities, and they increase the likelihood of defaults, which tend to snowball. See 2008 for more details.

Defaults should also increase demand for gold, because there is no liability or counterparty. But that doesn’t happen straight away, necessarily. The liquidity has to come out of the market first, and that means everything goes lower. Just gold doesn’t go down quite as much and it turns back up first.

The reaction of governments to a debt crisis will of course be to print. And that too benefits gold.

Which brings us to financial storm number three on the horizon, although this one is really a subset of two.

The UK. It is a standout amongst all of this. Our interest rates are already high, which means greater pressure on the government (they are the main reason sterling has held up). We have a new Prime Minister, who is currently trying to buy popularity and who seems to think that the solution to many of the UK’s problems is more government spending, not less, and that will require more borrowing and higher taxes. But he has inherited a precarious fiscal position and a bond market that is already demanding a substantial return. Ten-year gilt e yields have risen above 5%, their highest level in 18 years, and longer-term borrowing costs have reached a 28-year high, with 30-year gilt yields closing down on 6%.

The political situation is also awkward. The combined right-wing vote exceeds the Labour vote by some considerable distance, but it is split between the Tories, Reform and Restore. Does Burnham exploit this to call an early election? Will his backbenchers even let him if he wants to do this? Will an early election mean greater or less stability?

On the other hand high rates are at least propping sterling up. I say propping up. On a purchasing power parity basis, the UK is actually cheap and sterling too. Doesn’t mean it can’t get cheaper.

As UK nationals, we have inevitable exposure to sterling, but the prudent thing for a UK citizen to do is reduce sterling exposure. Hold non-government currencies is my advice: gold and bitcoin. I’ll have more on the la tter soon.

BOLD.L might be the way.

Most roads lead to gold at the moment but they are rocky roads.

Other matters

I have turned my Britain On Sale series of seven undervalued companies that could be taken out during the current takeover frenzy into a downloadable PDF report. Here it is.

There is a real opportunity here right here and now. I cannot stress that enough. The UK is cheap and being bought up.

And last but not least, The Secret History of Gold is now out in paperback in the UK, so get your copy now. It has had excellent reviews and has now reached best seller status, I’m delighted to report, with the audiobook especially popular.

A couple of interviews to share this week, both talking about the precious.

First, on Dutch channel Reinvent Money. (Host Paul Buitink is a bit of a legend by the way in the “alternative money” scene. Our paths first crossed in 2013, when he produced the Goldmoney podcast, which I used to host. Love that guy.)

Then last week I was in Serbia playing my libertarian songs at an anarchy conference in Liberland, as you do.

The Free Republic of Liberland, in case you are not familiar, is an island in the River Danube between Croatia and Serbia.

Here is your author looking fetching in his swimming trunks with Liberland in the background.

We couldn’t actually get to Liberland because the Croatian police wouldn’t let us land from our boat. So we swam in the waters nearby instead.

Gosh, the Danube is beautiful.

So conference was held up the road, and, as the sun went down, I entertained the freedom fighters with my anarcho-capitalist repertoire. Singing (the vastly underrated) Show Me The Way to Ancapistan to the citizens of Liberland is a memory I will always treasure.

Here are those dastardly Croatian police who would not let us in. (Those stick insects on the beach in the background by the way are settlers. Once of them is waving the Liberland flag.)

The police need to give their boat a good clean.

I should really do a full post about my trip to Serbia by the way. I just loved it. But in the meantime here is an interview I conducted while I was there with Tim Allen of the Free Cities Foundation. Another dude.

Britain On Sale

In other news, you might find this useful.

I have turned my Britain On Sale series of seven undervalued companies that could be taken out during the current takeover frenzy into a downloadable PDF report.

Here it is (paying subscribers only).

And, finally, here is this week’s article in case you missed it:

Thanks for reading the Flying Frisby.

Have a lovely Sunday.

Until next time,

Dominic

The Secret History of Gold is getting rave reviews and is available around the world at all good bookshops. The audiobook is especially popular.

And the paperback has just come out in the UK.

Today’s post is short and simple.

Investing is often best done that way.

The short of it is this: a new commodities supercycle has begun. It’s going to last several years. You want to be long natural resources and natural resource companies.

The declining purchasing power of national currencies muddies the waters, but I should say that the eventual price of commodities, metals, grains, meats, fossil fuels, softs such as coffee and cotton, is lower. This is especially the case if you measure them using a constant unit of account such as gold.

Unless you subscribe to peak oil theories and the like - that there is a finite amount of something and the resource is running out (and I have some sympathy with these arguments) - the simple fact is that we are getting better at producing these things.

As we get more productive, their price heads lower. Once we used manpower, picks and shovels to mine metals. Now we use huge great machines and robots. Grade may be declining, we may have to go to far-flung and inhospitable places to mine rock, just as demand is increasing, but human beings are also getting much better at mining.

The same goes for farming. We are getting better at it.

However, if prices fall too low, mines and farms close down. Investment dries up. This leads to shortages. Prices then go up to compensate, which leads to increased production, which leads to surfeits. Then prices fall again.

Thus commodities are highly cyclical, even if the broader direction of travel is lower.

Cycles tend to last many years. It takes a long time to get a mine producing. The last great commodity supercycle was the noughties. The one before that, in broad brush terms, was the 70s.

We are in another one now.

And the charts are confirming it.

Exhibit A

This first chart shows the SPDR S&P Global Natural Resources ETF, which owns natural-resource equities rather than the commodities themselves: It’s a basket of resource companies, mining, energy and agricultural.

There is a huge, 15-year saucer base from roughly 2011 to 2026.

There was a breakout from the major resistance zone, followed by a fall back to the zone for a retest, to kiss it goodbye, as they say.

It has now broken out to new highs.

$65 is your line in the sand. A sustained move below that and the breakout has failed. That’s where to manage your risk to.

Silver has done something similar, by the way, though over a much longer timeframe.

This chart is so bullish I couldn’t not mention it.

I’m always a bit hesitant with silver, as you know, but you absolutely must have some exposure in your portfolio, either to a miner or to some of the metal itself.

You can start quoting silly numbers for silver, if you like - $200/oz and more. I wouldn’t blame you.

Exhibit B

Next we have the ratio between the CRB, the Commodities Research Bureau Index, generally seen as a benchmark for commodities, and the S&P 500 over the last 3 0 years.

When that chart is rising, commodities beat the S&P 500. When it is falling, the S&P 500 is the outperformer.

Over the very long term there is a powerful downward bias for reasons described above - improved productivity. But there are periods when that trend reverses, most obviously during the noughties commodity bull market.

But on a relative basis, it’s insane how historically depressed commodities have become. (Over a 50 year period the chart is even more remarkable).

But the ratio has tested essentially the same low three times since 2020 and refused to break down. It is now making higher lows.

Is that a W I see before me?

Let’s zoom in and look at the last ten years.

Again, you can see the clear line in the sand at around 0.0425. It went briefly below that during the insanity of Covid, when oil went negative. But to all intents and purposes, the red zone is the low.

The ratio rallied hard in 2022, thanks in part to a certain invasion, then fell hard. But it never broke the 2020 low. It tested it and the retest held.

This year’s pullback - which started with another war - held at around 0.0475 as well. We now have what looks very much like a major base, with a succession of higher lows.

That is what I want to see.

The bottom line is that I think we have several years of natural-resource outperformance ahead of us.

It won’t always be thus. Nothing ever is.

But this isn’t the bottom. The bull market has already started. What I see from the charts above is confirmation.

Were I to compare this to the noughties bull market, I’d say we were somewhere around 2003-4 maybe. The secular low is behind us, some assets have already made enormous moves, but natural resources as a whole remain extraordinarily cheap relative to equities.

There will be corrections. There will be scares. Some commodities will do considerably better than others. Wall of worry. But for now the big asset-allocation call is simple:

Be long. Keep it simple.

And keep an eye on 0.0425 on that CRB/S&P 500 ratio. A sustained break below there would tell me the thesis is wrong.

My thanks go to all of you who filled out my survey last week. If you haven’t yet and have a spare three minutes, you can do that here. (Paying subscribers only please).

Disclaimer:

I am not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or any other regulatory body as a financial advisor. Therefore, any information provided in this newsletter does not constitute regulated financial advice. It is solely an expression of opinion. Small-cap stocks are inherently risky. Please conduct your own due diligence and consult with a financial advisor, if you have any doubts. Remember, markets can both rise and fall, especially in the case of small and mid-cap stocks. I am not aware of your individual financial circumstances, so only invest money that you can afford to lose.

This week I’m talking to the goldbugs’ goldbug, Alasdair Macleod.

I’m more of a continued decline, muddle through guy, but Alasdair, as you shall see, is very much in the outright collapse camp and he sees that outright collapse coming soon, as you shall hear - within the next 18 months!

Alasdair has spent decades studying financial markets, monetary history and the role of gold, and his argument is uncompromising: gold is money; pounds, dollars and euros are credit. I could not agree more. Confidence in fiat currencies is approaching breaking point, he says, and any currency that hopes to survive will ultimately have to become a credible substitute for gold through a proper gold standard.

We also look at the fragility of the bond markets, starling, Japan, China and what a 21st-century gold standard might actually look like.

My thanks as ever go to The Pure Gold Company for making these interviews possible.

This is the last of the videos for a while, as we take stock and evaluate. Broadly speaking, most of you seem to like them, so that’s good.

As always you watch the video above, or listen via the Substack app, Apple podcasts, Spotify et al.

And if you want to follow Alasdair and read his immensely popular Substack, you can do that here:

MacleodFinance Substack

Dedicated to explaining why gold is money and the rest is credit. Dedicated to explaining economics relevant to the preservation of wealth. And dedicated to explaining geopolitical developments relevant to investors.

By Alasdair Macleod

In other news, the latest edition of Charlie Morris’s Atlas Pulse is out now. It’s free, so get your copy here. Gold smells QE, he says. Well worth reading …

And, finally, here is this week’s piece - not on gold, but on copper. It’s telling us something.

Disclaimer:
Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. We do not know your financial circumstances. Do your own research.

I have been banging the drum for copper for some time, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Gold has the glamour, but many, including veteran investor Rick Rule, now see the greater opportunity in copper.

In summer 2024, I highlighted three copper companies Amerigo Resources (ARG.TO) at around C$1.75 and Arizona Sonoran Copper (ASCU.TO) at C$1.36 and QCCU (QCCU.V) at 12c . Amerigo and Arizona Sonora both hit C$8 on Monday meaning gains of ~350% and ~500%. QCCU, on the other hand, is still at 12c. You can’t win them all.

Back in May we noted that things were getting a little hot. The metal had just hit fresh highs; there was a plethora of investment bank supercycle notes and social media was full of predictions about imminent shortages.

The long-term story is intact but don’t chase it, we suggested. Copper tends to be weaker over the summer and some consolidation could give you a better buying opportunity.

We got a good opportunity in June but it did not last long, and here we are three months on with copper at ~$6.50/lb a couple of per cent below where we were in May.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out which way the trend is going in that particular chart.

The summer lull has been more of a pause than anything else.

Meanwhile, beneath the surface, the fundamental copper story is getting stronger.

Copper’s problem is not demand. It is supply.

We covered the demand side extensively in May. AI needs copper. Data centres need it. Power grids need it. Electric vehicles, rearmament, reindustrialistation, India - they all need copper.

This is not the usual China story by the way. If anythign China demand is lacklustre. Its imports of unwrought copper fell 11.5% year-on-year in July and industrial production there has been slowing.

But, as RBC notes, the LME copper market had moved into its steepest backwardation since the 2021 squeeze. In other words, buyers are paying substantially more for copper now than for delivery later. That is a classic physical tightness indicator.

Antofagasta has cut its 2026 production guidance after problems at Los Pelambres. Codelco has abandoned its 1.34 million tonne production target and now expects to produce less than it did last year.

Meanwhile we have BHP’s latest results. Copper now accounts for 54% of its earnings (EBITDA). Its copper mines are extraordinarily profitable (70% EBITDA margin). Yet despite the obvious incentive to produce more, BHP’s copper production actually fell 3% last year.

This is the largest mining company in the world, with some of the best copper assets, engineers and access to capital on the planet. If anyone can turn on the copper taps, so to speak, it should be BHP. Yet it is talking about a “persistent structural deficit” of as much as 10 million tonnes a year next decade. Demand from electrification, digitalisation, data centres and other newer uses, meanwhile, is expected to grow at around 6.5% a year.

So it now aims to grow its copper production at ~5% a year, faster than the rest of its business. The requires an extraordinary amount of capital.

In a recent video, Merlin Marr-Johnson, CEO of Fitzroy Minerals (FTZ.V) analyses BHP’s spending plans using Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, as an example and concludes, “They’re spending $5 billion to stand still. And that is the copper industry in a nutshell.”

Billions of dollars of investment don’t necessarily mean billions of dollars of new production. Mines get older. Grades decline. Pits get deeper. More rock has to be shifted to produce the same amount of metal. Processing plants wear out and have to be replaced. Sometimes you have to spend billions just to stop production falling.

Which brings us to Rick Rule.

Is copper now a better bet than gold?

It could be.

Rule argues that “The biggest copper mining companies in the world need to spend $250 billion to maintain current levels of copper production.” Note - to maintain, not increase. Not every one has $250 billion sitting around waiting to be spent. “The copper development boom that we absolutely have to see in the next 10 years will require vast amounts of capital.”

“There’s nothing that we can do, nothing at all that we can do, to avert a shortage in copper,” he says. As a result, five years from now the copper price will be, “dramatically higher than it is today.”

As you know, copper is an important strategic mineral. Citi recently looked at what might happen if countries start building national inventories. Global refined copper inventories, it estimates, currently sit around at around 3 million tonnes, equivalent to just 1.3 months of global consumption. If governments decided they wanted three months instead, they would need need to find another 4 million tonnes of copper.

Where does it come from?

To be accumulated over two years, Citi calculates, would require the copper price price to rise to over $10/lb to bring enough scrap into the market and destroy enough demand to balance things.

That is not a forecast, by the way, it is a scenario. But governments are increasingly treating critical minerals as a matter of national security. The US has proposed a US$12 billion strategic commodities programme, the EU has allocated billions to critical-mineral security and there have been calls in China for increased copper stockpiling.

So what do we actually buy?

I like Koryx Copper (TSXV: KRY).

I wrote about this Namibian company in early July, and the shares have risen a few pennies since then.

It’s in consolidation mode, after a big run up in 2025.

Its main asset is Haib, which has a characteristic that increasingly matters in this copper market: it’s big. As Rule says, “size matters” when it comes to majors making acquisitions.

Haib’s current resource stands at roughly 1.32 billion tonnes, containing around 7.6 billion pounds of copper, plus molybdenum and gold.

It is low grade. But it is enormous, close to surface and potentially capable of supporting a very large, long-life open-pit operation.

Recent drilling continues to demonstrate the scale. One recent hole returned 831 metres at 0.27% copper equivalent from surface, including 244 metres at 0.42%. Another returned 654 metres at 0.25%, including 84 metres at 0.47%.

The grades are unremarkable but as CEO Heye Daun says, “These results stand out for their length as much as their grade.”

There are now 15 rigs drilling at Haib, seven of them operating double shifts. Koryx now needs to demonstrate that all this copper can be mined economically, to the point that somebody with a much bigger balance sheet decides it needs to own Haib.

He has done this before, by the way, with Osino Resources which he sold to B2. The next major milestone is the pre-feasibility study, due around the end of this year.

That will tell us much more about the optimum mine size, capex, operating costs, recoveries and, crucially, the economics of exploiting the higher-grade portions of the deposit first. If it delivers the improvement management expects, Haib takes an important step from large, low-grade copper deposit to strategic copper asset.

Strategic copper assets - large mines - is what there is shortage of, and it’s what the majors want.

My full write-up on Koryx is here, by the way:

What if we get a recession?

Recession is the big threat to the whole argument. Copper is an industrial commodity. A serious global recession, particularly one involving China or falling stock markets, could send the copper price sharply lower. Koryx, as a developer with no revenues, could fall considerably more.

There are also Koryx-specific risks. Haib is low grade. The capital spend will be enormous. The PFS could disappoint. Koryx will probably need to raise more money before the story reaches its conclusion. The buyer I expect may never show up.

But investing is a probability game and you have to weigh up the odds. There is evidence of physical tightness everywhere.

Sometimes the summer lull means prices fall 25%. Sometimes, as this year, it’s little more than a pause.

Perhaps this is as good as the correction gets.

Disclaimer:

I am not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or any other regulatory body as a financial advisor. Therefore, any information provided in this newsletter does not constitute regulated financial advice. It is solely an expression of opinion. Small-cap stocks are inherently risky. Please conduct your own due diligence and consult with a financial advisor, if you have any doubts. Remember, markets can both rise and fall, especially in the case of small and mid-cap stocks. I am not aware of your individual financial circumstances, so only invest money that you can afford to lose.

I am being impersonated again, so if you receive messages from someone that looks like it could be me, it isn’t. Please block and report. (Also feel free to message me so I can report them too.) Many thanks …

We have another Money, Markets and More for you today with Joshua Saul, founder and CEO of The Pure Gold Company, who tells us what gold and silver investors are actually doing after one of the most extraordinary runs in precious metals in recent years.

Joshua is in the unusual position of speaking directly to investors as they buy and sell, which gives him a good view of what is actually happening at the coalface. The frenzy we saw at the beginning of the year has subsided, but something interesting is happening underneath: the first-time buyers have largely disappeared, but value-driven investors have been buying into the correction. Is this the end of the gold bull market, or simply a pause before the next leg higher?

You can watch the video above, or listen via the Substack app, Apple podcasts, Spotify et al.

🥇 This video was made in association with The Pure Gold Company.

In other news, the paperback of the Secret History of Gold - Money, Myth, Politics and Power has just come out in the UK, so order yours now. 4.7* on Amazon. :)

And, in case you missed it, here is this week’s piece:

Disclaimer

Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. We do not know your financial circumstances. Do your own research.

I have had a couple of emails to say that the interviews I’ve been publishing are too long. Think of the email as a notification that a new interview is available. Then dip in when you have the time, or when the guest or subject interests you. The longer format is deliberate.

So to today’s business …

Gold gave us a little zing this week on the back of coordinated interventions between the US and Japan in the currency markets to defend the crashing yen.

A weaker-than-expected US jobs report also helped, in that it lowered the likelihood of interest rate hikes at the Federal Reserve.

There has also been yet more central-bank buying, from, among others, the People’s Bank of China and the National Bank of Poland.

The floor at around $4,000 has held, as we hoped it would. I think there is a very high probability that was the low, with $55 playing a similar role in silver.

It’ll be some time yet before we reach the giddy heights of January, but the ongoing thesis that “gold goes nowhere for year as the big move consolidates and digests” looks like it was a good one.

I have taken advantage of the summer weakness to do some buying. As far as my mining portfolio is concerned, (which I run separately), I am now pretty much fully invested. I haven’t been in that position for a long time. That means if I want to buy another mining company, I have to sell something else first. I quite like that. It forces me to choose.

One of the conclusions I came to on my recent walk is that I have been holding onto certain companies too long, so there may be something of a portfolio purge over the coming months. But don’t worry I will keep you updated on any major portfolio reallocations I make.

But today I’m going to tell you about a company I bought earlier int he week. It’s high risk, but I think it has 10x potential over five years, while much of the dilution risk that normally comes with junior mining has been stripped out.

Spoiler: it’s one of the mines I visited in BC last month.

And that’s just what I am going to do today as we continue our summer of gold series.

A 10x gold bet

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You can either watch the video above, or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify et al.

Ross has spent decades analysing the precious metals markets and has repeatedly won the LBMA’s annual gold forecasting competition. Few people know the mechanics of the physical gold market better, which makes his perspective on what China and the world’s central banks are doing particularly interesting.

We also discuss whether gold could reach $7,000–$10,000 by the end of the decade, why Ross would favour silver with £100,000 to invest today, and his prediction that gold could once again become something people actually use as money.

Follow Ross and Metals Daily

This video was brought to you by The Pure Gold Company:

📖 The Secret History of Gold: Money, Myth, Politics and Power.

Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. Do your own research.

And if you missed today’s thought piece, here it is:

I walked 56 miles in 4 days, starting in Avebury and ending in Goring.

Lots of amazing views of Britain’s brown and pleasant land. Red kites galore. And, early on Day 1, I even saw a brown hare, something I hadn’t seen for many decades. At one point it sprinted (should say galloped?) through a field alongside and past me, quite the sight, but I was so busy admiring it I didn’t get the video.

Lots of barrows and burial grounds. Lovely peaceful places. I was particularly taken with Wayland's Smithy

The path was pretty deserted - I only passed somebody every hour or so. Sometimes I went several hours without seeing anyone, excluding cyclists of which there were a few, especially towards Goring.

So lots of time to think, and one of the things I thought about at great length was what to do with my largest position, something I’ll have more on soon. Gold stocks look, by the way, as though the summer consolidation is over, and are starting to pick up. Here’s to another bonanza 12 months …. But back to the matter in hand.

Each evening I would walk down off the Ridgeway to one of the villages in the valley, then climb back up the hill the following morning. Lots of lovely churches and thatched cottages to be seen.

One of the many landmarks on the trip is the famous Uffington White Horse, carved into the downs some 3000 years ago in the late Bronze Age. With the underlying chalk, it is bright and white, and locals have maintained it all these years. It almost looks modern: minimalist and abstract with clean, stylized lines conveying sweeping movement.

But as I walked the mile or two up the hill that sunny morning, several things struck me. First, that the White Horse isn’t actually very visible from the valley below.

If its creators wanted people in the valley to see it, surely they would have carved it into the side of the hill. But they didn’t. They carved it right on the lip.

nor is visible from the Ridgeway just above. In fact, it’s not that visible from land at all and better seen from the air above.

That immediately made me think of the Nazca Lines in Peru (see vid below), those ancient figures carved into a plateau which too best appreciated from the air.

But that doesn’t quite work either. If the Uffington figure was intended to be viewed from above, why not put it on the plateau? (You can’t even see it from the Ridgeway itself) Why put it on the lip?

3,000 years ago, much of the valley below would have been wooded or marshy, as I say, making the figure even harder to see from below. So who was supposed to see it? And from where?

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The final mystery of my day was this: is it actually a horse? Look at the head. Does that look like a horse to you?

It has whiskers. Horses don’t have whiskers. Cats do though.

Yours confused,

Dominic

PS Here is the white horse pictured from the air. You do not get this view from the land … and there’s no way that’s meant to be a horse. I’m sure Jason Arday has the answers,

In case you missed it, here is this week’s piece, the second part of my special report into the tidal wave of takeovers sweeping the UK at the moment as we sell ourselves off. One of these, WPP, moved 35% in two days.

In other news, here is my talk on gold from CPAC the other day. Nothing you don’t already know, but I was pleased with the talk.

And, finally, mining financier Simon Catt had me on his podcast, while I was walking the Ridgeway. Here it is on Spotify

And on Apple podcasts

Finally, finally, here’s a little two minute doc on the Nazca Lines which I narrated many moons ago - of some relevance to today’s piece. It’s not a bad place to spend a couple of minutes.

Until next time,

Dominic

You can now download this series as a PDF (paying subscribers only).

Britain’s stock market had become a bargain basement.

That’s what I argued last week, and the takeover wave continues with another one gone just yesterday. SEGRO, one of the FTSE’s largest property companies, agreed a £14.3 billion takeover by US logistics giant Prologis.

Overseas buyers have realised what many British investors have been saying for years. London is systemtically undervalued. It has become one of, if not the cheapest developed stock markets in the world. High-quality businesses are changing hands at valuations that simply don’t exist elsewhere.

So who is next?

That’s what we are looking at today.

Dr Martens, maybe? A globally recognised brand that has plummeted in value. Same goes for Burberry Group. Harbour Energy, perhaps? This oil major is looking decidedly cheap, and an oil squeeze could be round the corner. After the plethora of easyJet bids, why not Jet2? How about the builders, or the brewers, even? Or the ludicrously cheap retailers?

Every company I mention has to pass two tests. First, there has to be a plausible strategic reason why somebody else might want to own it. Second, it has to be a business I’d be happy to own even if no bid ever arrives.

If the current feeding frenzy in the UK stock market continues, they won’t be here long. At least, not in their current form.

So here they are - the four companies I think could be next.

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In the last of this series of interviews recorded at ARC, I sit down with retired (for now) businessman Toby Baxendale to discuss British industry, regulation, sound. money and why he believes Britain is making it increasingly difficult for entrepreneurs to succeed.

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Toby built a successful business in the meat and fish industries, employing hundreds of people before selling the company. He believes Britain’s long-term prosperity depends on creating an economy that rewards production, investment and entrepreneurship once again.

Enjoy! (You can listen to the audio via Spotify et al)

This interview was filmed in association with The Pure Gold Company

In case you missed it, here is this week’s piece. There has been a spate of takeovers in the UK this last month, many at 60-80% premiums. We identify the companies that could be next. It is a must read.

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How do you make money investing in the UK? Own a good company and wait for an American to buy it.

So runs the City joke. Except, if the last couple months are anything to go by, it’s not a joke. It’s true. The floodgates have opened

In June, US ingredients giant Ingredion agreed to buy Tate & Lyle for £2.7 billion, paying a 59% premium.

Then, in early July, Apollo gatecrashed Castlelake’s pursuit of easyJet. Castlelake had already made five approaches. Apollo’s proposal effectively valued the airline at an 80% premium.

Next Reuters reported that Watches of Switzerland had held takeover talks, with buyers circling despite the shares already having risen more than 50% this year.

Two days later, Swiss engineering giant ABB agreed to buy Rotork for £4.1 billion, a 73% premium to where the shares had traded before the approach became public.

Five days after that, OCS, backed by US private equity house Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, agreed a £3.1 billion takeover of Mitie.

The following day, US warehouse giant Prologis returned with what it described as its “best and final” proposal for SEGRO, valuing the company at about £14 billion, a 45% premium. Its board, after initially resisting, said it would recommend the offer if a firm bid followed.

A few days pass and Ridgeview agrees to buy Pinewood Technologies, and Serica trumps a rival bidder to acquire Pharos Energy.

It is a veritable feeding frenzy. “Almost 300 bids have been made for UK-listed companies in the past six years,” says equity research firm Edison, “frequently at premiums of 40-60%”.

British investors have spent years complaining that UK equities are cheap. Overseas buyers appear to agree and are doing something about it.

Private equity still has lots of capital that needs to be deployed, and valuations are compelling, especially with the pound having been weak since 2008. So when there is a strategic fit, they bite. You don’t pay generally pay 40 to 80% premiums unless you believe the market has materially undervalued what you are buying. London is systematically undervaluing its companies.

The British have not been buying. Why? For decades, UK pension funds were among the largest owners of British shares. In the early 2000s they allocated over 50%. Now it’s just 4-6%. Instead they favour bonds and global equity funds. Passive investing has accelerated the trend. Billions of pounds flow into global indices every month, but only a tiny fraction finds its way back into UK-listed companies because Britain now accounts for such a small percentage of the world’s stock market. Valuations fall, even if the underlying businesses continue to perform perfectly well.

Many of Britain’s quoted companies earn their revenues overseas: global businesses with a London listing. Yet they are often valued at significant discounts to peers in the US and continental Europe, and those discounts have, after years of saying it, finally become too tempting for strategic buyers to ignore.

Britain’s stock market is not merely cheap. It is shrinking. In 1996 there was 932 companies in the FTSE All-Share Index, as Charlie Morris notes. Today there are 536.

Some have merged. Some have failed. Some have moved their primary listing elsewhere. Many have simply been bought and taken off the market altogether. Every successful takeover may leave investors with cash, but there is also one less quoted company in which to reinvest it.

A smaller market attracts fewer investors. Fewer investors mean less liquidity, lower valuations and, in turn, more takeover opportunities. It is a self-reinforcing and vicious cycle. London has become perhaps the cheapest developed world equity market.

Buying shares in anticipation of a takeover bid is not always the best investment strategy. Rumours often come to nothing, and not every business gets acquired. But if you can find companies that are undervalued, financially strong and strategically attractive, then a takeover becomes the potential icing on an already attractive cake.

I asked one of my WhatsApp group chats for ideas about likely takeover targets. I got this reply: “At this stage it’s easier to list the UK companies that will not be sold to the foreign overlords”.

So who will be next? That’s what we all want to know.

Over the next few weeks I’m going identify what I think are the ten most likely companies to be taken over.

And this week we have three prime candidates. Starting with …

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Your mid-week commentary will be later than usual this week. I have something quite special planned. In the meantime, here is another episode of Money Markets and More.

Today, I sit down with former Conservative minister Steve Baker to discuss sound money, inflation, taxation, gold and why he believes Britain’s monetary system is fundamentally broken.

You can either watch the video above or listen via Spotify, Apple Podcasts etc

Before entering politics, Steve served as an engineering officer in the Royal Air Force before working as an aerospace and software engineer. He later became one of Parliament’s leading advocates for free markets, lower taxes and sound money, giving him first-hand insight into how economic policy is made and why he believes Britain continues to repeat the same mistakes.

This interview was filmed in 🥇 association with The Pure Gold Company.

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📖 The Secret History of Gold

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Follow Steve Baker:

https://x.com/stevebakerfrsa
https://www.stevebaker.info/
https://www.instagram.com/stevebakerfrsa
https://www.facebook.com/FightingForAFreeFuture

Voices for a Free Future with Steve Baker

Voices for a Free Future lifts the veil on how Westminster operates and illustrates how to achieve serious free market policy reform. Here, you'll read articles from Steve Baker, the FFF Team, and leading voices from the free market and freedom movement.

By Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA

Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. Do your own research.

Today I talk to Toby Young, now Lord Young, journalist, author, and founder of the Free Speech Union discuss Britain: how it works, its economic outlook, inflation, the expanding state, free speech and whether the UK is heading towards a financial crisis.

As a member of the House of Lords, Toby offers a unique perspective on the direction Britain is taking politically and economically. We finish by discussing where he’d invest one hundred grand today.

As always you can watch the video above or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify et al

This interview was filmed at ARC 2026 in 🥇 association with The Pure Gold Company.

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In case you missed it, here is this week’s piece. There are three really good company investment ideas in here, a lot of pictures and a lot of insights into what happens on the ground in junior mining companies. It is considerably more substantial than my usual weekly commentary.

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Follow Toby Young:

https://x.com/toadmeister
https://dailysceptic.org/

Follow The Free Speech Union:

https://freespeechunion.org/join
https://x.com/SpeechUnion
https://www.facebook.com/SpeechUnion
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFreeSpeechUnion

Money Markets & More is the interview series from Dominic Frisby, exploring money, markets, gold, economics and more, and it is made possible by 🥇 the Pure Gold Company

📖 The Secret History of Gold:

Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. Do your own research.

Before Pantsgram, or whatever it’s called, starts nitpicking, I may as well get in first and tell you what you already know: yes, AI was used in the writing of this article.

AI writes better headlines than I do. It understands SEO, which I don’t. It is good at proof reading, is not prone to typos and makes fewer spelling mistakes.

But it can’t write jokes. Which is why politicians remain unpopular.

Something a bit different today, as we report back from my tour of the mines of British Columbia, on the final leg of my North American tour.

Lots of pics. Lots of research. Lots to learn.

It’s easy to value mining companies from presentations. Actually visiting a mine site can completely change your perspective. Scale does not come across in a PowerPoint. Taking management’s word for something - such as community relations - is not the same as seeing it with your own eyes. On the ground it doesn’t take long to figure out if someone is competent or not. Scams are easier to spot. Infrastructure matters more than investors think. Grade is only part of the story.

After four, or was it five? days in Las Vegas, during which I quite literally lost track of time, I was glad to be flying into the cooler climate and fresh air of Canada.

I landed in Vancouver, a city I’d somehow never visited before despite spending far too much of my life analysing Canadian mining companies. I’ll be back soon. I loved what little I saw. I got up early on the Sunday and went for a lovely run along the harbour and around Stanley Park. Here’s the proof.

Then I met up with the others and we piled into a van for the three-hour drive to Merritt, a rather depressed logging town about 170 miles inland. (Where once there were five logging operations, now there’s one and it is on its knees, I was told).

On the way we stopped at Hope, where First Blood was filmed. I got my guns out and had a photo next to Sly himself, was also blown away by the beauty of the Fraser River, looked at some disused railway tunnels and onwards to our final destination, the Best Western in Merritt, a hotel for which I developed an entirely unexpected affection.

Over the next 72 hours I visited the properties of three very different companies:

• Nicola Mining (TSXV: NIM, market cap C$155 million): an unusual company combining producing assets, a permitted mill and district-scale copper exploration potential.

• Kodiak Copper (TSXV: KDK, market cap C$72 million): a copper explorer chasing what could become a district-scale discovery.

• Westhaven Gold (TSXV: WHN, market cap C$75 million): a gold developer with a high-grade project which could become the first mine in an entirely new Canadian gold district.

Three very different companies. Three very different stories. All three have, in my opinion, oodles of multibagger potential. They are all a short drive from Merritt with good roads everywhere. In terms of location, they are about as good as it gets.

Today, I ‘m putting aside my normal mid-week commentary to give you a full field report from the trip. I’ll explain what each company does, what I found on the ground, what impressed me, what concerned me. If I could only buy one, which would it be?

And why?

Nicola Mining (TSXV: NIM)

Company Snapshot

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In this latest Money Markets and More, I sit down with Francis Foster, co-host of Triggernometry and author of Uneducated: My Life as a Teacher and Why You Should Never Become One, to discuss Venezuela, socialism, inflation, the pound, and why he believes Britain is heading towards a financial crisis.

You can also listen to this interview as a podcast in the normal way.

Before becoming a comedian and broadcaster, Francis spent twelve years as a teacher. In fact, he wanted to call his book 12 Years a Teacher - a title I loved - but apparently his publisher vetoed it.

From there, our conversation ranges from Britain’s education system to government debt, money printing, wealth taxes and the lessons Britain should be learning from Venezuela’s economic collapse. Drawing on his own family’s experience, Francis explains what happens when governments lose fiscal discipline—and why he fears the UK is heading down a similar path.

This interview was filmed at ARC 2026 in association with The Pure Gold Company.

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ICYMI here is this week’s commentary

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Francis Foster

Francis Foster

Francis Foster is a comedian, social commentator, author and co-host of TRIGGERnometry. He is the author of "Classroom Confidential" which will be released in August 2025.

📚 Francis’s book Uneducated: My Life as a Teacher and Why You Should Never Become One:

https://www.youtube.com/@Francisfosterpod
https://www.instagram.com/francisjfoster/
https://x.com/francisjfoster
https://www.youtube.com/c/Triggerpod

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Money Markets & More is the interview series from Dominic Frisby, exploring money, markets, gold, economics and the ideas shaping the world.

🥇 In association with The Pure Gold Company

Disclaimer

Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. Do your own research.

Sorry for the delay with this week’s piece, I have been travelling.

But our Summer of Gold continues today with what is, for me and many readers, our biggest position: Metals Exploration (MTL.L). It has also been one of our biggest winners.

However, this year the shares have gone nowhere. Today they trade in the 13-14p range, having touched 19p earlier in the year. They came down as the fizz came out of gold and silver more generally.

Its Runruno mine in the Philippines, the company’s main cash cow, is near depletion, just as construction of the company’s new La India mine in Nicaragua nears completion, with first gold pour expected later this year.

New mines are hard to make work. Sometimes they never do. Plenty reach first gold only to disappoint investors for months afterwards, even years. Taking advantage of the excitement that often precedes production is frequently the right move. Is that the case here? Is it time to sell Metals Exploration?

Or is it time to buy more?

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