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
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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

Read more

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?

Read more

In this next episode of Money, Markets and More, I sit down with Liv Boeree to discuss AI, risk, poker, game theory, incentives, state power and better decision-making.

I thought this was a terrific interview and I hope you enjoy it.

You can either watch the video above, or listen to the interview as a podcast in the normal way.

Liv argues that, while AI could bring huge breakthroughs in health, drug discovery, efficiency and human flourishing, thi same technology can also be used to cause serious harm. We discuss regulation, bad incentives inside AI companies, state surveillance, privacy, human atrophy, automation versus augmentation, and why Liv believes poker is a better model for life than chess: imperfect information, luck, risk, emotion and long-term decision-making.

This interview was filmed at ARC 2026 and made possible by The Pure Gold Company.

📖 Read The Secret History of Gold

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Follow Liv Boeree on X or here on Substack:

Win-Win

Don't hate the players, change the game

By Liv Boeree

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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.

And, in case you missed it, here is episode 1 with Luke Gromen

A few weeks ago Josh from the Pure Gold Company asked if I'd be interested in recording some long-form interviews. It sounded like a good idea, so at ARC a fortnight ago we sat down and recorded six conversations. Season One, if you like.

The focus is not just gold or markets, although they feature prominently. They are about the forces shaping the world: money, debt, geopolitics, technology, energy, incentives. You name it.

I’ll be running the interviews here on The Flying Frisby, on YouTube via Money Markets & More, and as podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the other major platforms.

My hope is to make this a regular Sunday feature and, over time, build a library of conversations that remains valuable long after the headlines have faded.

I hope you enjoy them.

(And if you do enjoy them, please share them and let me know who you'd like me to interview next).

Subscribe now

To kick things off my first guest is Luke Gromen. Luke has been ahead of the curve on debt, fiscal dominance, the bond market and gold for a long time, and in this conversation he explains the bind facing the Federal Reserve, why markets may no longer be as free as we like to think, and why foreign central banks are buying gold instead of US Treasuries.

We also discuss the reindustrialisation of America, why reversing decades of offshoring is likely to be inflationary and why China does not want the yuan to become a straight replacement for the dollar.

You can read Luke’s letter, the Forest for the Trees, here.

My thanks go to Josh, Rachel Eyres, the Pure Gold Company for making these interviews possible.

Coming up soon we have

1. Liv Boeree

2. Steve Baker

3. Toby Young

4. Francis Foster

5. Toby Baxendale

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

And …

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

Greetings from Vegas

Never have I experienced a place so focused on separating you from your money. It’s worse than junior mining.

It’s relentless. Just getting from reception to your room without losing your shirt is a win.

I’m enjoying my experience here but I’m not sure Vegas is for me. I like fresh air. I didn’t see daylight yesterday and I only realised after it had got dark

Before I forget: I promised Liz Truss I would plug CPAC UK which runs from July 16-18 in London. Speakers include the former PM, Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees Mogg and Yours Truly . No Count Binface as far as I’m aware.

Flying Frisby readers can get 25% off with this link.

So to the matter at hand …

Iran bombing certainly took all the speculative money out of the precious metals trade. Both gold and silver have been grinding lower ever since, so that we are now well and truly in a downtrend.

I suspect we are nearer the lows now than we are the highs. The bullion dealers are all saying it. There are so many signs of capitulation, plus it’s the summer, always the weakest time of year for gold. But I also expect to have another 6 months of churn

Looking at the 3-year chart, the downtrend is clear. I see support of $3,900, for reasons explained by the blue dashed line.

Failing that we go back to the $3,300-500 zone, where there is a lot of support.

I still feel silver wants to touch back at $50, if only to kiss it goodbye.

On the other hand, gold is $4,000 an ounce. A year ago $4,000 seemed almost fanciful. Mining companies should be making a great deal of money. Albeit with brief interludes, mining shares have underperformed the metal for years, often deservedly so. Too much dilution, too long to get to profit (not always their fault), too much hype, not enough substance and too many alternative ways to play the gold story without taking on individual company risk.

The right miner, however, can multiply your money.

I buy a lot of speculative explorers because I sometimes get offered placements, warrants and the like, but cannot always write such things up because they are not suitable for everyone. Moreover they are not always core holdings. There are plenty of companies with established production, close to production or with assets that for some reason are undervalued. Over the course of the summer, I am going to devote a lot of commentary of these.

My position remains that gold trades sideways for a year as it churns through the excesses which peaked in January. I see this as a mid-cycle correction rather than the end of the bull market. Think 2006 rather than 2011. I’m still looking for $7,000 to $10,000 gold before the decade is out

In such a situation, you want to own some mining companies, and at the moment they are trading as though gold were trading below $3,000. In deed many of the valuation metrics are built around ~$2,000.

I do not see this publication as a tip sheet and these are not intended as a list of tips. Rather, I want to explain how I think about them today. Has the original investment case strengthened or weakened? What has management delivered? What are the next catalysts? At what point would I consider selling?

And we are going to start with what is my second largest position, a company that has changed considerably since I first wrote about it on here many moons ago. Even its name has changed and it deserves a fresh look.

The thesis died, but the investment hasn’t

Read more

The insanity of the UK seems a long way away, but it is so concerning.

Now, it seems, the regulators are telling you how you may or may not cool your home. Sigh. At what point will bureaucrats in the UK trust people to make decisions by themselves?

Of far greater concern is that they are pushing through legislation that requires social media platforms to give greater prominence to content from “trusted” (their word) national broadcasters.

The UK’s national broadcasters have repeatedly shown they cannot be trusted. BBC news doctored Donald Trump speeches, it ignored rape gang and migrant crime stories for decades because the truth was too inconvenient, broadcasters all spread misinformation about Covid and vaccines, and their “invisible casting” bears little resemblance to the world around us.

Even if you disagree with my examples, that's beside the point. Why should the State decide which news organisations are "trusted" and then compel private platforms to promote them ahead of everybody else?

When a body, such as Channel 4 or the BBC, is funded by the State, it is inherently Statist. Bias is inevitable. I’m not saying everything they produces is biased, although much of it is. I am saying they should not given privileged status by government decree.

National broadcasters already have enormous budgets, audiences and their own platforms, which people are perfectly free to visit if they choose. Why should they be artificially promoted on other platforms at the expense of smaller independent broadcasters, who often build their own platforms from nothing? Indeed many of them only start because they couldn’t get a gig with the state broadcaster).

This is censorship and socialism of the worst kind.

It’s also kind of fascist too: state run corporations trampling over small businesses.

They’ve lost control of the narrative and they hate it.

Elsewhere, PM-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, is planning to bring in a Land Value Tax. Good luck with that. The British will hate it. I’m a champion of LVT - provided it replaces other taxes, and is not in addition to them - as this will inevitably be. Bastardised LVT, as this will be, will be worse than Stamp Duty (which takes some doing), and will accelerate a collapse in the property market from the rush to the exit. Be careful what you wish for. I’ll put an article together shortly on how to protect yourself from Andy Burnham.

America, meanwhile, has its own problems not least the cost of everything. Yes, Americans earn considerably more money than Europeans, but the cost of living here is high. Petrol is cheaper, yes, but food is at least twice the price. Houses too (at least where I have been - Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Palm Springs - not exactly cheap areas I’ll admit).

I do not understand why it is that a pineapple from Costa Rica costs £1.25 in my local Coop, and yet here in California - just up the coast from Costa Rica - it is five bucks. I’m sure there’s a reason. But darned if I know what it is.

In the Bay Area, my mum and I had out first experience in a driverless Waymo. The robot was much more law abiding than any driver I have ever driven with, sticking precisely to speed limits, perfectly navigating the road and dealing perfectly with every hazard thrown its way. It’s so obviously the future of transportation.

After the initial excitement at being in a car with no driver had passed - I’d say that took maybe five minutes - we quickly stopped noticing there was no driver. These things are going to become so normal so quickly.

The main barrier to the rapid adoption is the same people telling you how to you may cool your home and what stories should be prioritised on social media, so it will be some time before ordinary folk get to benefit, even if the tech is already good enough.

Share

For your Sunday thought piece this week I’d like to share this interview I recorded for Professor James Orr’s First Light. I’m delighted to report that James, like you, is a subscriber to this publication.

I was pleased with the interview. Enjoy!

Here it is on Spotify, if you prefer your podcasts as radio.

Here is this week’s piece, a new company recommendation no less.

From Palm Springs I head to Las Vegas for Freedom Fest, where I am speaking and pushing the book:

It’s getting such a good response. I’m delighted.

Then it’s up to Canada where I’m looking at a couple of mines.

Busy bee.

Until next time,

Dominic

PS The latest edition of Charlie Morris’s Atlas Pulse is out now. It’s free. You can get your copy here.

Well, here it is, finally. The pick of my Namibia tips.

As you know I have looked at pretty much every investment story in Namibia, and this is the one that has impressed me the most. It could amount to as much as 10% of the country’s GDP.

It’s a copper story, so let’s start with a quick 3-year chart of copper.

You can see that, despite the carnage elsewhere in precious metals and oil, the copper price remains in a clear uptrend.

This particular company is perhaps not the opportunity it was 2 years ago, when it was little more than a penny stock, but it has been significantly de-risked.

I’ve been waiting patiently for the price of this C$400 million market cap company to come back before covering it, but it has steadfastly refused to do that.

Nevertheless, the time has come to put pen to paper.

My simple view: it gets taken out by a major within 18-36 months at twice today’s prices or more.

A quick word on copper

I covered the case for copper at considerable length last month, but briefly, whether it’s AI, electrification or a manufacturing renaissance, all roads lead to copper. More of a reddish brick road, than yellow, if you catch my drift.

Electric vehicles, data centres, power grids, wind turbines, solar farms and, yes, the army - they all need copper.

Copper discoveries, meanwhile, have become increasingly rare. Existing mines are ageing, ore grades (the amount of metal in rock) are getting lower and mine permitting is (in most but not all placers) getting trickier. Large, mineable copper deposits in investible jurisdictions are not so easy to find.

Which brings us back to Namibia.

It’s not Canada, the US, Chile or Australia, that’s for sure. Until two months ago, I couldn’t even tell you where Namibia is on the map. Now I’m one of country’s biggest champions.

The place is on the up and it has quietly become one of the most attractive mining jurisdictions in the world. A tiny desert nation of just 4 million people, it is the world’s third largest uranium producer. Oil has just been discovered off the coast and there is gold, copper and lithium in abundance. Diamonds too, though best not to dwell on these.

It has a long mining history. Property rights are comparatively strong. There is rule of law. Corruption is low by regional standards. Infrastructure is good: roads, ports, power.

This deposit sits in southern Namibia, close to the border with South Africa. It has quietly grown into one of the larger undeveloped copper deposits on the planet. There may be plenty of small copper deposits around the world with higher grades. There not so many capable of supporting decades of production - and that’s what majors are looking for.

In the words of the company itself, it is “optimizing, right-sizing and de-risking the project towards an investment decision and/or asset/equity sale.”

The CEO has no intention of building a mine. He is getting everything in place for a mine to be built, and then he will sell to a major - for probably two to three times the current market cap of the company.

That’s how I see it anyway.

Koryx Copper (TSXV: KRY)’s flagship asset, the Haib project, is not a new discovery. The deposit was originally worked on by Rio Tinto and later Teck. Two or three years back, Koryx CEO Heye Daun took on a somewhat neglected copper project, dismissed for its low grade, and, with his team, has spent the last few years systematically proving how mineable it actually is.

Haib is low grade. But, like many classic porphyries, it is also large. Porphyry size often compensates for grade, provided metallurgy and infrastructure cooperate.

The higher-grade portion of the deposit, according to the company’s updated resource estimate, now totals 571 million tonnes grading approximately 0.4% copper equivalent. This equates to over than fifteen years of potential production, according to analysts (Just from the higher grade material).

The latest resource estimate now stands at a 1.32 billion tonnes overall containing 7.6 billion pounds of copper, 187 million pounds of molybdenum and almost 900,000 ounces of gold. These are not trivial numbers, and in mining scale matters.

Last year’s Preliminary Economic Assessment outlined a project producing roughly 88,000 tonnes of copper annually over a 23-year mine life (Daun thinks it can last 30-50 years, and is now talking about 100,000 tonnes annually - so that is one of the goals the company is working towards). The headline figures were impressive: a post-tax NPV of US$1.35 billion, an IRR of just over 20%, an initial capital cost of US$1.6 billion and a payback period of under four years.

The company envisages a conventional milling and flotation operation supplemented by a heap-leach circuit. Put another way, the grade may be low, but the mining is a straightforward (ish) open pit project similar to the Andean operations found in Chile and Argentina

Average flotation recoveries have been running around 89%, producing a clean copper concentrate with few penalty elements. The molybdenum and gold further enhance the project economics. Ore sorting and coarse particle flotation studies are also showing encouraging results, potentially allowing waste material to be rejected before milling, thereby improving economics further.

These are exactly the sort of developments investors (and large mining companies) like to see. Every improvement in recovery rates, operating costs and throughput improves project value.

A giant copper deposit in the middle of nowhere is worth far less than a giant copper deposit connected to roads, power and ports. Haib should be ok. It is about 10 miles from a major paved highway (railways - poor in Namibia - are further). Namibia’s ports are good - and accessible. Power will mostly come from across the border in South Africa, though other options, including wind and solar, are also being looked at). The Orange River sits barely 5 miles away and has been identified as a potential water source.

Thus Haywood Securities’ description is apt: "a simple, buildable large-scale copper project differentiated by its infrastructure advantages and a high-quality concentrate."

What has really won me over is the CEO, Heye Daun. This highly charismatic and capable Namibian will be well known to some resource investors after his success with Osino Resources, which discovered and advanced a major gold project in Namibia and was then sold. He and his team, which includes “Rossing-trained” mining engineers, have a track record of creating value. Management matters.

He describes Koryx as, “his best yet”.

Daun is a proven operator, and he has an answer to every question I throw at him. He is decisive and clear about his goals: to demonstrate that this deposit is huge and highly mineable. He is drilling (14 rigs currently on site, 120,000 metres of historical drilling, another 55,000 metres underway), converting inferred resources into indicated resources, improving metallurgy, advancing permitting, studying throughput increases and optimising infrastructure. In short, he is not only preparing Haib for a larger buyer, he is making it very difficult to ignore.

He is also it’s worth noting fiercely proud of his country and its people and wants it to become a globally significant player

The company is now working towards a pre-feasibility study later this year, which will provide greater clarity on economics, mine sequencing, throughput and development options. Larger companies, both Chinese and western, are watching. Daun thinks this will become the biggest pit in Namibia, two- to three times the size of Osino

This is all going to cost a lot of money. Koryx currently have C$50 million, half of which will be spent by year end. At some stage next year they will have to do another financing, likely, as Daun puts it, “in conjunction with, or subsequent to the end of year PFS which we expect to deliver a very significant value uplift”.

The company has lot of local shareholders, including Cirrus capital who I spoke to recently. This mine working matters a lot to the Namibian economy - 10% of GDP. That should help permitting …

Another recent endorsement comes from BMO Capital Markets, one of the world's leading mining investment banks, which initiated research coverage this week. BMO is famous for conservative target prices, but its C$6 is not far off my own estimate of a double. (Today’s price is C$3.30). The more important point is that Koryx has attracted coverage from a major institutional mining analyst. That should both broaden and institutionalise the shareholder base.

Perhaps not quite a BHP tier one deposit, as Daun tell ms, but big enough. Does the bid come from BHP, Rio Tinto, Zijin, First Quantum or the Chinese? When does it come? If only one knew, but Heye Daun is building a company to sell, not a mine to operate. At around C$400 million, Kroyx is not the bargain it was two years ago, but Daun will want a price above C$1 billion.

The Risks

What can go wrong?

This remains a speculative mining investment, so a lot.

The project is low grade. It requires a lot of capital. Copper prices could come down. Namibia could go tinpot. Major mining companies may not step forward.

My view is that the reward justifies the risk. This story gives you exposure to both copper and Namibia, which is emerging as one of the world’s most attractive mining jurisdictions. Governments are becoming increasingly hostile to mining, so investable jurisdictions command a premium. I suspect the Namibia premium will only grow.

I would personally prefer to buy this company for less, but any corrections just seem so short lived. I should also say I have not bought stock in this company because of the fact that it has not pulled back as much as I would like. I aim to be positioned by the end of the summer.

• Share Price (May 15, 2026) C$3.41

• 52-Week Trading Range C$0.85 – 3.90

• Basic Shares Outstanding 120m

• Options Outstanding 0.58m

• RSUs Outstanding 7.55m

• Warrants Outstanding 4.59m

• Fully Diluted Shares Outstanding 132.72m

• Market Capitalization (FD) C$452.58m

• Estimated Cash (Jan 30, 2026) ~C$53.0m

• Debt (excl. vehicle finance) Nil

In other news, after years of promises, Comstock is approaching the moment of truth.

Since last week, Comstock has announced another commissioning milestone. The major equipment for its first commercial-scale recycling facility has now been delivered and assembled, with several of the nine production stages already commissioned and successfully stress-tested. Management says continuous operations should begin in late July, with the first full month of production within two months.

We are now moving into the phase where the company must produce tonnes processed, revenues earned and cash generated. If those numbers stack up, the shares could justify a much higher valuation. If they do not, the market will know soon enough.

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 was lucky enough to be at ARC this week. During my interview with Baroness Stroud I argued that money - what we use, who creates it and how, the iniquities and imbalances the system creates - is fundamental. It all starts with money. It’s the blood of en economy and it must be healthy. “Fix money, fix the world,” as the bitcoiners say.

Judging by the response afterwards, the argument struck a chord with a lot of people.

ARC is a remarkable gathering of politicians, writers, academics and entrepreneurs from around the world, and I was delighted to be part of it. I also found myself summoned for chats with a few party leaders, which did wonders for my ego. Whether they wanted to discuss satire or stock tips, I’m still not entirely sure.

After the interview they played this short video. I was told afterwards it was one of the highlights of the opening day. You may have seen it before. I still think it’s one of the best things I’ve made.

I’d say we’re about three quarters of the way through the song...

Video is by Goat, shot at Red Creative. Music is by Grieg, mixed by Wayne Mcintyre.

I'm travelling over the next few weeks. If you're in the San Francisco area, come and say hello at the Menlo Forum on Thursday July 2. After that I'm heading to Palm Springs and then on to FreedomFest in Las Vegas. Finally, it’s up to Vancouver to view some mines. It would be great to meet a few readers along the way.

In case you missed it, here is this week’s commentary.

There’s a big report coming on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for that.

And a final reminder that Lifetime Membership ends this week on July 1.

Lifetime Membership

Substack says payment is annual, but to be absolutely clear, this is a ONE-OFF payment for lifetime access. Once you have subscribed, I manually convert your account to Lifetime Membership myself.

If you encounter any problems at all, simply reply to this email, or message me on the Substack app, and I’ll sort it out personally.

If you’ve been considering it, this is the final opportunity.

Lifetime Membership

If you’re already a Lifetime Member, congratulations. You’ve locked in access for life and nothing changes.

Finally, the latest edition of Charlie Morris’s Atlas Pulse is out now. It’s free. Get your copy here.

Until next time,

Dominic

After two horrible and dilutive fundraises last year, I said I was done with Comstock Inc (NYSE: LODE), taking advantage of any rally to reduce my position and moving on.

But readers keep asking about it, and this week Comstock announced the sale of its legacy Nevada mining assets for a package worth more than $45 million to Mackay Gold and Silver (MACK.V).

So what do I think, what am I doing and what happens to Comstock?

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Mining is one of the most important industries in human history, yet people don’t seem to think about it. Every civilisation has depended on it. Every technological revolution has depended on it. Every smartphone, electric car, cathedral, railway, battleship and computer depends on stuff that first had to be dug out of the ground.

Mining is also “the world’s oldest profession”, as you shall discover.

From Neanderthals mining flint tens of thousands of years ago, the story passes through the Bronze Age, the Roman Empire, the great silver mines of the Americas, the gold rushes, and on to the giant open-pit operations and AI-driven trucks of today.

Along the way there are fortunes made, fortunes lost, frauds, booms, busts, discoveries, disasters and more than a few eccentric characters. The technology changes. Human nature does not.

I have just released the lecture on YouTube and thought I’d share it here.

Enjoy!

Below also are links to this week’s commentary, and to various recent podcast appearances, including comedian Geoff Norcott’s What Most People think.
Happy Sunday.

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Until next time,

Dominic

Here is this week’s commentary:

Here are links to Geoff’s show. You can listen on iTunes here, or on Spotify:

Finally, I also appeared on Doug Casey’s experts roundtable, talking with exploration company Mackay Gold and Silver, which you can watch here.

Doug Casey's Experts Roundtable

Nevada’s Greatest Silver Bonanza, Finally Consolidated — and Drilling Starts This Month.

Between 1859 and 1926, the Comstock Lode in western Nevada gave up close to 200 million ounces of silver and 8 million ounces of gold. It was America’s first great silver strike — the bonanza that launched the nation’s silver industry, helped build San Francisco, and carried Nevada to statehood in 1864. The veins ran absurdly rich: around 35 grams of go…

Listen now

a month ago · 25 likes · 4 comments · Matt Smith @ Crisis Investing, Dominic Frisby, The Macro King, and Doug Casey

The S&P 500 is close to all-time highs, but it’s looking wobbly.

After magnificent runs, gold and silver are both washed out and trending lower.

Bitcoin is all but dead and buried.

Rates are rising the world over so you can forget about government bonds - that particular bull market is over.

Oil and gas have turned down now Trump and Iran have their deal.

Remind me what uranium is again?

What to do? Sell? Buy? Take profits? Run? Hide? Risk on? Rotate? Hedge?

Everyone everywhere is telling you to do something. There is an entire financial industry dedicated to persuading you that inactivity is irresponsible.

Three years ago I proposed the opposite and launched the Dolce Far Niente portfolio - “the sweetness of doing nothing” portfolio.

It was based around a simple notion. Do nothing. The sweet FA portfolio. Most of us have busy lives to live with jobs, businesses and families. Some of us even have hobbies. We do not have the time, inclination or temperament to be constantly monitoring markets and worrying. I don’t know about you but I find the more decisions I make, the more bad decisions I make. The aim of the portfolio was to build a sensible allocation to the major themes of the coming decade, and then largely leave it alone.

No fiddling. No panicking because of some thing you read on X that morning. Nothing.

Different readers used different vehicles. When uranium went nuts, we reduced to 2.5%. I simplified the equity allocation, so the exact implementation evolved over time. What follows therefore is not an audited fund report, but an approximate check-in.

The broad conclusion, however, is clear.

Doing very little works surprisingly well.

Depending on exactly how you measure it, the portfolio is up around 65-70%.

Not bad for something specifically designed to reduce activity and thus stress.

If by the way, you are investor starting out, this is the portfolio I recommend, and I recommend it way ahead of racy, smallcap stock tips, such as you sometimes read on here.

So let’s take a look at the portfolio, and let’s see if any activity is required.

The first lesson is that asset allocation remains far more important than stock selection. This is one of the basic truths that, it seems, one keeps having to re-learn.

Doesn’t matter which gold miner you own if gold miners are trending lower. Being on the right track matters more than backing the right horse.

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I was on a panel with veteran geologist Brent Cook earlier in the week and something he said rather struck me.

Looking at the chart below, it’s hard to disagree.

The Gold Miners Bullish Percent Index has fallen to zero.

Not 5 or 10, but zero. That’s lower in the in the crash of 2008 and during the Covid panic. It has only ever reached this level during the darkest days of the great gold bear market of 2011-16, and even then only twice.

This chart measures the percentage of gold mining stocks that are on Point & Figure buy signals. If every stock is on a buy signal, the reading is 100. If none are, the reading is zero.

A reading of zero does not mean prices cannot fall further, only that not a single stock in the index is in a technical uptrend.

Readings like this only occur at moments of extreme pessimism. But what makes today’s reading so unusual is the backdrop.

In 2008, everything was crashing. In 2013 and 2015, gold itself was in a vicious bear market. During the Covid panic everything was crashing. Today, gold’s above $4,000; silver’s above $60.

The fundamentals for higher prices - central bank buying, irretrievable government spending and, in the case of silver, industrial demand - remain. Yet the mining shares are in the swanny.

And these are monthly charts. Such extremes take time to develop. Daily and weekly indicators can hit zero fairly easily. Monthly indicators rarely do.

This is an extraordinary breadth washout. Why is it happening?

Inflation (in the true meaning of the word)

When gold and silver went bananas late last year and early this, mining companies took advantage of the frenzy, as they always do, to raise capital. Bucket loads were raised.

Typically in Canada there is a four-month hold after a capital raise. It means that capital raised in January, for example, only came free trading last month and capital raised in February is only coming free trading now.

Somebody has to buy all that paper, and, if they don’t, prices fall until somebody does buy it.

Add that to the broader decline in the underlying metals prices, especially gold and silver, and you can see why junior mining is having such a rough time of it, and why Brent thinks things are going to get brutal.

Too much paper.

Not enough people to buy it.

The sector simply needs time to digest all that paper. Another leg higher in gold and silver would increase buying, but for now money is flowing in the opposite direction.

Such extremes can prove excellent buying opportunities - though if you bought the 2013 dip you had a wait on your hands - but we have all this paper to get through.

Many miners are terrible businesses, years from any cashflow. Costs, especially energy, have risen. Dilution is relentless.

The bear case is that mining stocks are warning us that gold and silver are headed lower.

On the other hand, the economics of mining have changed with gold and silver this high. Producers should make a lot of money. They will need to replenish lost ounces. The value of deposits has changed. Previously uneconomic mines start to look viable. The value of genuine new discoveries is immense.

The bull case is that miners are pricing a disaster that doesn’t come. Gold and silver stabilise, the financing overhang eventually clears and the sector re-rates sharply higher. We are near capitulation.

With a BPI reading of zero, one thing is certain: the sector is not over-owned.

Given that June typically sees the low for the year in gold and silver, I favour the bull case. But the summer is always weak. We might have a while to wait if my ongoing thesis that gold and silver range trade for a year proves true.

This is not 2011-16.

It’s a mid-cycle correction.

The question is not so much whether the sector is hated or not. The chart tells us it is. The question is how much longer investors can stay this pessimistic if gold remains above $4,000 and silver above $60.

Lifetime subscription prices go up tomorrow and other matters

Turning to other matters, here is this week’s commentary in case you missed it:

And a reminder that you have one more day to buy a Lifetime Subscription before prices go up.

The current price is £550 until tomorrow. It then rises to £650 before being permanently withdrawn on 30 June.

If you’ve been considering Lifetime Membership, this is your last chance.

Lifetime Membership

Two NBs

1. If you are looking to upgrade and have trouble with payments, please drop me a line (either reply to this email or message me). I need to cancel your membership, issue a refund and then you need to resubscribe.

2. Despite what the sign-up process says, this is a genuine one-off payment for lifetime access. I manually convert memberships myself.

Any problems, please message me on Substack or reply to this email.

Thank you.

Finally I appeared on the Before. During. After podcast with Sam Carrington this week. Good chat about comedy and real life.

Until next time,

Dominic

Imagine you are in the circus, watching a tightrope walker who’s been on the sauce.

He sways, the crowd gasps, he sways again, more gasps, and yet somehow he doesn’t fall. This goes on and on and eventually you get bored watching.

That, it seems to me, is Britain.

Public debt is now knocking on £3 trillion. (Remember you could have spent a million pounds every day since Jesus was born and still not have spent a trillion - that’s how incomprehensible a sum a trillion is). Interest payments now run at over £110 billion a year - more than we spend on education. Debt-to-GDP hovers around 100%. Growth is wilted. Productivity is like blancmange. Taxes are everywhere and record-breaking. Waste and bloat and bureaucracy are rampant.

But the political response to every problem is the same: spend more.

Despite all of this, like our inebriated tight rope walker, sterling refuses to drop. The pound trades around $1.35. The gilt market continues to function. The bond vigilantes, whoever these mystical people are, appear to be away at lunch with Lord Lucan..

Why?

The answer begins with a simple but often overlooked fact that currencies are not valued absolutely, but relatively.

You look at Britain’s fiscal position and conclude the pound must fall, but against what?

It’s not like the US isn’t running unthinkable deficits. Interest payments are exploding there too. The eurozone is if anything more trapped in low growth than we are. Japan’s debt burden is legendary. Never mind the oil, Canada is a basket case. Australian regulation is doing its best to revive the traditions of the penal colony and China has its own economic and demographic headaches.

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All currencies are crap

Then there are interest rates. Britain still offers relatively attractive yields. Ten-year gilts yield around 5%. That may be painful for the Chancellor, whatever her name is, but it is attractive to those looking for income. Japan, the US and most of Europe offer less. Higher interest rates support the pound. They attract computerised capital from around the world, which buys sterling to get the yield.

London remains a financial centre, albeit it one in over-regulated decline. There is still some rule of law and some respect for property rights. The UK is not yet Zimbabwe, Turkey or Venezuela, even if it may feel that way. A country can be badly governed for a surprisingly long time before capital completely loses confidence.

However, none of the underlying problems have actually been fixed, nor are they going to be fixed. We are still spending £48,000 per household through the state. You’ll get greater productivity out of a plate of blancmange. Taxes are not coming down. We are locked in promise, spend, borrow, tax, repeat.

Here’s another possibility. The tightrope walker may never fall off.

But with each step, the tightrope itself gets closer to the ground.

The pound has lost over 40% of its purchasing power just since 2020.

In 2007 a pound cost $2.10, so we are down a third against another unit which in itself is hopeless.

Measured against the constant that is gold, the pound has fallen over 95% since the Gordon Brown sales of 1999.

Here are those declines visualised.

Share

The framing is all wrong. The collapse is not sudden but ongoing.

Maybe we don’t get a dramatic crisis. No Black Wednesday, no run on the pound, no emergency press conference outside the Bank of England or wheelbarrows full of digital bank notes. Just more of this relentless decline.

Every year a bit more debt, a bit more printing, a bit more inflation, another 7% loss of purchasing power, a bit more government spending, a bit more taxation, year after year, decade after decade. The tightrope gets lower and lower but nobody notices because we are all looking at the walker.

Alf Ramsay was on £4,500 a year. Thomas Tuchel gets £5 million. That didn’t happen over night. It was cumulative, incremental and compounded.

The endgame remains debasement

Not just in the UK but everywhere. In a democracy where politicians need votes they will ALWAYS choose inflation over austerity, spending over restraint and dilution over default. This is built in. The incentives are too powerful. They will sacrifice the currency to preserve the system.

Nothing changes until the system itself changes.

Perhaps the tightrope walker never falls. But the rope keeps inching lower and lower until one day it is running along the ground.

The crowd applauds because there was no crash. Meanwhile the currency has lost another 98% of its value.

That is where this is going, gradually but relentlessly. Not with a bang, but with a long, slow debasement.

Sterling has been “collapsing” for decades, and it will “collapse’ for many decades more, likewise dollars and euros and yen.

The debasement of currency is not a new thing, though we have never seen it globally in the way it exists today.

Gold has seen it happen many times before and it has survived every time. It will survive tsunamis, earthquakes and explosions. National currencies will not.

Thanks for reading the Flying Frisby.

Until next time,

Dominic

A quick housekeeping note

I’ve decided to withdraw Lifetime Membership to The Flying Frisby at the end of June.

The current price is £550 until 15 June. It then rises to £650 before being withdrawn permanently on 30 June.

If you’ve been considering Lifetime Membership, this is your last chance

Lifetime Membership

NB despite what the sign-up process says, this is a genuine ONE-OFF payment for lifetime access. I manually convert memberships myself.

Any problems, please message me on Substack or reply to this email.

The book

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

Hello,

A quick note about The Flying Frisby.

For several years I’ve offered a Lifetime Membership. The idea was simple: make a one-off payment and never have to think about subscription renewals again.

A surprising number of readers have taken me up on it.

However, I’ve decided to withdraw that offer permanently at the end of June.

The timetable is as follows:

• Lifetime Membership remains available at £550 until midnight on 15 June.

• From 16 June, the price rises to £650.

• At midnight on 30 June, Lifetime Membership will be withdrawn permanently.

Until then, it remains available for a one-off payment.

Lifetime Membership

To be absolutely clear, this is a genuine ONE-OFF payment for lifetime access.

Substack displays it as an annual subscription when you sign up. Once you have subscribed, I manually convert your account to Lifetime Membership myself.

If you encounter any problems at all, simply reply to this email, or message me on the Substack app, and I’ll sort it out personally.

Lifetime Membership

If you've been considering it, this is the final opportunity. Once the deadline passes, the only subscription options will be monthly and annual membership.

If you’re already a Lifetime Member, congratulations. You’ve locked in access for life and nothing changes.

The Flying Frisby has been going for many years now. Thousands of articles, podcasts, a few videos, some bad jokes and more than a few good investment ideas.

All the best,

Dominic

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Let’s start with a quick market update after Friday’s brutal action

The last few days have not been pleasant for owners of gold, silver, miners or indeed bitcoin. Friday saw on 8% fall in silver. How January’s euphoria has reversed. That’s silver for you.

My ongoing thesis that gold, silver et al go nowhere for a year remains in place.

The structural backdrop for gold’s bull market also remains: growing government debt, huge fiscal deficits, ongoing central bank accumulation, de-dollarisation. But the heat needed to come out of the market, and now it is doing just that.

Silver I’m less certain about, as per usual. Its monetary role is largely gone, but if/when gold gets going again, silver will get pulled higher. Industrial demand remains robust. A year ago if you’d said silver will be $68 yet silver investors will be despairing, you’d have been laughed at.

That said, I think it probably needs to go back and retest $50 before this correction is done.

Miners will follow the metal. But it’s important to remember they are effectively leveraged financing vehicles. When risk appetite disappears, they get destroyed almost regardless of geology, though the good ones will come back.

In commodity bull markets, investors usually lose money by selling the bottom, sometimes through despair, sometimes because too much leverage forces them to.

I still lean toward “structural bull market, cyclical correction”. Though correction is perhaps to light a term when 50-80% of junior mining market caps get wiped out. The sector is not for the faint hearted, though we all love it when it goes up.

Remember the great Shelby Davis quote, “You make most of your money in a bear market, you just don’t realize it at the time”.

I need to conduct a proper bear market portfolio review, which I shall do very soon.

As for bitcoin, its correction looks dramatic, but in percentage terms it remains fairly normal by bitcoin standards. I covered it in this week’s commentary:

A quick housekeeping note

I’ve decided to withdraw Lifetime Membership to The Flying Frisby at the end of June.

The current price is £550 until 15 June. It then rises to £650 before being withdrawn permanently on 30 June.

To be clear, despite what the sign-up process says, this is a genuine ONE-OFF payment for lifetime access. I manually convert memberships myself.

If you’ve been considering Lifetime Membership, this is the final opportunity.

Lifetime Membership

Any problems, please message me on Substack or reply to this email.

Finally, this week I appeared on the Grant Williams podcast, talking about the book. Feedback has been really good. Grant is one of the best interviewers out there and I really enjoyed it.

Thank you for being a subscriber to the Flying Frisby.

Until next time,

Dominic

I was going to write about money transfer company Wise (WISE.L/WSE.US) this week.

The company recently listed on the Nasdaq, demoting its London listing to secondary, and the prospects looked rosy. UK-listed companies trade at lower valuations because they are listed in the UK. America not only has greater depths of capital, it values tech, growth and success. In the UK they get ignored, taxed or regulated - or all three.

And there is another thing. Have you ever tried being an American and sending money abroad? Boy, is it tiresome. And slow, and bureaucratic, and expensive. Wise solves a genuine problem of cross-border payments and solves it well. Its user base was therefore growing.

Meanwhile, its infrastructure is increasingly becoming embedded throughout the banking system itself, the plumbing behind international payments.

But then on Monday Belgium announced it was investigating Wise, as it suspected the company is “used by criminals to launder the proceeds of fraud, corruption and drug trafficking”, and the stock promptly sank 15%.

I have little doubt that Wise, like Revolut and every other payments platform, is used for money laundering, just as Facebook is used for hate speech, and WhatsApp to deal drugs. Money itself is used for money-laundering. Banks are used for money laundering. The stock market is used for money laundering. Cash is used for money laundering too. I guess, the question is whether the company is guilty of “non-compliance with anti-money laundering legislation”.

Maybe it turns out to be procedural and manageable - the rebound in the stock suggests that is the case. Maybe it becomes something more serious. We shall see - and I shall probably wait before committing my precious capital. How long will I wait? Not sure. These kinds of investigations have a tendency to drag on.

But the episode brings me to why bitcoin was invented int he first place, and this week I have had several worried messages about it. Do I still like it? And, more importantly. WTF is going on?

As I’m sure you know, the price has fallen quite sharply.

On one of my investor WhatsApp groups, which has some smart people, many are asking if it really is game over for bitcoin. “Does ANYONE have a good document about the actual use cases of bitcoin?” asked one. “I simply don’t see the point. I see a 15-year track record of promises that it will change the world but with zero actual use cases in my life.”

Somebody else chimed in, “The world is changing meaningfully with AI, chips, oil, geopolitics, rare earths, gold, silver etc. I’m just not sure bitcoin fits”

These observations are quite valid. What’s it for? You just need to look at the price to see it isn’t a hedge against inflation. Nobody uses it for micropayments. It hasn’t solved financial exclusion in the Third World. It’s not private. It’s not used as a day-to-day medium of exchange. It hasn’t replaced fiat. It hasn’t fixed any of things it was supposed to fix. Quantum computing’s going to take it out. What’s the point?

Remember: narrative follows price. Not the other way round.

Bear markets are vicious. They grind you down psychologically. They make you doubt the underlying asset itself.

So let’s address that question. W hat is the point of bitcoin?

Read more

Following 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 resort

Even 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 Frames

And this one was generated entirely in Neural Frames

Ironically, 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.

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Writing, research, advice and more

This 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)

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

Finally, 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 Frisby

Until next time

Dominic

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