It’s Time to Make Gold Great Again! |
Tuesday, 7 May 2024 | By Brian Chu | Editor, Gold Stock Pro and The Australian Gold Report |
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[7 min read] In this Issue: The silent disintegration of fiat currencies Gold: Misunderstood and vilified by design Make gold great again by making money matter Is that the way God sees it? Does He favour those who are good at killing? Or those who are not? |
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Dear Reader, Gold has rallied strongly in the last few weeks, going parabolic since mid-March. Recently, this rally took a break as tensions in the Middle East temporarily de-escalated. Have a look below: Now, this is not the end of gold’s ascent… I believe it’s having a brief pause. But why hasn’t this year’s outstanding rally captured the public’s attention? The exceptional move should have sparked a much broader interest in gold. But that hasn’t happened yet. It wasn’t long ago that lithium or uranium was a hot commodity. The media was brimming with articles touting both metals, spurring the public to pay attention. However, gold hasn’t received the same reception. In fact, rather than buying more, some investors are selling! According to Investor Daily, gold consumption among Australian investors fell in the past year to the lowest on record. This trend went against the trend of the Asian markets. The article also noted a fall in the amount of gold held by global exchange-traded funds (ETF) over the last two years, even as the price of gold rallied. Where did the gold go? The answer is that central banks and Asian buyers have bought up more gold over this period. And only recently did the US funds shift towards buying more gold. With Australian investors behaving this way, it begs the question how can we make gold great again? The silent disintegration of fiat currencies Let me show you how the price of gold has changed since 2019 for some of the major currencies in this table below: Did you expect gold to deliver such an astounding return over these five years? In case you’re wondering what ARS stands for, it’s the Argentinian Peso. While various stock market indices rose similarly over the same period, it was a rougher ride. I’ll let you in on something while we’re at it. Gold hasn’t become more valuable over the years. It’s the currencies that are losing purchasing power. This is what you’re receiving in return for your labour and brainpower. Gone are the days when you could rely on your paycheque and save to build wealth. Let that sink in! Gold: Misunderstood and vilified by design We know gold has been money for several thousand years. It’s a tale as old as time. However, the advent of central banking and technology has turned gold into an antiquated asset. Central bankers, investment legends such as Warren Buffett, the mainstream media, and academics have publicly criticised gold. They’ve called it a ‘barbarous relic’ and ‘pet rock’ and used the argument that ‘you can’t eat gold’ to explain why gold isn’t worth your attention. In response to the argument ‘you can’t eat gold’, here’s my rebuttal: ‘With respect, do you eat bank notes, coins and numbers in your bank account statement?’ Snarky comments aside, I believe every man or woman should take gold seriously. Especially when gold has stealthily increased in price against all the world’s currencies over time. You’ve seen how it’s moved at an alarming pace over the last five years. If you’ve read my Fat Tail Daily articles for some time, you know that I don’t believe that it’s an accident that gold is unloved by the general public. Not just unloved but deeply misunderstood. By keeping us ignorant, households and businesses will find it increasingly difficult to retain their wealth. A system that has central banks’ lending to the government, which in turn puts the people on the tab to repay will create an enslaved population. That’s why you pay taxes. Someone has to repay the debt to the central banks! Money doesn’t grow on trees. Knowing the secrets of gold can help you unshackle your bonds (pun intended), stand in the way of government irresponsibility, and purge the parasite that we know as inflation. Moreover, you regain your liberty and the ability to build wealth to pass onto generations. Make gold great again by making money matter Last Wednesday, I joined Kerry Stevenson from Making Money Matter and organiser of the Australian Gold Conference, Simon Lawson, the Managing Director of Western Australia-based gold developer Spartan Resources [ASX:SPR] and Hedley Widdup, fund manager at Lion Selection Group [ASX:LSX] to talk about the latest events happening in the gold space. In the 30-minute chat, we looked at what drove the price of gold higher in recent times, why gold is unloved in Australia, the valuation gap that exists between gold and gold stocks and the factors causing this. I invite you to listen to this chat and stay tuned to Kerry’s channel as she hosts weekly discussions with key industry figures on matters relating to gold. Also, this year’s Australian Gold Conference is happening from Monday 26th to Wednesday 28th August at Crown Towers in Barangaroo, Sydney. You can find out more about the event or register to attend by going to this website. I’m pleased to inform you that I’ll be presenting this year about how to build a precious metals portfolio and the tools I use to give me an edge in selecting gold mining stocks. Those of you who are already a member of my gold newsletters, The Australian Gold Report and Gold Stock Pro, have already tried it out for yourselves. It hasn’t been an easy journey given that gold has been rising these three years, but gold stocks have languished. However, the trend has shifted in favour of gold stocks recently and momentum is picking up. If you haven’t built up a precious metals portfolio yet, now is the time to consider doing so. Let me guide you in getting started. Consider signing up to The Australian Gold Report and I’ll show you three gold stocks plus a comprehensive guide on buying physical bullion, precious metals ETFs, and more! Why not join us in making gold great again in Australia? God bless, Brian Chu, Editor, Gold Stock Pro and The Australian Gold Report Brian Chu is one of Australia’s foremost independent authorities on gold and gold stocks, with a unique strategy for valuing big producers and highly speculative explorers. He established a private family fund that only invests in ASX-listed gold mining companies, possibly the only such fund in Australia, putting his strategy and research skills to the test under public scrutiny. He currently writes two gold-focused investment advisories. In his Australian Gold Report, Brian shows you a strategy for building long-term wealth in physical gold, along with a select portfolio of hand-picked stocks, mainly producers with proven revenue streams, chosen for their balance of risk and reward. In his more specialised Gold Stock Pro service, Brian helps readers trade some of the most exciting, speculative gold mining plays on the ASX. He uses his proprietary system — based on the famous Lassonde Curve model, which tracks the life cycle of mining stocks. His aim is to help you get ready to trade the next phase of gold and silver’s anticipated longer-term bull market for opportunities to benefit. Advertisement: PREMIERING NOW: THE BRIAN CHU INTERVIEW Brian Chu is the founder of The Australian Gold Fund. When gold last broke out, Brian’s private fund beat the ASX gold stock index by more than seven times over. Now, Brian sits down with Fat Tail’s Editorial Director Greg Canavan to discuss where gold is going in 2024. CLICK HERE NOW TO WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW |
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| By Bill Bonner | Editor, Fat Tail Daily |
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[3 min read] Dear Reader, And did they get you to trade ‘Your heroes for ghosts? ‘Hot ashes for trees? ‘Hot air for a cool breeze?’ Pink Floyd (1975) Whoa! Here we have what appears to be a landmark reversal. For many years, Americans have been accustomed to thinking of Israelis as the ‘good guys.’ The Saudis, meanwhile, were the ‘bad guys.’ In our simple-minded, un-nuanced way, that was all we needed to know. But now, even New York Times’ columnist Tom Friedman says they might have changed places: ‘To put it bluntly, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has put his country’s worst religious extremists in jail, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put his country’s worst religious extremists in his cabinet.’ We do not claim to know God’s Plan. And we’re suspicious of those who do. Their world is too tight, too neat…with only two colours — black and white — very unlike the real world. In the real world, colours fade... run... and turn grey. And God keeps His plans to Himself. Encouraging support for the latest $93 billion ‘foreign aid’ bill, Mike Johnson, House Speaker, identified Hamas as a ‘terrorist organization’. His heroes were fighting ‘terrorism’; end of story. Johnson neither increases our respect for Congress, nor diminishes it. But an honest family man often doubts that he is doing the right thing for his own children; does Johnson really think he knows the right thing for the children of Israel or Gaza? Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, a small area effectively, but not entirely, under Israeli military control. Hamas has little conventional military capability — no tanks, no bombers, no serious artillery or navy, no be-medaled generals, no nuclear submarines or ‘Iron Dome’ to protect it from aerial attack. Vastly outgunned, its campaigns tend to be of a ‘terrorist’ nature, along with Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other ‘terrorist’ groups. Even at terrorism, Hamas is not especially good. Up until September of last year (if we read the data correctly) it was responsible for 1,455 deaths. Often, Hamas attacked Israeli military installations. A campaign against a military target should not be counted as a genuine act of ‘terrorism,’ anyway; it is an act of war. Often as not, there were no casualties on the Israeli side. By contrast, Larry Johnson, an ex-CIA analyst, counts the number of Palestinian deaths, at the hands of the Israelis, at 8,660, almost six times as many. If America wanted to be on the winning side, surely Israel was the way to go. But is that the way God sees it? Does He favour those who are good at killing? Or those who are not? Larry Johnson: ‘A fair analyst would conclude that the Palestinians are more victimized than the Israelis based on the lop-sided number of killed and wounded on the Palestinian side.’ That was the score up until September of 2023. Since then, the balance of killing has tipped even further in favour of the Israelis. In the attack launched by Hamas in October, some 1,143 people were killed. It appears that many of those who died, however, were actually killed by ‘friendly fire’ from the Israelis themselves... we don’t know how many. Israel counterattacked. About 35,000 Palestinians — most of them women and children — have died so far (many of them still uncounted under the rubble.) This brings the total number of souls snuffed by Hamas terrorism to around 2,598, while those killed by Israel’s military tote to more than 43,000. Based on the body-bag count alone, the Israeli army is 16 times more of a threat to human life than ‘terrorists’. And how about the rest of the world? Statista reports that in an average year of the 21st century about 20,000 people died from ‘terrorism.’ Most of these incidents, as you would expect, occurred in the Middle East or Africa. Meanwhile, Brown University’s “Cost of War” project puts the number of people directly killed by America’s ‘War on Terror’ at 929,000, about a third of them civilians. In other words, for every victim of terrorists, the US and its allies killed two people. An even broader view comes to us from Professor R.J. Rummel, who estimated and summed the number of innocent people killed, not by terrorists, but by legitimate governments. In the 20th century, there were intentional famines, for example, both in the Soviet Union (Holodomor) and in China (Cultural Revolution). There were also purges, genocide, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps... killing fields, and mass murderers whose crimes take our breath away — Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao... and many others. Rummel puts the total number of dead from communist regimes alone at 148 million. James A. Lucas, meanwhile, doesn’t let Americans off the hook. He puts the number of dead in America’s unnecessary wars since WWII — Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan et al — at 20 million. ‘We are killing the bad guys,’ Mr. Mike Johnson might reply, ‘and thank God, we’re killing a lot of them.’ And who knows; maybe God agrees with him. Or, maybe He doesn’t. Regards, Bill Bonner, For Fat Tail Daily All advice is general advice and has not taken into account your personal circumstances. Please seek independent financial advice regarding your own situation, or if in doubt about the suitability of an investment. |
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