Readings of brilliant articles from the Flying Frisby. Occasional super-fascinating interviews. Market commentary, investment ideas, alternative health, some social commentary and more, all with a massive libertarian bias.
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When I was 19, I started getting these weird heat rashes.
Every day, whenever I got hot, these debilitating, paralysingheat rashes would envelop me. Burning, bumpy, red weals suddenly covered my body. So itchy—you wanted to scratch everywhere, though scratching brought no relief. Once the rash started, there was nothing I could do. I just had to wait for it to pass, which would take about half an hour.
I didn’t even have to get so hot that I broke sweat for the rash to come on. Just walking briskly would do it, getting flustered, wearing a layer too many, even having a shower.
And it came every day, usually mid-morning.
I thought it might be stress that was causing it, but it was the other way around: these rashes were causing the stress.
I found a way of coping with it: do intense exercise every morning and actually induce the rash. Then it seemed to burn itself out for the rest of the day.
But the next morning, it would be back again.
I went to see doctors about it. None of them knew what it was. As GPs often do when they don’t know the answer, they brushed it aside, “Oh, it’s probably stress.” I wasn’t making this up! But unless I actually had an attack in front of the GP, there was no way of showing them what it was.
I saw a dermatologist, who gave me anti-depressants. I saw Chinese herbalist after Chinese herbalist, who all concocted these disgusting teas for me to drink. Lord knows what damage I did to my liver drinking that stuff. I saw an acupuncturist who declared brightly that he could cure it. But he couldn’t.
It made my life a nightmare, because you never quite knew when the rash was going to hit. What if it came on when I was on stage? During that all-important meeting? When I was with a girl I liked? It was a source of acute embarrassment.
The condition disappeared, bizarrely, if I went to the tropics. Why, Lord knows. But as soon as I got home, back it came.
Then I noticed the condition also disappeared in the summer. What was that about? I realised the antihistamine I was taking for hay fever also prevented these rash attacks.
But I didn’t want to take antihistamine every day—that couldn’t be healthy—so, once the hay fever season was over, I would go back to keeping it at bay by trying to do intense exercise every morning and burning it off.
When I got married and had kids, aged 30, this became impossible, so I resigned myself to daily antihistamine. This started with Clarityn (Loratadine), moved onto Zirtek (which I hated because if I drank alcohol, I used to get incredibly drunk and that led to a lot of bad decisions and mistakes) and, eventually, Xyzal, which I found I only needed to take every other day. The potential long-term damage of sustained anti-histamine use was a gamble I was prepared to make to avoid the daily nightmare of this condition.
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Eventually, I discovered that the problem I had was a condition calledheat-induced cholinergic urticaria. I went to see a specialist at St Thomas' Hospital. “There is no cure,” she told me. “Sometimes it clears up by itself,” she told me, “sometimes not. You’re lucky antihistamine stops it. For many that doesn’t work.”
I volunteered to be a guinea pig so she could experiment on me as part of her research into the condition. I would go to the hospital, have a hot bath, my skin would erupt, and then she’d prod me and prick me and nod and mutter, but it got me no nearer to a cure.
Here I am at 54, and it has not cleared up.
What is the cause?
I’m still not quite sure if something I did caused it. Urticaria is from the same allergic school of illnesses as asthma, eczema, and hay fever, from which I suffer a little (asthma especially if I run or am near cats), so it might be hereditary or genetic. It affects young men more than any other group, which is what I was.
I’ve been on numerous forums where fellow sufferers discuss the condition, and a lot of us took the antibiotic tetracycline. I took it for years as a teenager to help with my acne. God, it makes me cross that I was allowed—even encouraged—to take it for so long. Bloody doctors, or one in particular (no longer with us so I won’t name him and speak ill of the dead), and my mother’s blind trust in them. I thought it might be tetracycline.
I had spent two months in Egypt just before I got my first outbreaks, and I got very ill with Giardia, a form of dysentary. Maybe I lost some essential bacteria in my stomach or something, or got leaky gut. (I’ve taken a million probiotics and all the rest of it—didn’t work).
Also just before the first outbreaks, I got the sh*t kicked out of me in a park in Milan by a group of young Italians - I mean properly beaten up, 7 v 1 and I made the mistake of fighting back - so maybe it was somehow related to that.
Maybe it was the accumulation of everything.
Nature’s magic superfood comes to the rescue
One of the unintended benefits of my health drive in recent years is that my asthma, which I’ve had since I was born, appears to have, for no apparent reason, gone. I haven’t been near cats to test it there, but I no longer need my puffer to play football. (Don’t know why. It might be an age thing; a health thing, most likely a seed oil thing).
Then I forgot to take my antihistamine for a few days, and I noticed that I wasn’t getting urticaria attacks either. Praise the Lord! I thought my urticaria might’ve cleared up too.
No such luck, as it turned out. It hadn’t. I went abroad and, after a few days, it came back.
Then I realised there was something I’d been taking at home, and I hadn’t taken it away with me.
It made all the difference.
That mysterious ailment you’ve had for ages and can’t rid of. this might sort that out too.
Why Are We So Fat and Unhealthy? Seed Oils Explained
Robert F. Kennedy has been grabbing headlines this week, not just for his alliance with Donald Trump, but for his criticisms of the American food industry, which he holds responsible for the epidemic of obesity and poor health.
I can’t believe what he has to say is even considered controversial, when it’s so obvious it’s true. Yet Time, The Guardian, The New York Times, and all the usual suspects have all come out to smear him.
Surely it’s clear? Processed food is bad for your health. Processed food causes obesity. Processed food is the cause of many modern illnesses. Don’t eat processed food. It is bad for you.
I’m not a doctor. Then again, I’m not an economist either. I’m just a guy who gets interested in stuff, especially systems—how they work and what their effects are.
In the noughties, I became very interested in our systems of money, largely because I couldn’t understand why houses cost so much relative to what people earn. Before long, I felt I had a good grasp of how money works. I ended up writing a film that became an internet sensation (and got horribly plagiarised in the process), several books, and umpteen articles, all making the case that if the West is to save itself and create a level playing field, we need sound money. Whether that’s based on gold or doesn’t really matter. Money needs to be independent, rather than a tool of government.
My Accidental Journey to a Six-Pack
Wednesday, July 24, 2024 • Duration 09:16
In the last few years, I have gone from this to this.
I’ve written about my weight loss before, but, just in the last two or three months, something has really accelerated, and I’m not quite sure what.
I’m now 54. I’ve suddenly got a six-pack. Well, sort of. A four-pack. I’ve lost 48 pounds (22 kg). My metabolic age has come down from 57 (when I was 51) to 49. I am super fit and bursting with energy.
Even at the age of 22, when I had just left drama school and won a British Open Martial Arts Tournament (BOMAT 1991 - I’ve got the trophy somewhere if you don’t believe me), I don’t think I was nearly as defined. I’m the same welter weight as I was then too.
What’s the secret? There isn’t one. I’d love to say this was all deliberate, but really, it has happened by accident. I was overweight, started fasting to lose weight, and it spiralled from there. Normally, I put the weight back on, but this time it’s not only stayed off, but I have lost more weight and got into better shape.
I thought I should describe some of my habits here, in case you find them beneficial. I don’t think it is one thing that has done it. I think it is the aggregation of everything.
So here we go: 12 habits to transform your health. If you are interested in following me down this route, don’t try and do all of these at once. Do one, then gradually add others. Baby steps …
1. Fast
Do the 5:2 diet. It takes effort, but it works. It is probably the single most effective thing you can do to lose weight. Fasting brings mental clarity too. Watch videos, listen to podcasts, read, indoctrinate yourself, then do it. After a while, you look forward to the feeling of being hungry and the good feeling you get after: I call the morning after a fast the inverted hangover because you feel so good.
2. Avoid Seed Oils
By seed oils, I mean all the industrial oils that have only entered our diet in the last 50 or so years and that human beings were never supposed to eat - vegetable oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, canola oil, palm oil - all that stuff. These things were invented to be industrial oils, and they’ve made their way into our food supply and they are poison.
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This contrarian indicator suggests we’re at the bottom of the mining cycle
Thursday, March 30, 2023 • Duration 08:18
I went to a mining conference on Monday - the Mining Journal Select London. As well as being on a panel, I wanted to catch up with the management of a couple of companies I hold shares in and get a feel for the state of the industry.
Mining is cyclical. If there’s a shortage of some metal or natural resource, the price of that resource will go up. Rising prices encourage people to start looking for more said resource, investing in it and mining it. Suddenly there’s a mining boom.
This eventually leads to an increased quantity of whatever the resource in question is, and the price comes back down again. The price of mining companies comes back too. Investment goes away. Suddenly we have a mining bust.
In today’s fiat world of wild price swings, boom seems to turn to bust with increasing rapidity and violence. We are definitely not in the boom phase of the cycle.
“Look at the room,” an investor came up to me and said after the panel I was speaking on. “It’s empty. It’s a classic bottom-of-the-market sign.”
I can’t help thinking he may have a point. But I also want him to be right, as my own portfolio is so exposed to mining.
An analogue industry in a digital world
In our 21st-century world of billionaires, leverage, booming tech stocks and cryptocurrencies doubling overnight, value is digital and digital is quickly scalable.
Ten grand can be enough to be trading portfolios in the hundreds of thousands. Write a bit of code, upload it to the app store and it can be downloaded billions of times. Upload a funny video, watch it go viral and find yourself with a million followers.
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Why Gold and Bitcoin Are Gaining Popularity as Bearer Assets Outside the Financial System
Friday, March 24, 2023 • Duration 08:24
In your time bestriding the narrow world like a Colossus, you might have heard the term, “bearer asset” or “bearer instrument”.
That would be an asset that you take physical possession of - cash or bullion, for example - an asset that is effectively owned by whoever has possession of it, that can be transferred from one person to another by just handing it over.
The ownership of the asset is not registered with a central authority, so that makes it vulnerable to theft or loss, but it also means the asset is nobody else’s liability. Unlike money in the bank or a government bond, it carries no promise from a third party. The value of the asset is thus not dependent on the creditworthiness of any issuer or guarantor, but rather on the inherent value of the asset itself.
So, in today’s interlinked financial world, a bearer asset becomes an asset outside the system.
Like Tottenham Hotspur, bearer assets have their strengths and their weaknesses. Their strength is that they are nobody else’s liability. Their weakness is that their liability is yours.
The two main bearer assets in today’s financial marketplace are gold and bitcoin.
Bitcoin rallies as investors seek safety
Bitcoin is not a physical asset of course. But the technological genius behind it means that it is a “digital bearer asset”. No such thing previously existed.
With bank runs, bail-outs and another banking crisis now upon us, both gold and bitcoin have suddenly fetched a bid. No surprise: they both are means to store value outside of the system. You don’t have to rely on third parties.
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More on ChatGPT, the Future of AI and what it means for you
Tuesday, March 21, 2023 • Duration 01:14:35
With the latest developments in AI, ChatGPT, Midjourney et al, we are experiencing something that, in terms of impact, will prove as big as the internet was in the late 1990s, if not bigger.
Following on from my chat with Andy last week, which has had really good feedback from those watched/ listened (some haven’t had time yet), we have another really interesting conversation for you today about the implications of the amazing developments that are happening in the world of tech, this time with Danny Richman.
It is only for paid subscribers. I will make it available to one and all in due course, when I will also release the podcast version for those who prefer to listen.
Danny is a seasoned tech professional with 38+ years of experience helping organizations like BBC, Vodafone, and Salesforce streamline operations and improve online visibility. He's now focused on practical AI applications in business, education, and non-profit sectors. Danny volunteers for the Prince's Trust, supporting disadvantaged youth to start their own business. Follow Danny on Twitter.
Going forward, I am looking to make more of these videos - please let me know what you think in the comments, or by liking and sharing (assuming you like!).
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The Business of War
Sunday, March 12, 2023 • Duration 06:37
Once upon a time, the business model of war was straightforward.
You attacked some neighbouring realm, overpowered it, then plundered and taxed the conquered people.
The Vikings were great pioneers of the model, as was Ancient Rome: it worked for as long as the empire kept expanding and Rome kept winning wars. When the expansion stopped, Rome had to replace the plunder with some other form of income. That’s when the currency debasement started.
Often, but not always, the conquerors built infrastructure - buildings, roads or train lines (in the case of the British) - they stabilised the currency and introduced functioning bureaucracies, leading to the common argument that the conquerors actually improved things, which in many ways they did.
The business model didn’t always function well, especially if the fight was ideological or, more importantly, if you lost. Europe “came second” in the Crusades and the grand part of the bill fell to the lowly European tax-payer. The various tithes of Henry II, Richard I and John, for example - with the Saladin tithe being the most famous - have gone down in history as some of the most punitive taxes ever imposed. There were even cowardice taxes, “scutage”, for those who didn’t want to go to war.
On the other hand, the Catholic Church and the papacy, which, broadly speaking, initiated the expeditions, made extremely good by the whole affair: the church experienced an enormous increase in wealth and power, the papacy especially.
Something changed with the great wars of the twentieth century. The Nazis may have vigorously pursued the traditional business model of war - to overpower, plunder and then tax. But the Allies emerged victorious and Britain, in particular, did not enjoy the spoils of victory that were enjoyed after the wars of previous centuries. There was little plunder, loot and taxation. Instead, the cost of the war fell on the British citizen.
Taxation in 1947 was three times as high as it was in 1938. The cost of living doubled between 1938 and 1951 - put another way, the pound lost 50% of its purchasing power.
The US supplied Britain with all sorts of essentials during the war and then after the war provided all sorts of credit. But it would not accept pounds as repayment, instead demanding gold or dollars. It took Britain two generations - 60 years - to settle the debt. Germany, on the other hand, had its debt written off in 1953. The British were not rewarded for their sacrifice.
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Life skills you learn from stand-up comedy
Wednesday, March 8, 2023 • Duration 10:37
Jonathan Johnson, from recruitment company, Auxato, got in touch and asked me to write a piece for him, explaining how it is I got from being stand-up comic and voice actor to a renowned (his words) longstanding, financial writer for Money Week. I thought readers would like it and he kindly gave me permission to republish it here. The questions are Jonathan’s.
Stand-up comedy – what life skills did it teach you?
Stand-up comedy teaches you lots of things. How to stand on stage in front of a bunch of strangers. How to present yourself. How to entertain people. How to cope with pressure. How to deal with difficult situations and difficult people. How to think on your feet. Communication. Clarity.
These are all really useful life skills that you might call upon in any number of other situations. Everyone should go and be a stand-up for a bit.
But there is a lot more to being a stand-up than what you see on stage. Behind the scenes, every comic is running a small business. Every day you are trying to get gigs. You’re sending out emails, making phone calls, posting on social media, all with the aim of pushing your brand, getting noticed and getting better work.
You’re running a diary. You’re invoicing for the gigs you have done. You’re chasing money from slow payers, while trying to extract money from the unsavoury promoters who are trying to wriggle out of paying you at all.
You are travelling up and down the country four, five, sometimes seven nights a week to places you have probably only ever heard of, meeting all sorts of different people. As a result comics often know the country as well as anyone - all the while trying to keep costs down so that you can exit the gig at a profit.
On top of all of that, but most fundamental of all, you have got to write an act that people find funny.
You learn so many skills doing comedy. Even if you are not destined for stardom, which most of us aren’t, the discipline still equips you for life. You just need to look at the many people who started out as comedians who have since gone on to achieve huge success in other fields, from Joe Rogan to Volodymyr Zelensky, to know there must be something in it.
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AI and the Future
Sunday, March 5, 2023 • Duration 01:28:19
A 90 minute interview about AI, the latest developments and the implications for our future with Andy.
Andy is an experienced technical architect and lifelong technologist, coder and hacker.
He designs systems that span security, finance, automation, IoT and proptech - and devotes a lot of his time to thinking about how technology will continue to transform our world.
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The lithium bull market is over. Here's why.
Friday, March 3, 2023 • Duration 07:28
I’ve seen it happen with so many niche commodities - potash, graphite, antimony, rare earth metals, cobalt, vanadium - and I am pretty sure it is happening again.
There is some substance you’ve barely heard of. Suddenly, it’s essential to some new technology which is going to save the earth in some way, but nobody’s producing it.
Why is nobody producing it, if it’s so essential? Because prices are so low.
Prices then start going up, because everybody wants it and nobody’s producing it.
Suddenly, a load of natural resource companies which aren’t going anywhere, especially in Canada and Australia, “change their focus” and “pivot” They start exploring for said commodity. Some of them acquire half-explored development projects and re-drill them.
Investment capital piles in. Some of the above companies actually make discoveries that start producing. Existing producers up their output.
Within a few years, there is a surplus of said commodity, where once there was a shortfall, and the price comes back down again. The bigger the previous rocket launch, the bigger the subsequent crash.
Those companies that aren’t profitably producing hit the skids. Those that are have to tighten their belts. The bull market has morphed to bear.
Nothing fixes high commodity prices like high commodity prices runs the adage.
If you can time these cycles well, you can make a great deal of money. But you can also lose a lot of money.
The bull market in an essential commodity bursts
I think we are seeing one such turn right now in lithium. Perhaps even in the broader battery metal space.
Fossil fuels are destroying the planet. Electric vehicles are the answer. But they need lots of lithium? Yes. Who makes lithium? I don’t know. But the price is going up. Quick, let’s invest in lithium. Let’s start a lithium company. Lithium is going to save us. Tesla can’t get enough lithium. Tesla’s going to buy a lithium company. Lithium, Tesla, EVs, Net Zero, Climate Change, BUBBLE!!!
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Recently, I’ve become very interested in health - on particular, improving mine. For years, I have been unable to understand why I—and millions like me—could never keep weight off.
I have become convinced that seed oils are to health what fiat money is to the economy. It is that fundamental, in my mind. Thanks to bitcoin and gold, the fiat money narrative genie is out of the bottle. Fiat is not going to die tomorrow—it will probably take decades —but more and more people are realizing how bad it is and are taking steps to escape the system via alternative money.
The same thing needs to happen with seed oils. I find myself becoming as passionate about this as I was about money 15 years ago. Why are so many people obese? Why are so many people, who work on their health, diet, and fitness still 10 or 20 pounds heavier than they’d like to be? Why were so many people skinny in the 60s and 70s, but not now? Are people greedier now than they were then? They can’t be. We are the same human beings. Indeed, we exercise more.
What’s changed is processed food. It barely used to exist. Now it’s almost impossible to avoid. The main enabler of processed food, the thing that gives it such a long shelf life, is seed oil.
What are seed oils?
"Seed oils" is a catch-all term for the various vegetable oils that have replaced animal fats to become a mainstay of the Western diet: sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, palm oil, margarine, and so on. Anything hydrogenated is bad.
Seed oils were mostly invented for industrial purposes, but because of their price and properties, “entrepreneurial” companies, assisted by regulators, quack research, and lots of PR, gradually added them to their food products, so that seed oils have now, mostly, replaced animal fats
Just look at how they’re made. You gather seeds from plants such as soy, corn, cotton, safflower, or rapeseed; heat the seeds to extremely high temperatures, so the fatty acids oxidize; process the seeds with petroleum-based solvents such as hexane to extract the maximum amount of oil; add chemicals to remove the foul smell (this deodorization process produces harmful fatty acids); and then add more chemicals to change the colour and appearance of the oil. Not healthy.
One of their properties is that they don’t break down easily (they can thus help lengthen food’s shelf life). The problem, it seems, is that the human body can’t properly break them down either.
Okinawa in Japan became famous for its longevity, with many people living well into their 90s and 100s. Then along came Western processed food, and suddenly there is an increase in obesity, diabetes, and other modern illnesses. The once famously long-lived population is now seeing both a decline in life expectancy and an increase in health problems that were previously unknown.
When correlation equals causation
This chart shows the consumption of vegetable oil in the US since the late 19th century. We didn’t used to eat seed oils; we ate animal fats. You can see they change in diet.
Sugar often gets the blame for the rise in obesity, but if you look at current US sugar consumption, it’s not that different from what it was in the 1930s or 40s. Obesity has grown, while sugar consumption has remained broadly flat.
Now, let’s look at vegetable oil consumption and obesity rates. They correlate. And in this case, correlation is causation.
Why is obesity such a problem? Look no further than seed oils for your answer. 100 years ago, Americans got zero calories from seed oils; now they make up a third of their daily intake. In this case, correlation is causation. Things like olive oil, butter, tallow, and coconut oil are fine.
Seed oils are in everything. Assume what you are considering eating contains seed oil and only eat it when you have ascertained that it doesn’t.
Tell someone you know about this.
3. Dead Hangs
I think these might have been the transformer, as I’ve only been doing them a few months. Get a pull-up bar. You can get ones that you hang in your doorway or, better, get one outside for your garden and hang from it. At first, you will only be able to hang for a short time, but keep hanging every day so that eventually you can hang for two minutes. Then do two two-minute hangs per day.
I only started doing dead hangs to cure my various neck ailments (too much computer), but they have had all sorts of unintended, beneficial side effects. They improve your posture, they stretch out all the evils of sitting in front of a screen all day, they sort out your neck problems, your shoulder problems, they stretch through your torso. I can’t think of a more physically beneficial way of spending two minutes than a dead hang.
Whoop is a health and fitness tracker watch which focuses on sleep and recovery. I got one to improve my sleeping habits. Sleep is the new exercise, as I’m sure you know. It measures, among other things, heart rate variability (HRV), which plummets when you drink. You then get a big red warning which puts you off drinking.
The unintended consequence, then, of getting a whoop was that my alcohol consumption has gone from having a couple of drinks or more most days - half a bottle of wine a day kind of stuff - to almost zero. I now crave not drinking. It’s not just the calories in alcohol, it’s the bad decisions you make after drinking, particularly late-night bingeing. Not drinking also improves sleep and general health. I did not plan to give up booze. I like booze. I love beer. I love wine. I like drinking. If you told me I had to give up drinking, I would’ve said no. But that’s what happens when you get a Whoop. So get a Whoop. Plus your sleeping habits improve too.
5. Have a partner you want to look good for
I had one - now sadly no more - but I’m sure it made me generally up my physical game. She was also extremely health-conscious and got me into all sorts of good habits. It helps to have a partner with whom you can eat well and exercise well. It makes you accountable too.
Sometimes splitting up with someone you like or love can be great for your weight too. Maybe that’s what happened to me!
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I’ve gone from taking zero supplements to taking so many so that I don’t know which ones are actually doing good. But I’m pretty sure Tongkat Ali and Fadogia Agrestis have had an impact. I sometimes think the act of taking supplements is more effective than the supplements themselves.
8. Water
Don’t know if it did anything, but I stopped drinking tap water where possible and only try to drink mineral water. (Next worry is microplastics).
9. Exercise
I try to do some form of exercise every day, and I mix it up between cardio, stretching, and weights. I probably could do more weights: I only do one session per week with some dumbbells at home. I need to join a gym. I find cycling good because it doesn’t hurt your joints. When I run, I usually only run two or three miles, but I live near a steep hill, so I do four 30-second sprints up the hill at the end. I play a bit of tennis and a bit of footy. Swimming is also good, but I don’t like chlorine, so that is more of an occasional summer pastime when I can do it outside .
10. Two meals a day
Do you really need three? Skip breakfast, have an early lunch, and go to bed early. And no seed oils.
11. 15 Minutes of Sun
The first thing I do every morning is drink a pint of water, make myself a cup of tea, then go and sit in the garden for 15 minutes and get some sunshine. This is supposed to help regulate your circadian rhythms and sleeping habits. I have been getting to sleep much more easily since I did this. Even if it’s cloudy and it’s winter, go and sit outside for 15 minutes first thing in the morning.
12. Count Calories
I have only just started counting my calories using the Calorie Counter app. The thought of putting your calories into this every time you eat deterred me from doing it sooner - yet more time on my wretched phone - but I’m actually quite enjoying it and I keep it probably 85 or 90% accurately. Eating discipline definitely improves if you get one. Ultimately, losing weight is basic maths: fewer calories in than out, and you lose weight. Net immigration is the same.
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A Bruce-y Bonus. Learn to stand up from the ground without using your hands
This is supposed to be an indicator of longevity. A few months ago I was hopeless. I could barely stand up from a yoga block. But now I can do it. Here’s the proof.
So there you go. I hope this helps. As I say, don’t try to do everything at once. You can’t. Baby steps. This is a case of the power of incremental gains and compounding.
Diet is the most important thing. If you don’t get that right, it doesn’t matter how much you exercise. You can’t outrun a bad diet.
And then there is old analogue mining. Getting to some remote and unexplored part of the globe. Sampling a bit of rock. Getting a licence. Sticking a drill into the rock. Hopefully, finding something. Sticking a few more drill bits in. Hopefully finding something more. Getting what you have evaluated. Persuading investors that what you have is meaningful. Getting more permits. Drilling more, evaluating more, persuading investors more and on and on for 20 years until you eventually complete the mine construction and start producing.
It takes an average of 16 years to take a mine from discovery to production, more if you factor in prior exploration. 16 years before the company is profitable. Who’s got 16 years in today’s fast-paced world? 16 years is a lot of time for something to go wrong. There could be a change of government, a change of local attitude to mining, a change in underlying commodity price or a change in the investment landscape to name just a few of the risks.
Mining is slow. Mining has not seen the breathtaking improvements in technology that other industries have seen. Yes, there are massive trucks, and huge machines, but the basic principles, extract metal from rock, are not far off what they were in the Bronze Age.
And yet mining is essential. We could not enjoy the world we enjoy without mining. The picture below is of a cabinet at the Camborne school of mines that shows the 70 different elements we need to make a typical smartphone: copper, silver, gold, tin, indium, tantalum, silicon, not to mention the gadolinium, europium and dysprosium.
These elements cannot be digitally created. Midjourney serves no purpose here.
Should investors ignore mining stocks?
At present, retail investors shun mining. So do institutions. Who can blame them? Never mind the ESG deterrent, the sector is down around a third or more on this time last year. The small-caps by much more.
It takes time, I was constantly told yesterday, but investors don’t like looking at stocks in their portfolio that are down 30 or 50% from where they were last year. They don’t have 16 years.
At the conference, there was some dissatisfaction that retail investors are no longer interested in mining, but can you blame them?
Mining requires so much capital, it needs promoters. It needs the guy with the suspiciously white teeth telling you that this stock is going to the moon and that you are going to be a millionaire. Without the promotion, without the blue sky, it can’t raise the capital it needs. The problem is that a lot of promoters are scoundrels. Investors get ripped off. What did Mark Twain say about a mine being a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it?
But even without the scoundrels, capital gets destroyed. Sometimes unscrupulous governments in far-flung parts of the world seize control of profitable mines. Sometimes unprincipled governments bow to environmental lobbies and remove their licences. Most of the time the regulator is Mother Nature. The mine is simply uneconomic. There is not enough metal in the ground to justify mining it at current prices. Metals prices need to be twice as high or more before this mine is viable.
Just one in a thousand exploration properties make it to production. Think of the capital destruction of those other 999 properties. Few prudent money managers invest with those odds.
Even the mine that makes it is, 90% of the time, comes in late and over-budget.
In this fast-paced modern world, no wonder the industry is on its knees.
High commodity prices will drive more spending
They say the cure for high prices is high prices. You could say the same about low prices. Mining needs higher metal prices
Having to tighten their belts, the conduct of those in the industry is much better than it used to be. Execs are staying at the Travelodge, not the Savoy. The numbers being presented are better. Companies are having to work harder, there is more competition for capital - this has all contributed to improvements in standards, as is often the way in bear markets.
I’m slightly obsessed at the moment with AI and the economic boom that is coming as a result of the improvements to productivity it is enabling. I was delighted to meet two different people who are looking at ways to employ AI in this most analogue of industries.
Anyone who has ever been to a core shack will tell you, there is a lot of data in mining. Miles upon miles of drill core stored in shacks, with the rock contents recorded and analysed.
Surely AI will have a role to play in analysing all that data, comparing it to the data of existing producing mines, as well as failed, non-producing discoveries.
One of the chaps I spoke to said he thought his AI might be able to get to a point where the success rate gets from one in a thousand to one in three.
Then again, he did have very shiny teeth.
We need mining. We will always need it. Our failure to invest in it is going to come back and bite us very hard.
Meanwhile, we soldier on and try to find the best projects, with the best management, with the highest probability of success.
We also need patience.
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I thought, given everything, we should check in on both today.
Here’s bitcoin, which, at $28,000, has broken out to 9-month highs
Is that a bullish, inverted head-and-shoulders pattern I see before me? I think so.
On that basis, what would the target be? The distance from the top of the head (around $15,000) to the shoulder line at c.$25,000 is $10,000 - so you would have a target of around $35,000, perhaps a little higher.
Some are even calling out for hyperbitcoinisation: a hypothetical scenario in which the widespread adoption of bitcoin occurs so rapidly that its price rises dramatically and it becomes the dominant form of money in use.
In this scenario, bitcoin would be widely accepted by merchants and individuals alike. The term "hyper" refers to the extreme and rapid level of adoption.
In a way, it is an inversion of hyperinflation. The fiat system would remain, it wouldn’t necessarily collapse, it would just be overtaken and superseded by bitcoin.
There are many who believe hyperbitcoinisation is both inevitable and desirable. Bitcoin is better money than fiat. The traditional banking model is dysfunctional and reliant on constant bailouts.
One such advocate is billionaire Balaji Srinivasan, who has grown so concerned at the goings-on in US banking, he has made a million-dollar bet that bitcoin will hit $1 million by June 17.
The odds are against him. Some are suggesting he is just doing it for the attention. But to be fair to Balaji, he has a good track record spotting trends.
I’m a bitcoin bull, but maybe I lack ambition. I can see it getting to $35,000 or $40,000 by June. I’m not so sure about $1 million. But hey, I’ll take $1 million dollar bitcoin if it’s offered.
I’ve heard this kind of prediction before. You used to hear them all the time about silver. I’m not holding my breath.
My rather drab observation is that, after a miserable 2022, tech has suddenly caught a bid. Even Meta’s going up. Bond yields have fallen with the banking panic, and suddenly growth stocks look attractive again. Sorry to be so prosaic and unsensationalist.
Meanwhile, that other bearer asset, gold has also found a bid, and with it silver and platinum. Gold this week has been flirting with $2,000.
The gold price surged after bank collapse
My buddy Josh Saul at the Pure Gold Company reports to me that, with the panic at Silicon Valley Bank, his company saw a 385% increase in new enquiries last weekend and a 274% increase in investors purchasing physical gold bars and coins last Monday, compared to its normal daily average. “One client said they are moving £16 million out of their current bank provider owing to fears of instability”, he says.
Volatility in the stock market isn’t helping either. “This year, we have also seen a 712% increase in people removing exposure to equities and cash in their pensions and SIPPs in order to purchase physical gold bullion in the same vehicle”.
My other buddy Ross Norman reports that visitors to his site Metals Daily have risen 763% in a month.
Gold is now at all-time highs in almost all currencies, except the US dollar. What do new highs normally lead to?
In the short term, gold , breathing down the neck of $2,000, is a little overbought by most sentiment readings. The miners have been quite flat in comparison, which is not a good sign. That suggests the spike is temporary.
But longer term I think it goes higher. I have long argued that everybody should have exposure to both gold and bitcoin in their portfolio, and it is crises like this one that demonstrate why.
Few people realise that by keeping your money in a bank, you are lending the bank money. The difference between money and credit has become conflated, along with many other things in this mad world. Even Switzerland no longer looks safe.
All the same arguments we heard in 2008 are coming back. At the heart of them lie fundamental questions as to the nature of money and banking. Fractional reserve banking, and even full reserve banking, became sujets du jour. The words fiat money entered the lexicon.
In 2008 there was a chance to address and put right the fundamental flaws in the system. It was not taken. Bail-outs brushed the problems under the carpet, and left them for another day.
The free market meanwhile came out with an alternative, bitcoin. It is now a trillion-dollar economy, and there are no bailouts. With each collapse - there have been plenty and there will be plenty more - the system gets stronger.
But with traditional banking, however, the more you bail out the system, the more precarious it becomes. You can’t take the risk out of a market. Without risk, you have no market. With risk comes responsibility.
Don’t blame the players. It’s the game that’s at fault.
My current recommended bullion dealer in the UK is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe, or you can store your gold with them. I have affiliation deals with them.
Today, the US’s enormous military-industrial complex has had its coffers tremendously enriched by its various wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and through America’s role as world policeman. From defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing to oil giants, such as Halliburton, which benefitted from lucrative contracts gained in the aftermath, billions have been made. But who actually foots the bill?
Broadly speaking, there hasn’t been the “traditional” plunder and taxation of the newly conquered territories in the wars that the US nominally won, and it lost quite a few others. Some of the cost has been covered by the “exorbitant privilege” of the US dollar and the ability the US has to print and loan. But probably the largest portion of the cost of war falls on the US citizen, paid for in taxes.
Roughly 12% of total US government spending (21% of federal spending) - so roughly 12% of everything an American pays in tax - will go on what the US disingenuously calls defence (I don’t recall any nation actually invading the US).
That same citizen will be the one hit to get hit if/when those debt chickens come home to roost.
With the enrichment of the military-industrial complex, and the worship of many of those who operate in it, there are many parallels between today’s US war business model and that of the Crusades. Some large organisations are enriched and empowered by it, others pay.
You might say the current model is unsustainable, which would be true. But that doesn’t mean it can’t go on for a long time. The Crusades went on for two hundred years.
And what about the current war in Ukraine? At first glance, I suggest Russia was hoping for a traditional plunder-and-tax affair with its invasion. But Ukraine has since attracted vast support, the original source of which is the western tax-payer. I guess we have a blend of the two models.
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Yet, if you’re a potential employer looking at someone’s CV and you see the word comedian, I bet that makes you less likely, rather than more likely, to call them in for an interview.
In fact, most comedians who decide they’ve done it for long enough and now want to try something else, find it near impossible to find employment because of the fact they have comedian on their CV. The only option for most is to set up another business.
Please tell your friends on Twitter, Linked and Facebook about this really interesting article.
What a random hotchpotch of a career you have. How did it happen?
I’m now 53. The longest I’ve ever lasted in a “proper” job is three months. This was back in 1992, when I was 23. I used to get up every morning, get the tube into Leicester Square and then do 10am to 6.30pm in an office. I hated it. It was not that bad a job either, but I hated being stuck in an office all day with no fresh air and not owning my own time.
That’s not to say I’m not hard-working. I’m extremely hard-working. You just need to look at my output to see that.
I would spend the next 15 years working occasionally as an actor, regularly as a voiceover (for some reason I always got more voiceover work than acting) and then, from 1997, as a comedian. All the while, I was trying to get stuff published - I wrote two novels and a million articles - but never with any success. I think I got one article in the Big Issue.
But by 2006, I had made a bit of money, some in property (by accident) and some from voiceovers: I had been, at various points, the voice of such eminent products as First Direct, Nintendo 64 and the National Lottery. My dad had made a bit of money, too. Between us, we were trying to figure out how to turn our bit of money into a lot of money; because we were trying to raise five million quid to bring Kisses on a Postcard into the West End.
From what I was reading at the time, commodities and gold, especially, seemed to be the place to invest, particularly with all the growth that was taking place in China. There were all sorts of people talking about it. But how to meet them and talk to them, without having to pay them? A podcast …
What gave you the inspiration for the podcast interviews?
I always knew I’d be a good presenter, even though I’d never actually done it. I was good at hosting comedy clubs and other such stuff. I approached a mining PR company called Commodity Watch and suggested we start a podcast. They didn’t really understand what I was talking about, so I did it anyway and began interviewing all these various people I’d heard on the internet talking so wisely about stuff.
My very first interview was with the billionaire, Jim Rogers, who had run the Quantum Fund with George Soros. My next two were with noted silver analyst, David Morgan, and the gold expert, James Turk.
I quickly learnt that you could secure interviews with people “above your station” quite easily, if they have something to promote, such as a book. A lot of the time people are happy to help out, even if they don’t have something to promote. To my surprise, there were far fewer walled gardens in the worlds of investment and commodities than in comedy and TV. People were much more open.
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What brought about the job at Moneyweek?
One of the people I interviewed was Merryn Somerset Webb who, at the time, was editor at Money Week. “We need people like you to come and write for us,” she said. “Come into the office next week and meet Toby, the MD.”
So I did. Here I am, 17 years later and I am still writing the same weekly column, a column that has been popular and, in terms of longevity at least, successful. I’ve since published three books with a fourth on the way. I’ve written several documentaries, one of which was a huge internet sensation (even if I was never properly credited) and more besides. I think it’s fair to say that partnership with Moneyweek has worked - for them and me.
But if I had sent my CV in to Merryn, all she would have seen was stand-up comedian, voiceover artist, occasional actor, Johnny-come-lately podcast host and unpublished novelist. I don’t think she would for a second have gone, “I need to get this bloke writing for us.” Pretty much any employer would have looked at my CV and passed it by.
I now have this ridiculously random hotchpotch career that I can’t begin to explain. I’m a financial writer, comedian, singer-songwriter, comedy music video maker, TV presenter and voiceover artist. A very nice chap who works in internet marketing and likes my output - but despairs at its lack of clarity - with whom I correspond frequently, put this graphic together to try and explain what I do.
What can we learn from that episode with Merryn?
Two things. One, I don’t believe there is any substitute for face-to-face meetings. Meeting someone in the flesh inspires trust in a way that not a million emails can.
(That, by the way, is, I think, why I never had stuff published. I just sent it in. I’m not even sure it got read. It’s much easier to ignore a letter or an email than someone in person).
Often it works in reverse too. You really admire someone online for whatever it is they’ve written or said, but then you meet them in person and realise this is not the type of person you should be listening too.
Second, when you meet someone through the medium of an interview for a podcast, rather than just a meeting, it’s like a heightened encounter. You get through so much more in an hour than you otherwise would.
Get to know anyone who hosts a regular podcast and you will see they are total mavens. How many people do Joe Rogan, Konstantin Kisin or Steven Bartlett know as a result of their podcasts? How powerful are their networks? They are super connected - and trusted. Any introductions they make will carry weight.
As it turns out, stand-up comedy was the ideal training ground for being a financial writer. In comedy, if the audience doesn’t understand you, they don’t laugh. If they don’t laugh, you die. Thus does the comedian quickly learn the vital discipline of clarity.
You also learn that you have to entertain people if you want to keep their attention.
No such discipline exists in the world of financial journalism. Obfuscation is everywhere. It almost pays to be obfuscatory because then you can say, “Oh I didn’t mean that, I meant this.”
Some of the broadsheet journalists - guys who regularly win Finance Journalist of the Year or whatever - are as dull as ditch water and about as clear. Half the time, you have no idea what it is they are droning on about. I barely make it past the first paragraph.
But do you know what? They probably got the job because their CV was right.
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Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. My current recommended bullion dealer is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. You can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deals with them.
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Much as I love niche commodities for these repeating cycles they display, I’m afraid I missed the lithium bubble. I didn’t catch the early phases of the bull market when it had a good run in 2016 and 2017.
In 2018 and 2019 the lithium companies had a miserable time, and I felt somewhat vindicated. But after the Covid lows of 2020, they exploded - I missed that one too, as I was away with other commodities.
I felt I was too late to join the party. I clicked my tongue as the price went up without me. I clicked my tongue even more as the bull market went on for longer than I thought it would . I then watched with a certain amount of confusion as the companies pulled back while the price of lithium carbonate kept on rising. That’s not normally a good sign.
In any case, now the price of lithium carbonate has stopped rising. In just a couple of months, it’s lost over 30% - having risen tenfold.
Here’s the price action since 2017.
And here is the Global X Lithium ETF (NYSE:LIT) - the lithium companies - over the last ten years.
Supply up, demand down
Lithium is not actually that hard to produce. Many of the problems are regulatory. But there was a frenzied rush by electric vehicle makers to secure supply over the past two years, which sent lithium prices to the moon.
Whoever could get producing first would win the race to secure contracts. The slower movers would suffer.
Then late last year China announced it would halt subsidies for the $87 billion industry.
Demand for electric vehicles dropped, just as lithium supply started coming on-stream. There is now a lot more supply on its way from China, Chile, Australia and North America and that is only going to send prices one way. Australian supply alone is set to rise by 32% this year.
Lithium giant Albemarle (ALB.N) has said the lower car sales are a “temporary weakness”, given the early Lunar New Year in China. I’m not buying it.
As my buddy, asset manager Simon Catt of Arlington Capital, alerted me in an email yesterday, the AUD$12.5bn market cap, Aussie producer, Pilbara Lithium (ASX.PLS) announced last week that their latest shipment of 15,000 tonnes of 6% spodumene concentrate was unpriced. “UNPRICED! Hold the phone,” he cried.
Chinese battery giant CATL, the largest Chinese battery manufacturer, is selling its batteries at little more than cost to automakers. The discount includes an assumption that prices of lithium carbonate would fall by over 50%.
“Lithium - First Leg Lower”
Goldman Sachs just put out a report titled, “Lithium - First Leg Lower”, noting much of what I have just said and more.
Chinese lithium demand is down 52% versus the three-month moving average, while production is unchanged. Prices “have more room to fall before spot demand recovers, in our view.” Goldman notes the end of subsidies, falling EV sales, falling spot prices, falling demand from EV battery production, and rising EV inventory putting a further dampener on demand and rising supply from China and Chile.
It would seem the battery wheel is come full circle, if I may misquote the great man.
This is not the end of lithium demand, nor the end of the electric vehicle. Both will play an enormous part in our futures. But my hunch is that this is the end of a two-year bull market that saw lithium carbonate and spodumene up many times over.
Supply can now meet demand. The market has solved the problem in the market. Now the market has another problem: falling prices. It will solve that too. And so the commodity cycle turns.
Interested in protecting your wealth in these extraordinary times? Then be sure to own some gold bullion. My current recommended bullion dealer is The Pure Gold Company, whether you are taking delivery or storing online. Premiums are low, quality of service is high. You can deal with a human being. I have an affiliation deals with them.
