Is The US Banking System In Trouble?

Is The US Banking System In Trouble?

December 2, 2024  Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black)

In the year 1157, the Republic of Venice was engaged in a bitter trade war with its arch rival the Byzantine Empire.

While the rest of Europe was barely surviving thanks to the stupidity of their centrally planned feudal economies, Venice was a place where anyone, even the most illiterate peasant, could work hard, take some risks, and become fabulously wealthy.

In short, it was the medieval America. And unsurprisingly its economy was booming.

Trade was the bread and butter of the Venetian economy. Venice had the fastest ships, the boldest captains, the shrewdest merchants, and by far the best legal and economic system.

In the other corner was the Byzantine Empire, a superpower in decline. Even the emperor at that point was more of a figurehead as nearly everything in the economy was controlled by incompetent career bureaucrats.

Even despite its decline, however, the Byzantine Empire still controlled regional trade in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. And Venice dominated trade in the Western Mediterranean.

It was only natural that the two-- a rising power versus a declining power-- would lock horns in a trade war.

Bear in mind that medieval trade wars were not what we think of today. In our modern era, a trade “war” is mostly harsh words, barbed tweets, and now potentially tariffs.

A thousand years ago, a trade war was almost an actual war-- naval battles, piracy, wanton slaughter… pretty much standard medieval warfare short of a full-blown ground invasion.

And like any war, a trade war was expensive.

So, in the year 1157, rather than raise taxes, the Venetian government launched a special loan program from its citizens. Participation was pretty much mandatory. But the basic idea was that, unlike taxes, the government would pay back the money, with interest.

Investors were issued paper certificates as a guarantee of repayment. And since nearly everyone in Venice had paper certificates (since the loan was mandatory), merchants and bankers began trading certificates to settle transactions.

The government loan certificates had essentially become a financial security-- and even a form of money. And the world’s first real bond market was born.

These days bonds are considered a boring, ‘safe’ investment. And most individual investors seldom bother to even learn about the bond market, let alone actually buy any bonds.

After all, bonds aren’t nearly as sexy as the stock market.

But bonds are still a critical piece of the global financial system. And just like in medieval Venice, bonds are almost a form of money, i.e. large corporations, banks, and governments consider bonds a “cash equivalent”.

Banks in particular are massive hoarders of bonds. When you make a deposit at your bank, most of the time they use that money to buy bonds.

That’s because, again, bonds are considered safe and boring. Especially US government bonds. And banks are supposed to be safe and boring.

But a serious problem started to creep into this ‘safe and boring’ asset class around ten years ago.

You might recall back during the 2008 financial crisis, central banks around the world printed tons of money and slashed interest rates to zero.

Governments also started spending like crazy in an effort to bail out their economies, and most of them went very deeply into debt.

The US national debt was $9.5 trillion just prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Barely three years later it had risen to $15 trillion.

But because interest rates were so low, most of that $5 trillion in new debt had a yield of roughly 1%.

And it was America’s commercial banks (along with insurance companies) which bought up a huge portion of those 1% yielding bonds.

Well, eventually the economy emerged from its crisis… so the Fed began to hike interest rates. But in doing so they created a huge problem for banks.

If there’s one thing to understand about bonds, it’s this: bond values fall when interest rates rise.

Think about it-- the banks bought trillions of dollars’ worth of bonds during the financial crisis. And their bonds were locked in a ~1% yield.

When rates suddenly rose to 2%, the value of the banks’ 1% bonds obviously fell. After all, why would a bond with a 1% fixed yield be worth the same as a new bond that pays 2%?

So, the new, higher rates caused the banks’ bond portfolios to suffer huge losses. Some banks were even heading towards insolvency. But they used a bunch of clever accounting tricks to hide their losses and pretend that everything was fine.

I first wrote about this nearly ten years ago and predicted that some banks will fail as a result.

Fortunately for the banks, the interest rate hikes were short-lived. By 2019 the Fed reversed course and started cutting rates. Then came the pandemic, and rates once again went to zero.

You’d think the banks would have collectively breathed a sigh of relief, learned from their mistake, and vowed to never load up on low-yield bonds ever again.

Yet the opposite happened. Banks bought trillions of dollars’ worth of US government bonds throughout 2020-2021 with yields as low as 0.01%. Crazy.

Today bond yields have risen to more than 4%... and, SHOCKER, the same effect has taken place: banks’ bond portfolios have suffered enormous losses.

The FDIC recently reported the total ‘unrealized’ bond loss to be over half a trillion dollars. That’s a lot.

The US banking system as a whole has enough equity to cover that loss. But individually, many banks do not.

In fact, this is precisely the reason that Silicon Valley Bank (among others) failed in 2023. So if rates don’t fall dramatically (or worse-- rates go up), then we could see more banks fail.

Bank of America is one of the naughty banks with nearly $90 billion in losses from higher interest rates. That’s over a third of the bank’s total equity.

This means that Bank of America is not insolvent; but at some point, the regulators could force them to reinforce their balance sheet by suspending their dividend and raising more capital. This is likely a big reason why Warren Buffett dumped so much Bank of America stock.

(Bizarrely, since reporting massive bond losses in their most recent quarterly report, Bank of America’s stock price has shot up nearly 20%. The same thing happened with Silicon Valley Bank’s stock in 2023.)

But, again, while there’s currently still enough capital in the US banking system as a whole to fend off a major crisis, there’s a MUCH bigger problem lurking-- and I’ll write to you about this soon.

In the meantime, if you’d rather avoid the mess entirely, definitely consider short-term T-bills in Treasury Direct (it’s like having a four-week CD), or dollar-pegged tokens like USDC.

There’s also the option of a foreign bank account in a financially secure jurisdiction, which includes the added benefit of asset protection and diversification.

To your freedom,  James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

PS-  Banks are marketed as pillars of security, but in reality represent significant risk to your hard earned money.  In the upcoming Monthly Letter for Schiff Sovereign Premium subscribers, we uncover the cracks in the banking system and explain how these challenges are affecting both individual banks and the system at large.

More importantly, we provide actionable strategies to safeguard your wealth—and even grow it—despite these uncertainties.  

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/is-the-us-banking-system-in-trouble-151833/

What’s up with Buffett and his $325 Billion Pile of Cash?

What’s up with Buffett and his $325 Billion Pile of Cash?

November 20, 2024 Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black)

Much has been written about Warren Buffett having sold a substantial amount of stocks. And his company, Berkshire Hathaway, is sitting on a record $325 billion cash pile as a result.

Buffett has often said that his preferred holding period for an investment is "forever". So the fact that he has sold so much stock has many observers proclaiming that "Buffett is predicting an imminent stock market crash."

Except that he's not. Buffett is a pretty transparent guy who has never been afraid to speak his mind. If he were predicting a crash, he'd probably say it.

Besides, Buffett has sold plenty of stocks in the past; this is not an anomaly. In 2022 and 2023, for example, he dumped shares of Chevron, Activision Blizzard, Taiwan Semiconductor, and HP.

This time around he sold off some shares in Apple and Bank of America. But he actually explained WHY-- especially with Apple. And I think his reasoning is worth mentioning.

Buffett explained to a reporter that "We don’t mind paying taxes at Berkshire. And we are paying a 21% federal rate,” which amounted to $5 billion last year.

But he continued, saying that the US federal corporate tax rate "was 35% not long ago, and it’s been 52% in the past. . . With the present fiscal policies, I think that something has to give, and I think that higher taxes are quite likely," i.e. that the government will take "a greater share of your income, or mine, or Berkshire's."

"So if I’m [selling Apple stock] at 21% [tax rates] this year, and we’re doing it at a lot higher percentage later on, I don’t think [shareholders] will actually mind that we sold a little Apple this year.”

This is a critical takeaway.

Nations with enormous debts and deficits can’t live beyond their means forever; Buffett isn't predicting a market crash-- he's predicting higher taxes... that, sooner or later, the federal government is going to have a take a much bigger bite out of people's paychecks.

As I've written before, there's a chance that Buffett's prediction might be wrong. It IS still possible for the US to get back on the right track-- a combination of government efficiency, spending cuts, de-regulation, and a technology (AI) fueled productivity boom could generate such an economic boom that the country COULD grow its way out of debt without having to resort to higher taxes (or inflation).

But the new administration will have to get moving immediately. Otherwise, Buffett will be proven right: higher taxes will be inevitable.

His decision to sell Bank of America stock is even more obvious and also bears mentioning. Quite simply, Bank of America is in deep trouble.

You probably recall how the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates all the way down to zero during the pandemic. It was ridiculous-- the US government was able to sell Ten Year notes with a yield of less than 0.4%.

Talk about a ******* deal. The largest debtor in the history of the world was selling bonds with such a pitiful yield that they didn't even keep up with inflation. Who would be such an idiot to buy such a terrible asset?

Bank of America, that's who. In fact, Bank of America invested hundreds of billions of dollars of their depositors' savings in these terrible assets.

Well, now that interest rates are literally more than 10x higher (from 0.4% to more than 4%), those same bonds that Bank of America bought back in 2020 and 2021 have lost a TON of money. BofA is sitting on more than $100 BILLION in unrealized losses from their bond portfolio.

Remember, this is the same reason that Silicon Valley Bank (among others) went bust last year-- the bonds they bought during the pandemic lost a ton of value, and the bank was wiped out. Bank of America is in a similar position now.

The key difference is that Bank of America has enough capital on its balance sheet to sustain those losses. So they might not be wiped out or fail. But the implications for shareholders are pretty bad.

Whenever a bank gets into trouble, the first thing that happens is the regulators step in and start making a bunch of demands. In this case, the FDIC and Fed will probably force Bank of America to raise more capital.

This will have the effect of severely diluting existing Bank of America shareholders... which most investors, especially Buffett, absolutely HATE.

The second thing that regulators always do with troubled banks is force them to suspend their dividend. And dividends are among the top reasons why Buffett likes to hold companies "forever". So given the likely prospect of zero dividends and heavily diluted shares, it looks like Buffett is getting out before regulators drop the hammer on Bank of America.

This is a big difference from "Buffett predicting a crash" as so many headlines across the Internet have been suggesting.

That said, the US stock market in general is definitely looking very expensive and near historically high valuations once again.

But there's at least one sector that's still cheap: real assets.

I've been writing for most of the past two years that real assets make a lot of sense to own, especially during inflationary times. Real assets were THE asset class to own during the 1970s stagflation.

The US is currently on the same path-- with its national debt constantly surging to new record highs (now $36 trillion), suggesting that another bout of nasty inflation could be in order down the road.

But, again, there's now a reasonable chance that the new administration is able to get the nation's finances on the right track... potentially forestalling an inflation spike and debt crisis.

So do real assets still make sense?

For now, yes. Natural gas is a great example-- as I've explained before, US natural gas is still incredibly cheap. And any American energy renaissance will depend heavily on natural gas. Prices could surge as a result, and natural gas producers could boom. Yet many companies' shares are still available for peanuts.

Bottom line, it still makes sense to consider fantastic real asset producers-- especially when they are profitable, low-debt, dividend-paying businesses that trade at absurdly low valuations.

To your freedom,   James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/whats-up-with-buffett-and-his-325-billion-pile-of-cash-151751/

If You Think Bitcoin Is On Fire, Just Wait For The Natural Gas Boom

If You Think Bitcoin Is On Fire, Just Wait For The Natural Gas Boom

November 12, 2024 Notes from the Field By James Hickman / Simon Black

“Wow, these guys are going to be in for a rude wakening about how much power is going to be available. . .” thought Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation Energy.

Dominguez was one of the attendees last May at a private, invitation-only gathering of energy and tech company CEOs held at Microsoft’s headquarters. The whole point was to talk about power.

Everyone already knew that AI was consuming a lot of electricity, and they assumed this demand would grow. A lot. But they didn’t realize by quite how much until OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman told the group that just a single AI model will require as much power as a large city.

Again, that’s just ONE model. And there are plenty of them out there-- Google Gemini, OpenAI, Meta AI, etc. Every major tech company-- not to mention plenty of startups-- have developed or are developing power-hungry AI models.

In terms of energy demand and power consumption, AI will be the equivalent of adding several states to the US over the next few years. And America’s power grid simply doesn’t have the capacity.

Joe Dominguez understood that immediately… which is why his company teamed up with Microsoft to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania.

But one additional nuclear power plant is barely going to move the needle on America’s energy needs… and it takes way too much time to build new ones.

In fact, the most recent nuclear power facility to come online in the US took more than a decade to build. So even if the industry gets started today (which they won’t), and the permitting process were quick and easy (which it won’t be), nuclear power is still a long way out.

But there’s an easier option for the here and now: natural gas.

I’ve written about this before-- US natural gas is absurdly cheap, especially compared to global prices. That’s because there’s just so damn much of it in the US… combined with the fact that natural gas is complicated to transport.

Oil is simple. Tanker ships crisscross the planet transporting crude from country to country, so the global price for oil is similar everywhere.

But it’s not that way with gas. Natural gas has to first be decontaminated of various impurities at the wellhead in order to be transported in ‘dry’ form through pipelines, then stored underground.

At the moment there is no trans-Atlantic pipeline allowing US natural gas to flow to Europe. And building one would take years if not decades.

That’s why there’s such a tremendous price difference in natural gas between the United States and Europe. The US produces oceans of it but hardly uses it, hence a cheap price. Europe barely produces any but consumes it voraciously, so the price is more than 4x higher.

If only there were a readily available way to transport natural gas across the Atlantic… then US producers would be able to export to Europe. Natural gas would be more like oil-- a global commodity whose price is more or less the same around the world. And the US price would surge.

Well, there actually is a way to do that. Natural gas can be liquefied into a condensed form (about 1/600th of the gaseous volume) and transported at -163C.

Obviously, there’s a cost to liquefying and transporting gas. But a US producer can still make so much more money selling gas to Europe-- even after the additional costs are included.

And this started to happen around 2017; US producers began liquefying their natural gas and exporting to Europe in major quantities. Within a few years, LNG exports were booming.

But then, earlier this year, Joe Biden bowed to the climate fanatics and ordered his Department of Energy to cease issuing permits for new LNG export terminals… essentially shutting down export growth.

It’s safe to expect a totally different policy starting in January, i.e. more US natural gas will flow to Europe. That means less supply in the US. Natural gas prices will rise as a result… and probably by a LOT.

But don’t forget about AI.

Let’s first think about different ways to generate electricity and the types of fuels that are available.

There’s solar and wind, for example. The prices of solar panels in particular… and wind turbines to a degree, are both falling. In large part this is because the Chinese Communist Party heavily subsidizes its domestic solar panel industry.

So, wind and solar are somewhat price competitive. But they carry a security risk: do you really want China manufacturing your entire power grid? Is it possible they built a kill switch in their software?

More importantly, they’re not terribly reliable. There are times (like night!) when the sun doesn’t shine. Germany (which generates nearly 60% of its power from renewable energy) recently experienced yet another dunkelflaute, i.e. a foggy, doldrum period in which there is neither sunshine nor wind.

This doesn’t work for AI. Tech companies need reliability.

Then there’s coal… which is super reliable, not to mention cheap and efficient. But it’s one of the dirtiest fuels known to man. Google won’t get its hands dirty with that one.

Tech companies love nuclear. They understand it is, by far, the most efficient form of energy known to man. But again, new reactors are 10+ years away. AI needs power now.

And that pretty much leaves natural gas. The US has oceans of it and barely uses a fraction of its supply. It’s absurdly cheap. In fact, according to the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, natural gas is THE cheapest fuel source per MW of electrical capacity.

It’s the cleanest of all the conventional sources. Plus, you can construct a new facility in about two years… so new power can come online quickly. And the Big Tech companies have demonstrated that they are more than willing to shell out the cash needed to finance natural gas power plants.

Between these two trends: AI power demand, and the upcoming export boom, natural gas prices are probably going to soar.

We’ve just watched the Dow Jones Industrial Average rise by 7% to an all-time high in the last week. Bitcoin has surged by more than 30% to its all-time high.

That’s nothing compared to what we could see in the natural gas price.

It’s obviously not going to happen in a week, these trends will take longer to unfold. But it’s definitely a good time to look at some of the extremely undervalued natural gas producers whose profits will boom.

To your freedom,  James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/if-you-think-bitcoin-is-on-fire-just-wait-for-the-natural-gas-boom-151726/

What About Gold?

What About Gold?

November 18, 2024  Notes From the Field – James Hickman (Simon Black) Sovereign Man

It was early January 2020, and weird things were happening in the world.

Socialism was on the march in the Land of the Free. Conflict, it seemed, was exploding everywhere, both abroad (North Korea, Iran, Yemen) and at home.

And most notably, over in China, the Communist government was literally welding people into their homes to ‘keep them safe’ from a bizarre virus that was spreading rapid

It was only January, but 2020 was already looking pretty uncertain.

I wrote an article about preparing for uncertainty. And, with respect to finance, I wrote that gold was a very sensible asset to own in such times: “Frankly I don’t think anyone can credibly say that they have any idea what’s going to happen in the world in 2020. And that’s why I own gold.”

We soon found out. One of the most ridiculous hysterias in human history gripped the world. Countries were locked down. Governments and central banks conjured trillions of dollars out of thin air to pay people to stay home and not work.

Three months later, in mid-April, I wrote again that the Fed’s virtually unlimited money printing was going to be “very inflationary” and encouraged readers to consider gold once again (along with other real assets).

Quite predictably, the price of gold shot up, from $1560 in early January, to $1720 in April, to nearly $2000 in August.

At that point there was a lot of fickle, speculative capital flowing into the gold market. Gold ETFs were receiving huge inflows, pushing the price to (what was then) an all-time high.

So I wrote to our audience again on August 3rd stating that, “a short-term correction may be in order” for gold. The price peaked three days later, and then fell be several hundred dollars per ounce.

I started writing about gold again in earnest back in early 2023, a few months after the price had bottomed out. The fiscal trajectory of the United States under Joe Biden was painfully obvious at that point. The national debt was growing at an unprecedented peace-time pace, and other nations were lining up against the dollar as the global reserve currency.

Gold was a smart move. And by the end of the year I concluded that “we could easily see central banks around the world ditching their US dollars and loading up on gold as part of a new, de-dollarized global financial system.”

And that’s what started happening: fed up with dollar inflation, US government dysfunction, and America’s gargantuan national debt, foreign central banks began trading their dollars for gold.

THE GOLD PRICE SOARED AS A RESULT

Even in March of this year, when gold was at its all time high of the time at $2,150, I wrote that gold was actually a contrarian investment with a lot more room to rise.

It went all the way up to almost $2,800.

Now, I’m not citing my own work to be boastful. Trust me, I’ve gotten plenty of things wrong.

My point is to illustrate that I AM NOT A GOLD BUG. I don’t hold a fanatical view about gold that it’s the only thing worth owning and is only going to go up.

Furthermore, I don’t think about gold strictly in terms of price; that’s way too one-dimensional.

Gold is a great insurance policy. It’s a hedge against systemic risks. It’s great for estate planning and asset protection. It holds its value over inflation over long periods of time. And, sometimes, it can also be a fantastic speculation.

The above examples demonstrate that I’m not shy about saying whether I think gold has been overbought, is too expensive, or too cheap. My assessment obviously changes when the information changes.

Right now one thing is clear: foreign central banks were the ones responsible for driving the price of gold to all-time highs throughout 2024, just as I suggested would be the case in 2023.

And that was happening at a time when most individual investors (plus ‘smart money’ hedge funds) were actually selling gold. So they were missing out on the boom.

But that started to change over the past few months.

Data from Gold ETFs around the world show that individual investors have been buying tons of gold. Problem is— that money tends to be very short-term... and fickle.

We can already see it; a lot of those same small investors have already yanked their money out of gold after the US election, which is why the price is down about 10% from its record high.

But, again, the real long-term driver of gold demand is central banks. And I think a lot of foreign central banks are sitting on the sidelines right now.

With gold already near its all-time high, they have paused their buying spree, and they’re now looking at this incoming administration to see what happens next.

Can Elon trim the federal budget? Will there be a US energy renaissance or AI-fueled productivity bonanza? Will the government become functional once again? Will America’s unparalleled military superiority be restored? Will sensible monetary policy reign in inflation?

Because if those things actually happen, then the dollar has a pretty good shot of continuing its reign as the dominant global reserve currency.

And I think a lot of central banks that have been buying so much gold are happy to wait for the next several months to see what happens. Hence gold could easily trade sideways for a while, or even fall.

All that said, gold is still worth owning... because there’s still long-term risk to the US and to the dollar.

Vladimir Putin recently made some comments that a lot of folks misinterpreted as “Russia and the BRICS nations will keep using the dollar. . .”

But that’s not what Putin said.

Putin said it was the US government’s weaponization of the dollar that pushed Russia and the BRICs nations away. And as long as that threat remains, the BRICS+ bloc is plowing ahead with developing an alternate financial system.

Many large economies have already started trading with one another in a currency other than the US dollar. And that trend is likely to continue, i.e. the dollar is going to have competition.

Not to mention, there’s still a ton of uncertainty in the world. The national debt is still way too high. The Leftists still want to storm to power and Make America California. Conflict might still break out.

These are all sensible reasons to own some gold.

But given that the key driver of the gold price, i.e. central banks, are probably going to sit on the sidelines over the next few months, I wouldn’t be buying right now on the expectation of a short-term price surge.

To your freedom,   James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/what-about-gold-151745/

The Dirty, Four-Letter Word That Keeps the Lights On

The Dirty, Four-Letter Word That Keeps the Lights On

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black) October 24, 2024

There’s a really dirty four-letter word that starts with a “C”. No, not that one. This is a word you simply cannot say around Greta Thunberg, otherwise her ears will melt off of her face. 

I’m talking about coal. And it’s about to have its moment.

One reason is that global population grows each year, and every one of them needs energy in some way or another—to keep the lights on, to fuel the machines that harvest their food, to power virtually everything that keeps life going.

Second, the world population generally becomes wealthier each year. Billions of people in China, India, and Southeast Asia are better off now than they were ten years ago. As economies develop, they consume more food, more goods, more electricity— and all of that requires more energy.

More efficient technology offsets some energy use, like switching from old-school incandescent light bulbs to LEDs.

But the general rule is that as energy becomes cheaper, people tend to use more of it, i.e. the world always finds a way to use that energy savings somewhere else.

Plus there are some technologies (AI, crypto mining) which, in aggregate, consume a ton of energy.

So overall global energy demand keeps rising.

Energy supply, on the other hand, is REALLY hard to come by. Exploring for oil, drilling, constructing power plants, building hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, etc. is capital-intensive, labor-intensive, resource-intensive, and very time-consuming.

Meanwhile, many sources of energy supply are dwindling.

Some major shale fields in the US, which were once the biggest source of growth in energy supply, have peaked.

But perhaps an even more significant obstacle to supply is how the government and hyperventilating, pearl-clutching leftists do everything they can to reduce supply.

These people who stop traffic, throw glitter bombs on priceless works of art, and deface public property, in their efforts to “Just Stop Oil” want to turn the clock back to 1750 on human civilization.

Plus there are fanatics with real political power— like California Governor Gavin Newsom— who insist on replacing conventional electrical plants with extremely inefficient wind and solar.

I like clean air and water as much as anyone, but wind and solar aren’t anywhere near as environmentally friendly as people claim. They require tons of dirty minerals and chemicals, and barely produce enough energy yield to offset the inputs.

This is why big technology companies (who are looking to power their massive AI electricity needs) are going all-in on nuclear power.

Nuclear is absolutely the power of the future. It’s clean. It’s safe. It’s absurdly efficient.

By comparison, a single kilogram of Uranium can produce as much electricity as an entire square kilometer of solar panels. The difference in energy yield is not even close.

Tech companies understand this... hence why Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. are investing billions in nuclear energy as the ultimate solution to power their electricity-hungry AI data centers.

But it takes time to build nuclear power plants. And the most advanced “small scale” nuclear reactors are still in development.

In the meantime, tech companies still need power. The world still needs power. Lots of it. And more every year.

We’ve already talked about how natural gas (especially US natural gas) is THE cheapest energy source on earth right now. In fact, at its current price of roughly $2.40, US natural gas is priced at the energy-equivalent of oil selling for $15 per barrel. That’s cheap.

But there’s another cheap, abundant energy source that is going to be extremely relevant in powering the world’s energy needs for the foreseeable future: coal.

Yes, it’s a very, very dirty word. Climate fanatics don’t want to hear it. But until the world builds sufficient nuclear energy infrastructure, there’s still a critical need for conventional fossil fuels. And that includes coal.

Like it or not, coal is still vital to energy infrastructure, accounting for more than a third of global electricity production. In fact, global coal consumption has consistently INCREASED over the past few decades despite the environmental backlash against it.

Coal is still an extremely efficient source of energy, compared to wind and solar. On an energy return basis, it’s about 6x more efficient than wind and solar— i.e. less energy input required per unit of output.

And if you think coal is dirty, then you should check out how environmentally damaging cobalt mines are (a key ingredient in solar batteries). Not to mention, most cobalt mines in Africa are teeming with child labor.

Coal power plants have the added benefit of being very quick any easy to build. That’s why China— in addition to investing heavily in nuclear power— is also still buying a lot of coal.

It’s also worth pointing out that coal is an essential ingredient in iron and steel production. So even though the leftists hate it, coal will likely remain a key resource in human civilization for the next few decades.

However, from an investment perspective, hardly anyone wants to touch coal. Investment funds are afraid of government blow-back and the wrath of the left... so they don’t invest in coal.

And for individual investors, coal is uncool and unpopular. Thanks Greta.

As a result, there are some coal companies out there making money hand over fist. They have a bright future with plenty of demand down the road. Yet their valuations are a total joke.

TO READ MORE:  https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/the-dirty-four-letter-word-that-keeps-the-lights-on-151675/

A Real Asset With A 12% Dividend Yield

A Real Asset With A 12% Dividend Yield

Notes From the Field By James Hickman / Simon Black October 17, 2024

It’s very hard to overstate just how obliterated the global economy was following World War II. Europe was in ruins, with many major cities having been bombed back into the Stone Age. Japan had literally been nuked.

And just about every economy around the world that still had any manufacturing capacity was pumping out guns, bullets, and bombs; there was hardly any economic activity taking place that wasn’t somehow tied to the war.

It was sort of like Covid— the regular economy was shut down... and governments discovered very quickly that they couldn’t simply turn the global economic machine back on with the flip of a switch.

The transition from obliterated war economy to booming peacetime economy was an incredibly difficult one. So, in 1948, the United States (which was among the only developed major economies still standing) launched the Marshall Plan.

The idea was simple: America would shovel $13 billion (which, as a percentage of global GDP, is equivalent to around $5 trillion today) around the world to facilitate trade and economic edevelopment.

But alongside the financial aid came a promise: the US Navy would protect the seas, ensuring that the global flow of goods could continue unimpeded.

For decades, American naval dominance guaranteed a level of safety and stability that allowed international trade to thrive. Shipping routes were secured, costs remained low, and commerce could flow relatively uninterrupted across the world's oceans.

The post-WWII era ushered in an unprecedented period of cooperation and prosperity, making international trade easier, faster, and more profitable.

But those calm seas are growing choppy again.

The war between Russia and Ukraine, for example, has drastically altered oil trade routes. Russian crude oil, which once flowed easily into Europe, is now making much longer journeys to places like India, where it’s refined and then sent back to Europe as diesel.

This convoluted, inefficient process is adding enormous strain and cost to shipping routes, increasing the “ton miles”, i.e. each mile that a ton of product must travel.

But this is just one example. In the Middle East, the Houthis in Yemen have launched attacks on vessels transiting the Red Sea, creating a new chokepoint in global shipping lanes. Pirates have increased their attacks in the area as well.

Many oil tankers are now rerouting entirely around the southern tip of Africa to avoid the Suez Canal, extending travel times significantly.

The further oil must go, the more tankers are needed. The problem is, these changes took place quite rapidly, yet shipbuilding is not an industry that can quickly respond to that demand.

Shipbuilding is a slow, capital-intensive process. And after years of underinvestment, there are hardly any new tankers being built. Shipyards are busy constructing other types of vessels, but the number of new oil tankers remains near record lows.

At the same time, a large chunk of the existing global fleet is over 20 years old, nearing the end of its lifespan. This imbalance is going to worsen before it gets better, leading to a serious shortage in oil tankers at the exact moment when the world needs them most.

The combination of more ton miles and fewer ships is creating a perfect storm in the tanker market.

This imbalance is inflationary. Both shipping and energy are core components of nearly every supply chain. Higher costs to transport oil mean higher costs for just about everything else we buy—from groceries to manufactured goods.

Climate fanatics can pretend that the world is ready to run off wind and solar, which is why they suppress investment in everything from new drilling, to transport ships. But the reality is, oil is still the most important energy source on earth.

Energy is a prime example of a real asset— a critical resource that keeps the economy going, and cannot be created out of thin air by governments and central banks.

And the shipping companies which transport that oil are real asset businesses... which is why we have been following this industry closely.

One company in particular that we told subscribers about in our premium investment research stands out as being uniquely positioned to capitalize on these trends.

It has a fleet of 82 ships, with an average age of just over 10 years, meaning they have plenty of life left. They can also continue to benefit from the shortage of ships as long as it lasts— which we know from the global orderbook for new ships, will be several years at least.

But this also means the company won’t have to spend huge amounts of capital in the near future buying new ships. And already, it carries little debt... yet still pays around a 12% dividend.

Again, in addition to the dynamics of debt, deficits, and dysfunction in the US government which promise to increase inflation, global conflict is also inflationary.

This is another example of the real asset companies not only poised to do well in an inflationary world, but that are also trading near historic low valuations.

This shipping company, for example, is trading at a P/E (price to earnings) ratio of just 4.44.

While we can wish all we want that the world was not becoming less cooperative, that won’t change the reality. Better to position ourselves to benefit under these conditions, by investing in companies that actually gain from that disorder.

We’ve talked a lot about this same dynamic when it comes to gold, and why central banks around the world are turning to it, and away from the US dollar.

We also talked about it recently in relation to how the prices of certain critical metals have been artificially suppressed by climate fanatics who think the days of gas vehicles are past. They are wrong.

The best way to fight back, while inflation-proofing your future, is to invest in critical real asset companies at historic lows.

To your freedom,  James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

PS-

Our premium investment research service, The 4th Pillar, has provided recent, in-depth reports on several undervalued real asset businesses, which we believe are set to boom under these conditions

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/a-real-asset-with-a-12-dividend-yield-151662/

A Real Asset With A 12% Dividend Yield

A Real Asset With A 12% Dividend Yield

Notes From the Field By James Hickman / Simon Black October 17, 2024

It’s very hard to overstate just how obliterated the global economy was following World War II. Europe was in ruins, with many major cities having been bombed back into the Stone Age. Japan had literally been nuked.

And just about every economy around the world that still had any manufacturing capacity was pumping out guns, bullets, and bombs; there was hardly any economic activity taking place that wasn’t somehow tied to the war.

It was sort of like Covid— the regular economy was shut down... and governments discovered very quickly that they couldn’t simply turn the global economic machine back on with the flip of a switch.

The transition from obliterated war economy to booming peacetime economy was an incredibly difficult one. So, in 1948, the United States (which was among the only developed major economies still standing) launched the Marshall Plan.

The idea was simple: America would shovel $13 billion (which, as a percentage of global GDP, is equivalent to around $5 trillion today) around the world to facilitate trade and economic edevelopment.

But alongside the financial aid came a promise: the US Navy would protect the seas, ensuring that the global flow of goods could continue unimpeded.

For decades, American naval dominance guaranteed a level of safety and stability that allowed international trade to thrive. Shipping routes were secured, costs remained low, and commerce could flow relatively uninterrupted across the world's oceans.

The post-WWII era ushered in an unprecedented period of cooperation and prosperity, making international trade easier, faster, and more profitable.

But those calm seas are growing choppy again.

The war between Russia and Ukraine, for example, has drastically altered oil trade routes. Russian crude oil, which once flowed easily into Europe, is now making much longer journeys to places like India, where it’s refined and then sent back to Europe as diesel.

This convoluted, inefficient process is adding enormous strain and cost to shipping routes, increasing the “ton miles”, i.e. each mile that a ton of product must travel.

But this is just one example. In the Middle East, the Houthis in Yemen have launched attacks on vessels transiting the Red Sea, creating a new chokepoint in global shipping lanes. Pirates have increased their attacks in the area as well.

Many oil tankers are now rerouting entirely around the southern tip of Africa to avoid the Suez Canal, extending travel times significantly.

The further oil must go, the more tankers are needed. The problem is, these changes took place quite rapidly, yet shipbuilding is not an industry that can quickly respond to that demand.

Shipbuilding is a slow, capital-intensive process. And after years of underinvestment, there are hardly any new tankers being built. Shipyards are busy constructing other types of vessels, but the number of new oil tankers remains near record lows.

At the same time, a large chunk of the existing global fleet is over 20 years old, nearing the end of its lifespan. This imbalance is going to worsen before it gets better, leading to a serious shortage in oil tankers at the exact moment when the world needs them most.

The combination of more ton miles and fewer ships is creating a perfect storm in the tanker market.

This imbalance is inflationary. Both shipping and energy are core components of nearly every supply chain. Higher costs to transport oil mean higher costs for just about everything else we buy—from groceries to manufactured goods.

Climate fanatics can pretend that the world is ready to run off wind and solar, which is why they suppress investment in everything from new drilling, to transport ships. But the reality is, oil is still the most important energy source on earth.

Energy is a prime example of a real asset— a critical resource that keeps the economy going, and cannot be created out of thin air by governments and central banks.

And the shipping companies which transport that oil are real asset businesses... which is why we have been following this industry closely.

One company in particular that we told subscribers about in our premium investment research stands out as being uniquely positioned to capitalize on these trends.

It has a fleet of 82 ships, with an average age of just over 10 years, meaning they have plenty of life left. They can also continue to benefit from the shortage of ships as long as it lasts— which we know from the global orderbook for new ships, will be several years at least.

But this also means the company won’t have to spend huge amounts of capital in the near future buying new ships. And already, it carries little debt... yet still pays around a 12% dividend.

Again, in addition to the dynamics of debt, deficits, and dysfunction in the US government which promise to increase inflation, global conflict is also inflationary.

This is another example of the real asset companies not only poised to do well in an inflationary world, but that are also trading near historic low valuations.

This shipping company, for example, is trading at a P/E (price to earnings) ratio of just 4.44.

While we can wish all we want that the world was not becoming less cooperative, that won’t change the reality. Better to position ourselves to benefit under these conditions, by investing in companies that actually gain from that disorder.

We’ve talked a lot about this same dynamic when it comes to gold, and why central banks around the world are turning to it, and away from the US dollar.

We also talked about it recently in relation to how the prices of certain critical metals have been artificially suppressed by climate fanatics who think the days of gas vehicles are past. They are wrong.

The best way to fight back, while inflation-proofing your future, is to invest in critical real asset companies at historic lows.

 To your freedom,  James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

PS-

Our premium investment research service, The 4th Pillar, has provided recent, in-depth reports on several undervalued real asset businesses, which we believe are set to boom under these conditions

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/a-real-asset-with-a-12-dividend-yield-151662/

How to Buy Gold for $900 per Ounce

How to Buy Gold for $900 per Ounce 

Notes From the Field By James Hickman / Simon Black  October 11, 2024

Today’s letter is about how to go back in time.

A lot of us remember 2009 as a pretty tough economy. The whole world was in bad shape. Major banks had failed, panic had set in, governments were spending money hand over fist, and debts were rising fast. It was pretty brutal.

But if there’s anything nostalgic about 2009, it would be that, almost exactly 15 years ago, gold traded below $1,000 an ounce for the last time.  Today, the price of gold is hovering at its all-time high, more than $2,600 per ounce.

We’ve talked a lot about why that is. Central banks have been buying up physical gold, literally by the metric ton, primarily because they are looking to diversify a portion of their reserves outside of the US dollar.

And central banks are sitting on a LOT of US dollar reserves— more than $8 trillion.

It makes sense that they want to diversify. There’s so much more conflict in the world, and US global dominance is waning.

Iran is now flat-out threatening the US government and promising to retaliate if America provides military support to Israel. This would have been unthinkable even five years ago.

But today, adversary nations have seized on the US government’s weakness. And foreign central banks— which, again, hold trillions of US dollar reserves— have noticed.

They’ve also noticed America’s outrageous national debt, and its annual budget deficits; in fact the most recent estimate by the Congressional Budget Office of the Fiscal Year 2024 is an incredible $1.8 trillion.

So obviously these central banks see a clear need to diversify. And gold is one of the best and easiest ways for them to do that.

The gold market is big. It can handle tens of billions of dollars of inflows at a time. Plus gold is universally valued around the world with a 5,000 year history of maintaining its value. No central banker is worried about whether or not they’ll be able to liquidate their gold holdings in the future.

But central banks only buy physical gold, i.e. piles and piles of physical gold bars. They do not buy gold mines... or gold miners.

This is why there is a historic anomaly in front of us: the price of gold has soared to an all-time high. But many gold companies are laughably cheap.

This is pretty strange when you think about it; a gold miner’s revenue is denominated in... gold! And many of these companies are starting to see soaring revenues and record profits. Yet their stock prices are still languishing.

For example, one gold producer we profiled in our premium research is trading at a Price to Earnings (P/E) of just 4x. It has almost no debt. And it produces a ton of Free Cash Flow.

The company has even blown away expectations and managed to produce 100,000 ounces of gold. Yet the stock price has barely budged.

What’s amazing is that the entire company is currently valued at less than the market price of that one year's worth of gold that it mined.

But the kicker is how little it cost this company to produce that gold.

Their “All In Sustaining Cost” (AISC)— everything spent to pull that gold out of the ground, from mining to processing— was less than $1,000 per ounce.

And in our view, buying shares in an efficient, profitable, deeply undervalued mining company with such a low cost structure is almost like going back in time to 2009 and buying up gold at less than $1,000 per ounce... especially given that the company still has millions of ounces of proven gold reserves in the ground which it has yet to extract.

I’ve written many times before— we still see significant upside for gold. Especially if Kamala is elected.

Based on the type of spending she envisions, plus her weak “vibes” and “joy” leadership, I don’t expect the dollar to last as the global reserve currency beyond her first term.

Instead, central banks will continue to turn to gold. And when central banks converted just $80 billion— about 1%— of their US reserves into gold, the price increased to over $2,600 an ounce.

What would happen to the gold price if they converted 5%... or 20% of their US dollar reserves into gold?

Even buying physical gold, right now, at all time highs, would probably work out really well.

But buying a company whose revenue is gold, yet costs a fraction of that price, could work out even better.

Gold is just one of the real assets we talk about in Schiff Sovereign Premium.

We’ve been clear that America’s debt problems can only be solved by lower interest rates and more money printing from the Federal Reserve.

That’s why we don’t believe inflation is behind us, and why we believe so whole-heartedly in the value of real assets— critical resources that cannot be conjured out of thin air by governments and central banks.

This gold producer is just one example of these massively undervalued real asset companies we’ve named in Schiff Sovereign Premium— a highly educational, month-by-month guide that is designed to help you navigate the world from a position of strength, both personally and financially.

You can click here if you want to learn more about both the Plan B strategies and compelling investment research we present.

To your freedom,  James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/how-to-buy-gold-for-900-per-ounce-151648/

America Is Now On “The Second Half Of The Chess Board”

America Is Now On “The Second Half Of The Chess Board”

Notes From the Field By James Hickman / Simon Black October 10, 2024 

Over fifteen centuries ago, according to an ancient Sanskrit legend, a mythical Hindu priest named Sissa was ordered to invent a new board game to entertain the king of Taligana.

Sissa labored over the task for quite some time, but he eventually brought the King a military strategy game with a 64-square board and beautifully hand-carved pieces. Today we call this game chess. And according to the legend, the King was absolutely enamored with it.

So enamored, in fact, the King offered Sissa any reward he desired. So, the priest asked for a single grain of wheat to be placed on the first square of the chess board. Then two grains on the second square. Four grains on the third. Eight grains on the fourth. And so on.

The King of Taligana thought the request to be humble and cheap. After all, a little bit of wheat was nothing compared to the endless entertainment of this new game. So, he ordered his men to bring in the grain.

But as they continued counting, the numbers began to grow quickly.

One-quarter of the way through the board (sixteen squares), Sissa was owed around 131,000 grains-- roughly four kilograms of wheat. No big deal.

But with every square the amount kept doubling. Halfway through the board Sissa is owed over 8 billion grains-- about a quarter of a million TONS of wheat. And it keeps doubling from there.

By the final square, the amount of grain owed is far more than all the wheat that the world can possibly produce.

This is known in mathematics as exponential growth, i.e. when something grows at a faster and faster rate. Sort of like my kids. Or more ominously, the US national debt.

According to data just released by the federal government, interest on the national debt for Fiscal Year 2024 (which just ended last Monday, September 30) was roughly $1 TRILLION.

That’s just the interest bill.

And while that number itself is simply astonishing, it’s even more important to put it in context. $1 trillion is significantly more than the government spends on virtually EVERY other line item, including the military and Medicare.

In fact, Social Security is the ONLY federal program whose budget exceeds interest on the debt. For now. But within the next 5 years, interest on the debt will surpass even Social Security.

Just going back to FY 2020— which started pre-pandemic on October 1, 2019— the interest bill that year was “only” $345 billion. And in FY21, it only rose to $352 billion. That was just a $7 billion, or 2%, increase. No big deal.

But in FY 2022, it took a more significant jump to $475 billion. Then $660 billion. And now a TRILLION dollars.

So not only is the interest bill increasing, but the rate at which it is increasing… is increasing.

Just like grains of wheat on a chessboard, this is an exponential problem. At first it looks manageable. Even paltry. But around halfway through the chessboard, the problem starts to spiral out of control very quickly.

Technologist and author Ray Kurzweil actually refers to this phenomenon as “the second half of the chess board”, i.e. the part of the exponential growth model where the problem becomes too big to solve.

How did the most powerful nation in the history of the world reach this point?

For starters, a complete lack of discipline when it comes to federal spending. For decades now, the government has spent money as if there were no limit and would never be any consequences to increasing the debt.

This was most noticeable during the pandemic when they (and the media) engineered widespread fear and hysteria, shut down the economy, and then spent trillions of dollars to keep everyone afloat.

The national debt skyrocketed as a result. But at the time, interest rates were practically zero. So, the government’s borrowing costs were pretty negligible. That’s why the annual interest bill barely moved between FY2020 and FY2021.

But as you probably recall, rates soared in 2022. And so did the government’s interest bill.

Each year, in fact, much of the existing national debt matures; money that the Treasury Department borrowed five or ten years ago becomes due and must be paid back.

Naturally, the Treasury Department doesn’t have any money to pay back its lenders. So instead, they issue new debt to repay the old debt.

The problem, of course, is interest rates. The money they borrowed years ago was at 0% or 1%. Today it’s 4%.

Just this past Fiscal Year (2024) the Treasury Department refinanced roughly $5 trillion in debt at significantly higher interest rates… in ADDITION to the $2 trillion in NEW debt that they borrowed.

This means that NEXT YEAR’s interest bill will likely be even HIGHER.

You can see how this problem can quickly become a crisis. Again, five years ago the annual interest expense was $345 billion. Five years from now it could easily be $2 trillion.

Sure, the government’s overall tax revenue is also increasing. A bit. But the interest bill is growing much faster-- at an exponential rate. You can’t have linear growth in your revenue and exponential growth in a major expense and expect to survive.

It appears that the US government has crossed the proverbial Rubicon into the second half of the chessboard. And their options are extremely limited.

On one hand, the government could slash spending, reform entitlement programs (like Social Security, welfare, etc.), and engage in a massive deregulation effort to boost economic productivity. But I’m not holding my breath.

Their other approach will be to increase taxes and print tons of money to keep interest rates artificially low.

This is already starting to happen.

The government released its new inflation data just this morning showing that core inflation is STILL on the rise. Inflation is not beat by a long shot. And yet the Federal Reserve is going full steam ahead in its rate cutting cycle.

Fed officials aren’t stupid. They know that 0% interest rates are the only hope for the US government’s financial survival.

And the chief consequence, of course, will most likely be some pretty nasty inflation.

This is why we keep saying that real assets make so much sense, i.e. crucial materials like metals, energy assets, and productive technology that are (1) useful and critical in the economy, and (2) cannot be created out of thin air by central banks or governments.

Historically, real assets perform extremely well and hold their value during inflationary times.

And the added benefit is that, right now, many of the businesses which produce real assets are at historically cheap levels. We’ll show you a great example tomorrow.

To your freedom,   James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/america-is-now-on-the-second-half-of-the-chess-board-151643/

Real Assets are Historically Cheap Right Now. Here’s One Example.

Real Assets are Historically Cheap Right Now. Here’s One Example.

Notes From the Field By James Hickman / Simon Black / Sovereign Man October 2, 2024

The “green energy” revolution is one of the biggest fantasies of today.

For example, they tell us that fossil fuels are going away, that the gasoline powered internal combustion engine is a thing of the past, and that everyone wants to drive an electric vehicle (EV).

Clearly, that’s why over 90% of consumers still choose gas powered vehicles...

So the government instead has to step in to mandate electric vehicle use, attempting to force manufactures to sell 50% electric vehicles by 2030.

They conveniently ignore the fact that the American electric grid cannot handle that kind of power demand.

And if the $1 billion per EV charging station Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is spending from the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill is any indication, we’re not going to get there in six years.

The “green energy” revolution is one of the biggest fantasies of today.

 Meanwhile, auto manufacturers are actually scaling back EV production as demand slows and infrastructure gaps remain vast.

Governments and activists may wish it were otherwise, but fossil fuels are not going away for decades. Yet, the belief that they are has led to massive misallocations of capital into renewables.

We’ve talked about this in regards to oil, natural gas, and the uranium required for nuclear power. All of these energy assets have been ignored by investors, or demonized by activists and governments, despite remaining absolutely critical.

And the same thing is true of the metals necessary to build traditional internal combustion engines.

Mining companies are obsessed with finding more metals like nickel and cobalt for the “green energy” revolution. Meanwhile, the specific niche metals required for gas vehicles have been neglected.

I’m talking about platinum group metals (PGMs). These include six metals—platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and osmium—renowned for their high melting points and corrosion resistance.

Over 80% of palladium and 90% of rhodium is used in gas vehicle emissions control systems to convert toxic gases into less harmful substances.

And it seems investors have believed the lies of the climate fanatics, assuming that demand for these metals will drop precipitously as everyone flocks to electric vehicles.

This ignores, first, the actual reality that people still prefer gas vehicles.

Second, the fact that hybrid-electric vehicles are actually the most popular alternative to gas-only vehicles.

And while the EPA-regulation wants everyone to drive electric vehicles, hybrids also satisfy its 50% mandate.

Already, hybrid vehicles account for about 25% of vehicle sales in the US. And they actually use more PGMs per vehicle than traditional combustion engine cars.

But the supply of PGMs is shrinking.

South Africa, the dominant producer of platinum and rhodium, has struggled with power shortages, labor strikes, and declining investment in its mining sector. Russia, another major player, faces sanctions and geopolitical uncertainty that disrupt its palladium production.

With these two countries controlling the vast majority of global supply, the market is heading for significant deficits in the coming years. The numbers are already telling: in 2023 and 2024, the platinum, palladium, and rhodium markets all ran deficits, as in, more was consumed than produced.

Despite this looming shortage, prices for PGMs have plummeted.

Palladium is down 66% from its 2022 highs, and rhodium has crashed by 80% since 2021. This collapse in prices has put major PGM producers on the back foot, forcing them to cut jobs, and even shut down some operations.

Investors, spooked by the drop, are shorting palladium at record levels, convinced that the future belongs to EVs. But they’re missing the bigger picture.

False narratives like these are one reason why many real assets are historically cheap right now.

Real assets are physical, tangible goods like certain commodities and natural resources which have intrinsic value tied to real world uses. This includes energy assets like oil and uranium, productive technology, and fertile farmland.

It also includes critical minerals and metals, like the ones we have been discussing.

Unlike financial assets and paper money, they cannot be conjured out of thin air by central banks and government. Which is why they protect wealth against inflation.

And the type of conditions present in the PGM market is a classic example of finding a historically undervalued real asset.

A crucial, critical resource with limited supply? Check.

A burgeoning shortage, with no movement in the markets to remedy it? Check.

A historically low price for the critical resource? Check.

That’s why this summer we wrote to subscribers of our investment research service, The 4th Pillar, about a company which mines PGMs.

But rather than traditional mining, it extracts these metals from tailings— the waste left over from other mining operations.

And that means it actually gets its source material delivered to it for free...

This company has a deal with a chrome miner for the exclusive right to process the chrome mine tailings. It gives back the recovered chrome, and keeps all the extracted PGMs for itself.

It’s a symbiotic relationship with no money exchanged, no profit share, and no royalty owed.

This low-cost, efficient business model has allowed the company to stay profitable even as PGM prices have cratered.

With a rock-solid balance sheet and minimal debt, it is perfectly positioned to weather the current downturn and capitalize when the market inevitably turns.

But again, this isn’t just the story of PGMs and vehicle markets.

Everywhere you look, real assets are historically cheap.

Often these same conditions exist— the market for a critical resource has been ignored by investors, or demonized by activists, cutting into supply, while demand stays steady, or even grows.

While frustrating, these lies create enormous opportunity. The best way to capitalize is by investing in critical real asset companies at historic lows. As inflation rises and markets correct, those who invest now stand to benefit immensely.

To your freedom,  James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/real-assets-are-historically-cheap-right-now-heres-one-example-151519/

PS-
The 4th Pillar is our highest tier investment research service that focuses entirely on undervalued real asset businesses. Based on our track record, an annual membership is well worth the $1,995 cost.
If you’re interested in subscribing you can do so here.

So What About Silver?

So What About Silver? 

Notes From the Field by James Hickman / Simon Black

September 25, 2024  In the 6th century BC, during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon flourished as a center of power, culture, and commerce.

We know this because the Babylonians were exceptional record keepers. And they chiseled everything down onto cuneiform tablets, many of which have survived through today.

Sadly the tablets aren't tabloids. They don't contain any juicy gossip or colorful stories of ancient times.

But they do offer extremely detailed-- though often boring and mundane-- records of everyday economic transactions, legal contracts, and administrative activities.

Just like future historians centuries from now should easily be able to see this evening's closing stock prices for Apple and Tesla, we can also read about daily grain prices in ancient Babylon.

One important tablet from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II highlights the interchangeability of gold and silver in Babylonian commerce. It records a transaction where 5 shekels of silver were considered equivalent to half a shekel of gold.

(The shekel was an ancient unit of weight approximately equal to 8.33 grams.)

This exchange rate implies a silver-to-gold ratio of 10:1.

The formal establishment of fixed exchange rates between gold and silver took a significant leap under Darius the Great in the mid-6th century BC.

Ruling over the vast Achaemenid Empire, Darius borrowed the concept of minting coins from the Lydians and introduced a bimetallic standard. He decreed that one gold "daric" coin was equivalent to 20 silver coins, creating one of the first examples of an official, fixed silver-to-gold ratio.

Over time, the ratio fluctuated due to advancements in mining techniques and changes in supply and demand. And by the era of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, the ratio had shifted to 13:1.

Similarly, in ancient Rome, Julius Caesar established a 12:1 ratio.

Even in the early history of the United States, The Coinage Act of 1792 legally defined the US dollar in terms of specific weights of gold and silver—1.604 grams of pure gold or 24.1 grams of pure silver—establishing a ratio of approximately 15:1.

Of course, today, the silver-to-gold ratio is whatever the market decides. Ever since the dollar was removed from the gold standard more than five decades ago, the market ratio between silver and gold has ranged from about 25:1 all the way up to 120:1. Right now it is about 85:1.

Many people have an idea about where this ratio should be. Some people think that it will inevitably fall back to 50:1 which would price silver at around $53 per ounce.

Silver could certainly rise to $53 and far beyond. But not because of some preordained ratio.

Remember, there is no fixed rule or law regulating the silver/gold ratio. There's nothing stopping it from rising to 500:1.

And frankly I think it's likely the ratio could rise much higher from its current 85:1.

Just think about the catalysts that could drive both gold and silver prices much higher.

Gold prices over the past few years have been pushed to all-time highs by central banks. And as I've argued, this is a pretty clear sign that they anticipate moving on from the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

As the US national debt continues to explode higher and the federal government appears increasingly dysfunctional, it's becoming likely that the US dollar's global dominance could come to an end within the next several years.

What does the post-dollar global financial system look like? What will the next reserve currency be? No one knows.

And that's why central banks are buying gold. Because they have $8 TRILLION worth of US dollar reserves that they need to convert into something of value.

Gold, for now, represents that value. So central banks are buying it by the metric ton.

But (with minor exception) central banks do not buy silver. The market is too small, making it extremely difficult to invest billions of dollars all at once.

Silver prices are influenced more by industrial demand... and investor speculation. I'll come back to that.

I've said before that a Kamala victory will likely spell the end for the dollar's reign. This is a person who thinks that inflation is caused by "greed" and whose answer to every problem is more government spending.

The Harris deficits and inflation will likely be the proverbial straw that breaks the dollar's back. And the consequent surge in central bank gold purchases could easily send the silver/gold ratio soaring past 200 or more.

Again, while 200 is far beyond the historical average, there's no reason why it can't be even higher. Historical averages are merely data points, not firm rules.

It's far more important to pay attention to price catalysts. And gold has a major catalyst in central bank purchases.

That doesn’t mean the price of silver won’t rise. In fact, a climbing gold price alone is very like to increase the price of silver, simply because investors will speculate that it will rise.

This becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy; investors buy an asset believing that it will rise. That increased demand causes the price to rise, encouraging more investors to buy.

We've seen this type of feverish speculation with plenty of asset classes in the past-- including silver more than a decade ago.

But in the end, if there aren't real demand fundamentals to support the price, the speculative mania always fades.

Bottom line, gold has clear demand from central banks that could send the price to absurd levels. Silver does not share the same catalyst.

Silver prices could absolutely skyrocket. But this would be far more likely due to temporary speculation (and those buyers tend to be finicky and sell quickly) rather than from true long-term industrial or investor demand.

To your freedom,  James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

PS-  If you value this type of financial and political analysis, this is just a taste of what you’ll get with Schiff Sovereign: Premium. At just $9/month, it’s packed with incredible insights, including both Plan B strategies and compelling investment research. It’s a highly educational, month-by-month guide that is designed to help you navigate the world from a position of strength, both personally and financially.

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/so-what-about-silver-151499/

And, Right On Cue, Gold Hits Another All Time High...

And, Right On Cue, Gold Hits Another All Time High...

Notes From The Fuield By James Hickman (Simon Black)  September 16, 2024

This is an anomaly we haven’t seen before.

Gold just hit yet another all-time high. But what’s strange is that, if you look at gold’s supply and demand fundamentals, the price should almost be falling. Not rising.

I’ll explain—

On the supply side, gold production is actually increasing slightly. The largest miner in the world, Newmont Mining, produced nearly 30% more gold in the first half of 2024 compared to 2023. And across the entire industry (according to the World Gold Council), global gold mining output is up slightly over 2023.

So much for shrinking supply.

But what about demand? Well, this is usually broken down into four main segments.

The first and (by far) largest segment of demand is jewelry. But global jewelry demand is down.

Signet Jewelers (which owns major jewelry brands like Kay, Zales, Jared, Blue Nile, and many others) has reported an 8.5% drop in revenue so far in 2024 versus 2023. Meanwhile China’s Gold Association reported a 27% decline in gold jewelry purchases in the first half of 2024.

Even on the high-end side, LVHM’s jewelry division (which includes the luxury brand Tiffany’s) also reported a 5.1% sales decline due to “an uncertain economic and geopolitical environment. . .”

So overall jewelry worldwide (which is THE biggest component of gold demand) is down. Worldwide.

The next segment which drives gold demand is investment demand, i.e. individual investors who buy bars and coins... but most often invest via Exchange-Traded Funds.

Well, the largest ETFs in North America (GLD and IAU, which comprise 80% of the market) are DOWN for the year, meaning they have been net SELLERS of gold, rather than buyers. Even in the month of August, these two combined for a big fat whopping 1.7 metric tons of net purchases, roughly $200 million.

That’s nowhere near enough to move the gold price.

Meanwhile, across the Pacific, all of Asia’s gold ETFs COMBINED only purchased a net 0.3 metric tons (i.e. $30 million) last month. Again, this is simply not enough demand to move the gold price.

And so far for the year, worldwide, gold ETF holdings are DOWN by about 44 metric tons.

The third category of gold demand is industrial use. You might already know, for example, that there’s about 50mg of gold in your mobile phone thanks to gold’s unique chemical properties as an electrical conductor.

So mobile phone producers (along with certain medical device manufacturers and a handful of other industries) also buy gold. It’s pretty small demand, though— industrial and technology use only makes up about 10% of global gold demand.

That said, it’s worth pointing out that iPhone sales (which is a good proxy for global mobile phone production) are down substantially, from a peak of $48 billion in Q1/2021 to just $39 billion in its most recent quarter.

So, to summarize, jewelry demand is flat or down. Investment demand for gold is flat or down. Industrial demand is too small to matter, but even that is down. Meanwhile, supply is rising.

Rising supply and falling demand? It seems like gold prices should be falling right now. And yet gold just reached yet another record high. What gives?

Well, as we’ve said before, the answer is central banks.

Poland is a great example; despite being a relatively small country, it bought 19 metric tons of gold last quarter alone. And it plans to buy at least another 125 tons in the future. That’s a lot of gold.

This is a trend taking place worldwide; central banks including China, Turkey, Qatar, India, Czech Republic, etc. have loaded up on gold this year. And in the second quarter of 2024, central banks purchased 183 metric tons of gold... which is far more than usual.

Central banks typically buy small amounts of gold, i.e. a few metric tons here and there. But over the past two years, they’ve been buying gold like crazy.

It’s pretty obvious why. They’re concerned about the world, and they’re concerned about the fate of the US dollar and US government finances.

Think about it— central banks around the world own TRILLIONS of dollars worth of US government bonds, i.e. US dollar foreign reserves. And they’re obviously worried.

Congress and the White House run outrageous budget deficits every year. The federal government’s dysfunction is a constant national embarrassment. The US national debt is set to soar by AT LEAST $22 trillion over the next decade. And inflation is far from being solved.

Foreign central banks know this. And they realize that, in a few years time, their trillions of US dollar reserves will be worth a lot less.

So they’re trying to do something about it now. And that means trading at least SOME of their dollars for gold... hence the feverish central bank gold purchases, and the all-time record high in the gold price.

We’ve already suggested that gold could easily go much higher... especially if Kamala wins. I think that’s easily a $10,000 gold price, which would suggest only a small percentage of US dollar foreign reserves invested in gold.

That doesn’t mean the gold price can’t fall in the meantime. Gold prices have been rising for so long, and, realistically, nothing goes up or down in a straight, uninterrupted line.

Some central banks will continue buying gold irrespective of its price. Others will be more conservative and try to play the market. Singapore’s central bank, for example, actually sold a bit of gold recently and are probably hoping for a pullback in prices to buy more.

But over the longer term, gold is still an extremely sensible hedge with a lot of upside.

Having said that, the real value we see right now is in gold miners.

Look at Newmont mining— and, this is not a recommendation, but just an example. Newmont is the world’s largest gold miner, i.e. more than 80% of its revenue is essentially gold.

Gold is at an all-time high, yet Newmont’s stock price is about 40% below its record high from a few years ago.

Sure, it’s a much more complicated story; you have to consider gross margins and mining costs and country risk, etc. But the larger point is that gold stocks (especially relative to gold) are very cheap right now... especially when you consider where gold could be a few years from now.

To your freedom,  James Hickman   Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/and-right-on-cue-gold-hits-another-all-time-high-151422/

Shocker: Iran Funneling Billions Through the Fed’s System

Shocker: Iran Funneling Billions Through the Fed’s System 

Notes From The Field By James Hickman / Simon Black September 9, 2024

When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s, my father used to go every summer for two weeks of military training as part of his commitment to the US Army Reserve. And whenever he flew home, we would always meet him at the airport.

But back then, my mom, sister, and I could all go straight through security and sit at the gate to wait for him. In fact that was normal all the way through the late 1990s.

Then, of course, everything changed after 9/11. The federal government took over airport security overnight, and for the past 23 years, we’ve been taking off our shoes, getting fondled by federal agents, and throwing away our liquids.

More than two decades after 9/11, most of these TSA Security rules (the majority of which have been adopted around the world) seem pretty stupid.

Does anyone honestly believe that a 3.4 ounce tube of toothpaste is OK, but 3.5 ounces of toothpaste is a security threat?

This is the kind of idiotic logic behind rules that add unnecessary inconvenience to people’s lives, without providing any discernible benefit.

The same thing applies to those ridiculous consent forms on countless websites across the Internet. Whenever we visit a site we are now forced to “accept cookies”, thanks to a law passed by the European Union’s most idiotic politicians.

They somehow think we are all safer and better off... and that our privacy is protected.

Except that our privacy isn’t protected. Mark Zuckerberg and the Google guys are still following us around the Internet watching everything we do and click. Not to mention the governments themselves grab our biometric and personal data, shove it all in a database, then leave it prone to breach by hackers.

But hey, at least we have those cookie notifications to keep our data safe, right?

It’s just another stupid rule that inconveniences people, without providing any discernible benefit.

Banking is another great example.

Some people aren’t old enough to remember, but it used to be a pretty simple process to open a bank account. You’d show up, sign some papers, and you were done. Now, we’re all threatened with imprisonment, forced to fill out a million forms, and every single transaction is scrutinized under anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism regulations.

The entire apparatus treats you like a criminal suspect rather than a valued customer. And for what?

Turns out, it’s all for nothing.

Laws like FATCA, CRS, and the USA PATRIOT Act were supposedly passed, at least in part, to cut off terrorist groups from the global financial system.

But all the regulators missed that Iran– a nation that has been blacklisted by the global financial system– sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas– a blacklisted terrorist organization. And then Hamas used that money to kill innocent Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.

The US President himself agreed to release $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran for the release of a handful of Americans. So again, what exactly is the point of all that scrutiny in the financial system?

My mother has to jump through all sorts of hoops to prove that she’s not a criminal just to withdraw some cash from her bank account. But Hamas and the Taliban get hundreds of millions of dollars funneled to them, through the US banking system.

The latest example is actually the Iraqi banking system—which was set up in part by the US government after the 2003 invasion.

Top officials from the US Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve helped oversee the establishment of Iraq’s new financial system, including the anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering controls.

Well, big shocker, it turns out that the Iraqi banking system, i.e. the system set up by the US government, was used by terrorist groups to send money to Iran and to Hamas.

So once again, what exactly is the point of all these rules and regulations, which inconvenience regular, law-abiding citizens... if groups like Hamas can still receive ample funding through the system. It’s obvious the rules are pointless and have no real benefit.

The irony here is that so many governments around the world, including the US, are some of the most outspoken opponents of cryptocurrency.

The US Treasury Department hates crypto. They say it is dangerous to have an unregulated monetary system where terrorists and drug cartels can operate with total privacy.

Yet the very banking system that THEY established is what’s actually funding terrorists.

Everyone else has to suffer through daily friction and be treated like criminals, just to send some money from point A to point B; withdrawing $5,000 in cash brings a bureaucratic shock and awe.

And this is one of the biggest reasons why I think it makes sense to own crypto.

I’m not a crypto fanatic by any means. I don’t own it to speculate on the price. And most days, in fact, I don’t know the price of Bitcoin or Ether. Nor do I care.

To me there’s no point in trading dollars for crypto, only hoping to trade crypto back for more dollars. The larger idea is that crypto represents a way to send and receive funds outside of a system run by incompetent bureaucrats who constantly make our lives worse.

It’s similar to my belief that gold makes sense as a long-term store of value; I don’t trust the Federal Reserve or the White House with preserving the value of my savings. Gold is a great way to do so... without having to rely on the financial system.

With both crypto and gold, there’s no intermediary or incompetent bureaucrat standing in the middle.

That’s also why I’ve never seen any reason to debate which is better, gold vs crypto. There’s no reason to argue about it.

Both serve a useful purpose, and both are worth considering as part of any sensible Plan B.

To your freedom,  James Hickman  Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

PS-

If you’re not sure how to get started on a Plan B, check out Schiff Sovereign: it’s packed with incredible insights, including both Plan B strategies and compelling investment research. It’s a highly educational, month-by-month guide that is designed to help you navigate the world from a position of strength, both personally and financially.

https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/shocker-iran-funneling-billions-through-the-feds-system-151402/