Bumble

I'm skeptical about the significance of squeezing. People like to blame short-sellers for causing price falls, but in most cases the short interest in a stock is only a few percent and is too small to matter. Short interest must reach 20% or more before a real squeeze is going to occur. When GameStop short-sellers blew up last year, it was because short interest was 100%, which normally should not be able to happen. WallStreetSilver buyers on Reddit buying silver bullion is nice to see, but I doubt it will make any difference to the price: it's just too small. I believe there may be some supply constraints on refiners at present, which might help to push silver prices up, but if so, it will be temporary. I don't trade in and out of positions, so the present price moves are not going to change my investments. I invest almost exclusively in natural resource companies. I own several gold miners and a few silver ones, some royalty companies, some non-precious miners, particularly battery metals and uranium, and a little in energy. I would invest in forestry, water, and agricultural stocks too, but I don't understand them well enough.

Natural gas prices in Europe are anomalous. In North America they are a fraction of what we are paying in Europe. Also, the source does not say whether they are using spot price, futures price, or some commercial price. My guess is they are using the Henry Hub spot price.

On that topic, there is a superb Youtube channel called Fall of Civilizations (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6Y5JJPKe_JDMivpKgVXew) that contains lengthy documentaries about historical civilizations and how they came to an end. Much better than watching old movies over Christmas.

There is a good video by Patrick Boyle on Turkey's economy here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5HCDvEaxSU

Turkey cannot be allowed to collapse. It is the key to holding Asia, the Middle East and Europe together. It is the Jenga piece that cannot be removed without the tower collapsing.

It turned out to be 21 ct. Looked genuine, at least to me, except the colour was a little off - just slightly too yellow. It was a 1925, which is a notorious year for copies. The frequency lines that showed on the Bullion Test app were very nearly correct, just a tiny bit off.

This video shows how to use the phone app Bullion Test to do ping tests really accurately. I once found a fake sovereign using this app. It was a jeweller's copy fake, very similar to a genuine coin, and you wouldn't have noticed the difference just judging it by ear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEqV7LAgaL4

This chart is from a report published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, called Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Options. The interesting feature is that it shows that nuclear power is the greenest source of energy.

This is the time of year when experts make predictions for the coming year. Some execs from Saxo Bank have started early with this document. This is my summary of their points: 1. The move to reduce fossil fuel production will be paused because of high energy prices and the resulting inflationary impact on commodities and food. Policy-makers will backtrack on promises and relax restrictions. 2. Much of the younger generation will abandon Facebook (Meta) in protest at the way it farms and uses their personal information. 3. The US mid-term elections will lead to a stand-off over some close results, which will provoke a constitutional crisis. 4. US price inflation will reach 15% on an annualised basis at the end of Q4. 5. The EU will create a superfund to finance initiatives for defence, clean energy and climate change, and will pay for it by requiring that pension funds buy its bonds. These bonds will be a kind of EU bond by the back door, sidestepping the usual objections to EU bonds. 6. A group of women traders will mimic the Reddit/WallStreetBets group and make a co-ordinated assult on companies with a weak record on gender equality. 7. Rising energy prices will see India join the Gulf Cooperation Council as a non-voting member in order to reduce its energy insecurity. This will be part of a general realignment of geopolitical alliances. 8. Spotify will experience a substantial reduction in business as musicians make increasing use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for distributing their work, so as to avoid the high percentage of revenue taken by Spotify and other streaming platforms. 9. Hypersonic military technology will give rise to a new arms race. 10. A key breakthrough in biomedicine will increase life expectancy, leading to financial and environmental problems.