Bumble

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.

Funny that you mention toilet roll, but apparently during the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, the point was reached where if you bought a roll of toilet paper you were handing over more paper in banknotes than you were getting back in tissue. So, people did the predictable thing and started wiping themselves with banknotes and flushing them. The result was that it became common in public toilets to see a sign saying please don't flush banknotes because they block the toilet. You can buy novelty banknote toilet paper on Amazon if you feel like showing the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England how you feel about their currency.

I remember, back in 2009, thinking that the Zimbabwean $100 trillion note would become collectible, so I bought one on eBay for £5. They are now selling for about £150. I should have had more conviction and bought a whole bunch.

I was playing around with the Ngram feature on Google Books. It allows you to search for the use of a word or expression and plot how common its use was in publications. Searching on "gold standard" shows a peak around 1870-1905, which was a time when many countries followed the UK onto the gold standard (Germany in effect in 1871, and the USA in 1900). A second larger peak occurred in the 1930s, topping in 1933, which was the year of FDR's infamous Executive Order 6102 banning private ownership of gold in the USA. The dog that didn't bark was an absence of any response to Nixon ending the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971. Finally, a growing interest from the 1990s to the present.

There is too much debt, whether government, corporate, municipal or personal. There is no realistic prospect of a sharp increase in economic growth that would allow us to afford it, so the debt must be reduced. It can be reduced in nominal terms, i.e. by defaulting on it, or in real terms, i.e. by inflating it away. The latter is the soft option and is what governments will do. To bring debt under control will require negative real interest rates of probably -4% to -6% for years to come. So, we may reasonably expect inflation to stay at the 4% to 8% level, while interest rates remain very low at about 0% to 2%. High levels of inflation cost governments money, because they have outgoings, such as benefits and pensions, that are index-linked. So, governments are always motivated to understate inflation. Also, economic performance is often measured as real GDP growth, so the inflation rate acts as a negative factor. Understating inflation makes the real GDP performance look better than it actually is. Invest accordingly. The worst thing to hold in an inflationary environment is cash. Commodities that will retain their value, such as precious metals, are better. Better still are productive assets, such as farmland or rental properties. Better again are businesses with pricing power that can benefit from higher prices. Best of all is to invest in your own skills and knowledge so that you can always earn a living.

Closed at $1818 today, with the upper Bollinger Band at $1819. That's good, but we really don't want to see the price push through the upper BB next week, because algo traders will sell on that signal. RSI is not overbought and MACD is pointing upward, which is also good. Ideally, it would be nice to see some consolidation at this level, with the price settling at around the $1820-$1825 level.

Only just saw your post, Midas. Yes, there are seasonal variations with the gold price, and Oct-mid-Dec is usually weak, while mid-Dec-Feb is usually strong. The latter is because of seasonal demand in the Far East because the Chinese New Year is a time when people give gifts of gold. The former is partly due to weak demand and partly because in the USA and many countries, the tax year is the same as the calendar year, and the end of year is a time to sell things in order to manage your capital gains/losses for the year. That said, the last two years have been highly atypical, because of the virus. We had an unusual strong run up in Jun-Jul 2020, and prices have been drifting down ever since. The other big difference is that gold is now competing with cryptos for safe haven money. If the current run-up in cryptos were to end, gold could benefit greatly. But 50% retrenchments in crypto are not unusual and do not scare people away.

FIssion Uranium (FCU.TO and FCUUF) up 32% today. GCL should move tomorrow morning.

Matt Zabloski, a mining and metals portfolio manager, gave an interesting interview on Real Vision. The summary of his positions are: Short iron Long copper Long nickel Long lithium Long graphite Long rare earths Short uranium - he thinks that the environmentalist lobby will oppose new nuclear power stations in the west; Japan is restarting slowly; and China has enough production to meet its own demand and doesn't need to buy Neutral gold, but long selected gold miners. He likes single asset gold miners, but not the majors; likes to buy midcap miners and short GDX as a kind of pairs trade.

I've noticed that some days, Geiger Counter (GCL.L) lags about half a day behind the stocks that it contains. If you check its price at about 4 p.m. London time (before market close) it often simply isn't moving, even when the big uranium stocks are. Then it catches up the next morning. It is not a pure arbitrage play, because there are several hours for the mainly US and Canadian listed uranium stocks to move after London close. Also, GCL often has quite a large bid/ask spread. But on days when the uranium stocks are making large moves, it's worth taking a look. Today (Thursday 30th) is a case in point. GCL didn't move and closed at 50.00. Most uranium stocks are up, with the exception of a few such as Uranium Royalty. If I'm right, we should expect GCL to gap up a few percent at market open on 31st. The buying opportunity is gone: it would have been before market close today.

Nice video on Uranium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdebMTuzetk