I’ve been called a contrarian for so long that I’ve started to think of it less as a label and more as a job description. And one of the positions I’ve held longest — one that’s drawn the most eye-rolls over the years — is that coal never went away. Nor is it going away.

Coal — just like oil or natural gas — is simply an arrangement of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The friendliest elements, concentrated into portable, reliable energy that actually works when you need it. I’ve always been a fan.

Yes, the Western world declared war on coal. Politicians made speeches. Pension funds divested. ESG consultants wrote lengthy reports about the inevitable transition. Coal was supposed to be finished — a relic of the industrial age, embarrassing to own and dangerous to defend. And yet, quietly, the world kept burning it. Global coal demand hit all-time highs even as the eulogies were being written. China kept building coal plants. India kept building coal plants. Japan — which the world thinks of as a sophisticated, technologically advanced nation — never really stopped either. The funeral kept getting scheduled. Coal kept not showing up to it.

All of that is now being laid bare by what’s happening in the Gulf. The Iran war and the energy crisis it has unleashed have done something that years of data and argument couldn’t: they’ve stripped away the comfortable fiction and shown the world exactly how exposed it really is.

All of a sudden, scores of countries — across Europe, and particularly across Asia — found themselves staring into an energy abyss they’d spent years pretending didn’t exist. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG flows, is effectively closed. And the countries that depend on it most have discovered, the hard way, that dependency and vulnerability are the same thing.

Consider Japan. It imports 87% of its total energy. Of its crude oil, 95% comes from the Middle East, and roughly 70% of that travels through Hormuz. With the strait closed, two-thirds of Japan’s oil supply is blocked. Not at risk. Blocked. It is now burning through emergency reserves that cover perhaps two to three weeks of stable LNG demand. South Korea is in essentially the same position — importing 98% of its energy, heavily dependent on the same routes. Australia has 38 days of fuel reserves. India, 1.4 billion people, imports 85% of its oil with heavy Middle East exposure. The list goes on.

These countries don’t have a Plan B for Middle Eastern energy. That’s not a criticism — it’s just a simple fact. For decades, the implicit Plan B was the American security guarantee. The U.S. Navy kept the sea lanes open, and everyone could afford to pretend that their energy dependency wasn’t as dangerous as it looked. But the sea lanes are no longer open. It turns out the security guarantee had fine print that nobody read carefully enough.

What you do when your Plan B evaporates is you fall back on what actually works. What’s available. What doesn’t require permission from anyone to access. And for most of Asia — and a good chunk of Europe — that means coal. It’s not glamorous. It was never supposed to be part of the story they were telling. But coal is there — abundant, proven, shippable on routes that don’t run through anyone’s missile range. When the choice is coal or cold, people choose coal. That’s why demand never fell the way the models said it would.

And it’s why, now that the vulnerability is impossible to ignore, the countries that matter most for global energy demand are making decisions that will outlast this crisis by decades. When a country genuinely stares into the abyss of energy vulnerability — when the lights flicker and the reserves start counting down — attention is drawn back to coal. As well as nuclear, of course. Japan, South Korea, India are not going back to the comfortable fiction that the shipping lanes will always be open. They’ll burn more coal, build more coal capacity, and lock in longer-term supply agreements with producers who ship on low-risk Pacific routes. And they’ll do this regardless of what gets said at the next climate summit, because physics and economics have a way of winning arguments against ideology.

Hormuz didn’t create the coal story. It’s just drawing attention to it.

In this month’s issue, we have two ways to play this — one for readers who want broad exposure to the sector, another for those comfortable sitting at a higher-stakes table. Lau gets into the specifics below.

Regards,

Doug Casey

Recommendation

Hi,

Lau here.

Doug has set out the macro case — a contrarian thesis he’s been holding for years, finally getting the catalyst it needed. The practical question — which names, why now, and at what price — is what follows.

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The Islamabad talks are dead. After 21 hours of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran this past weekend, the two sides failed to reach an agreement. The sticking points were exactly what you’d expect: Iran refused to end uranium enrichment or fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz without charging tolls. The U.S. refused to accept anything less.

Within hours of Vice President Vance announcing the collapse, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. Navy would begin blockading the Strait of Hormuz — effective today, Monday.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Iran shut the Strait six weeks ago. Now the United States is shutting it again — from the other side. The official justification is to intercept ships that have paid Iran’s tolls and block traffic to and from Iranian ports — which almost certainly includes Chinese tankers, the biggest buyers of Iranian crude. In practice, Trump is blockading a waterway that Iran already blockaded. He’s closing the strait to reopen it.

That’s an unprecedented escalation.

Oil is telling you how serious this is. WTI crude surged above $104 this morning. Brent futures crossed $102. But those are the paper prices. The physical market — where actual barrels change hands — tells a more honest story: dated Brent hit $144 per barrel last week. And that was before Trump announced the blockade.

This is the largest disruption to global oil supply since the 1970s. And by some measures, it could be the largest in the history of the world oil market. Unlike the 1973 embargo, where OPEC simply chose to withhold supply, this one involves an active shooting war, a closed strait, and now a formal U.S. naval blockade layered on top.

Over the weekend, Doug emailed me about a position we’ve had in the portfolio — a producing oil company he knows well. Now, I know for a fact that Doug owns a significant chunk of this stock personally, and he told me he’s planning to buy more. In his own words: “oil is likely to stay well above $100, maybe a lot above $100 — and we probably ought to re-recommend it.”

I agreed. The company is an oil and gas producer with producing offshore assets in Africa — where the deepwater sector operates on an entirely different level than onshore — alongside international majors like TotalEnergies, thousands of miles from the Strait. Those barrels don’t need to transit anything to reach global markets. In a world where Persian Gulf oil is effectively trapped — Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE are already shutting down fields as storage capacity runs out — African offshore crude has become premium supply.

So, today we’re upgrading this position from Hold back to Buy. Here’s the full reasoning.

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Let me say something that will probably cost us more subscribers.

This war is a big deal. A very big deal. And almost nobody is treating it like one.

The market is down a few percent. Commentators are telling people to stay calm, buy the dip, wars always end. The same people who told you COVID was nothing in January 2020, and then told you it was the end of the world in March 2020, are now your guides through a shooting war in the Persian Gulf. Good luck with that.

Here’s what I keep coming back to. Before a tsunami hits, the water recedes and the beach gets wider. People run out to pick up seashells. They’re delighted. They have no idea what’s coming. That’s where we are right now — with this war, and with the markets. The seashells look very pretty.

Now, I’m not going to pretend the Iranian regime are good guys. They’re not. But there’s something that bothers me even more than the war itself, and that’s how it started. Negotiations were actively underway when the first missiles flew. You had people at a table, talking, and then you attacked. I don’t know how else to describe that except dishonorable. At least the Japanese, before Pearl Harbor, formally declared that negotiations were over before they struck. Here we didn’t even do that. And when you launch a war that way — through deception, while pretending to talk peace — you don’t just inflame the other side. You guarantee they will never trust you again. You eliminate any possibility of a negotiated exit. You’ve closed the door yourself.

The first casualty in war is the truth — and we are already deep in that territory. You can plan your life around everything coming out of that theater being a lie, propaganda, or something slanted beyond recognition. So when someone tells you we’re winning, or it’ll be over soon, or the Iranians are about to fold — ask yourself who benefits from you believing that.

What I do know is that Pandora’s box has been opened. And once you open it, you cannot predict what comes out next. That’s not pessimism. That’s just how wars work. They grow. They find their own logic. They pull in things you never anticipated. The smarter play — the only play that made any sense — would have been to declare victory and go home. Teach them a lesson, show them you’re serious, walk away. That door is closing fast now.

Trump has demanded unconditional surrender from Iran. I want you to think about that. Unconditional surrender was considered a strategic blunder even against Nazi Germany — it stiffened resistance and prolonged the war. Against a nation of 90 million people whose backs are against the wall, it isn’t a blunder. It’s a fantasy.

And speaking of fantasies — the idea that the new supreme leader represents any kind of opening. You just killed a man’s father. His sister. His niece. You wiped out his inner circle. And Washington apparently expected moderation in return? He’s more hardline than his father, deeper in with the Revolutionary Guard, a man who has spent his entire life as the enforcer of the system you’re trying to destroy. There’s also an irony here that escapes most people — the Islamic Republic was born in revolution against a hereditary monarchy. Its founding principle was that no family rules by birthright. And yet power has just passed from father to son for the first time in its history. That’s not a regime collapsing. That’s a regime telling you exactly where it stands.

Now, about the markets. I’ve thought they’ve been grossly overpriced for a long time, for reasons that have nothing to do with Iran. The average guy is already struggling — tapping his 401k, driving a 13-year-old car because a new one costs what a house used to cost. The crisis has been building for years. Most people just haven’t had their shared experience yet — their moment where everyone around them recognizes it at once, like watching a plane fly into a tower, or the NFL canceling its season. That moment is coming. This war could be the catalyst — the pin the bubble has finally found. And when people wake up to it, they won’t wake up gradually.

War is nature’s way of teaching Americans geography. They’re going to learn a great deal about the Persian Gulf in the months ahead. Better to be early to that lesson than late.

The specific opportunities we’ve identified — and Lau will walk you through the details — are a direct way to position yourself ahead of what I think is coming. The philosophy behind it is simple. Don’t be the person running out to pick up seashells.

Regards,

Doug Casey

Recommendation

Hi,

Lau here.

This month, we sent two alerts — each with a new recommendation (catch up here, and here). One on the equity side, one in commodities. Both are directly tied to what’s unfolding in the Middle East right now.

If you’re not yet in either position, you haven’t missed it.

Below, we’ll lay out why the Hormuz crisis isn’t resolving — and why that’s the foundation for everything that follows.

Why This Isn’t Over

What a month it’s been.

Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t reopened within 48 hours. Iran threatened to mine the entire Persian Gulf — and then went ahead and started laying mines in the strait itself. Oil spiked. Trump backed off hours before his own deadline, announcing “very good and productive” peace talks with Tehran. Oil crashed 11%. Iran denied any talks were happening. Oil bounced back above $100. Israeli strikes continued. Iran fired back at Gulf states. Shipping companies pulled out entirely. War-risk insurance premiums went through the roof — reportedly tacking on an extra quarter million dollars per passage for large tankers. Most insurers have simply stopped offering coverage at any price.

That was just the highlights. As of this writing, the strait remains effectively closed.

Now — since both of our recommendations this month are built on this disruption staying in place — you might be wondering: what if it actually gets resolved? Trump has been threatening to force it open, extending deadlines one after another (the latest, as of writing, pushes to April 6). He’s deployed thousands of troops to the region just in the past week. He’s been talking tough about reopening the strait by force.

Here’s what you need to understand about the context in which all of this is actually playing out.

Start with Iran’s side of the table. Iran has absorbed the assassination of its Supreme Leader and weeks of sustained strikes on its military and energy infrastructure. Washington’s original demand — full nuclear dismantlement, halt to ballistic missiles — was never a negotiating opener. Tehran read it as an attempt at regime change. Accepting those terms doesn’t just mean political embarrassment for the ruling establishment. It means the end of the establishment. These are people who have already paid an enormous price. They have nothing left to concede that they’re willing to concede.

Then there’s Trump’s problem. This war never had popular support — polls have consistently shown roughly two in three Americans opposed to it. He gets zero credit for starting it. But he’d take all the blame for losing it. And “we backed down” is not a message you bring into midterm elections. Whatever else Trump does, he needs to come out of this looking like he won something. That’s not a small constraint.

Neither side can afford to look like they lost.

You also have to wonder about the sunk cost dynamics at play here. Both sides have already spent enormous amounts of blood, money, and political capital. When that happens — at any scale, let alone this one — the rational response of cutting losses and walking away gets replaced by the need to keep going until there’s something to show for what’s already been spent. The sunk cost fallacy is powerful enough in everyday life. In geopolitics, it’s basically unavoidable.

At least on the American side, the bill is staggering. Tomahawk expenditures alone hit $3 billion in the opening weeks. Total war spending crossed $26 billion in just sixteen days. Congress is now getting hit up for another $200 billion in supplemental war funding. The White House has proposed an FY2027 defense budget that would jump from $900 billion to $1.5 trillion — the single largest year-over-year defense spending increase in American history.

You don’t ask for that kind of money if you’re winding things down.

Note: Even as the U.S. prosecutes this war, the Trump administration quietly lifted sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian crude sitting on tankers at sea — clearing the way for Iran to collect up to $14 billion in oil revenue. The stated rationale: ease oil prices. Critics from Trump’s own Senate called it “shamefully stupid.” Secretary Bessent argued Iran would struggle to access the funds; the general license contained no escrow mechanism and no payment restrictions. At least one side in this conflict knows where its next paycheck is coming from.

Then there’s the physical obstacle that almost nobody is talking about: the mines.

Iran hasn’t just threatened to mine the Strait of Hormuz — it’s done it. At least a dozen naval mines have been deployed, including the Maham-3 and Maham-7 models: modern, sensor-equipped weapons designed to target commercial vessels. Iran knows exactly where every one of them is. That matters, because even if a ceasefire were signed tomorrow, mine clearance is not a weekend project. It requires specialized vessels, months of painstaking operations, and — critically — cooperation from the side that laid them. U.S. military officials have already said it’s “too early to begin escort operations” because Iran’s capacity to lay more mines hasn’t been neutralized. The mines are leverage, and Iran will use them as such.

This complicates things quite a bit. Even U.S. officials are privately admitting they may not be able to open the strait at all. A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment put the potential closure at one to six months. Iranian sources have suggested it may not return to pre-war status even if the conflict formally ends. And tellingly — as of yesterday — the White House press secretary said reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not a “core objective” of the Iran campaign. Think about that for a second.

But here’s what you really need to keep in mind — and this applies directly to your positions. Even if the war ended tomorrow, even if a ceasefire were signed tonight, the damage is already done. This doesn’t snap back. The supply chains disrupted by this conflict don’t just resume the moment the shooting stops.

Think about what’s already broken. Qatar’s Ras Laffan — one of the world’s largest LNG processing facilities — was struck during the conflict and is estimated to need five years of repairs. Five years. Iraq has shut down its largest oil fields. Qatar has declared force majeure on LNG contracts it’s been honoring for decades. Shipping companies haven’t just paused voyages through the region — many have fundamentally restructured their route networks around Hormuz being closed. Insurance markets don’t just flip back on; underwriters who pulled coverage will take months to reassess, and premiums won’t return to pre-war levels for years. The CEO of QatarEnergy has been blunt: “Even if everything were miraculously to stop now, the ramifications will absolutely take years to replace.”

The war might end. The damage is baked in. And the economic ripple effects haven’t even fully arrived yet — the supply chain dislocations, the food and energy inflation now spreading through import-dependent economies from Asia to Africa, the currency and sovereign debt pressure building across the developing world — that’s a 2026 and 2027 story that’s still being written.

Both of our positions are built on this reality. Below we walk through the arithmetic, and then the case for each.

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What a week.

President Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t reopened within 48 hours.

Iran responded by threatening to mine the entire Persian Gulf.

Oil spiked.

Trump backed off hours before his own deadline — announcing “very good and productive” peace talks with Tehran.

Oil crashed 11%.

Iran denied any talks were happening.

Oil bounced back above $100.

Israeli strikes continued. Iran fired back at Gulf states.

And as of this writing, the strait remains effectively closed.

That was just the last five days.

We’re now four weeks into a conflict that has shut down the world’s most critical energy artery — the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows daily. Since the war began, just 21 tankers have transited the route, compared to more than 100 ships per day before the conflict. Brent crude peaked at $126 — a disruption the IEA called worse than anything since the 1970s oil crisis.

And it’s not getting resolved anytime soon.

Neither side can afford to look like they lost. Trump needs a win he can sell to voters ahead of the midterms — and “we backed down” isn’t that. Remember, this is a war that never had popular support to begin with: polls consistently show roughly two in three Americans oppose it. And the Iranian regime, having just lost its Supreme Leader and absorbed weeks of strikes, cannot hand Washington a clean win and survive politically.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: U.S. officials are privately admitting they may not be able to reopen the strait at all. A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment put the potential closure at one to six months. Iranian sources have suggested it may not return to its pre-war status even if the conflict ends.

We already sent you one recommendation this month to position for what’s coming. As the crisis deepens, we have a second — and it’s one most investors are completely missing.

What Nobody’s Talking About

Everyone’s focused on oil (and gas). Understandably. But there’s a second crisis unfolding in the background that will hit you even more directly — at the grocery store, not just at the gas pump.

Fertilizer.

The Persian Gulf accounts for nearly half of all seaborne urea exports globally. The Hormuz closure has effectively trapped 35% of the world’s seaborne urea and phosphate supply, with major producers like Qatar’s QAFCO and Saudi Arabia’s SABIC forced to halt or curtail production entirely. Urea — the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer in the world, the thing that makes crops grow — cannot be rerouted the way oil sometimes can. There are no pipeline alternatives for bulk ammonia and urea. It’s just... stuck.

Urea prices have surged nearly 40% since the conflict began, with prices at the Port of New Orleans now exceeding $650 per ton.

And the timing couldn’t be worse. We are right now in the critical spring planting window — the weeks during which farmers across the Northern Hemisphere decide what to plant and how much fertilizer to apply. Those decisions will largely determine how much food the world produces for the rest of 2026.

A food shock is being set up in slow motion. Which brings us to today’s recommendation.

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How serious is this dust-up with Iran? My opinion is that it’s super serious... likely to spin out of control.

That’s Doug Casey, speaking just days after the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggered what’s now shaping into the most significant Middle East conflict in decades.

Doug continued:

I thought that both the stock and bond markets have been very overpriced for a long time. I don’t want any part of the general stock market and I think it could crash.

They’re floating on air.

This war could be the catalyst... the pin that the bubble has finally found.

He’s right. And the developments over the past ten days suggest this situation is only getting more serious—not less.

Which is why I’m sending you this alert with a new recommendation—a position designed to capitalize on the crisis unfolding in real time and the market vulnerabilities that will persist long after the headlines fade.

But before we get to that, let me bring you up to speed on the latest developments.

As I wrote to you last week, the Strait of Hormuz—the narrow waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil supply passes—has effectively shut down. Tanker traffic dropped 90% from normal levels by March 4th. On March 2nd, a senior official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officially confirmed the strait was closed and threatened any ship attempting passage.

At least five commercial vessels have been struck by drones or missiles near the strait since the conflict began. Two Indian crew members were killed when the oil tanker Skylight was hit north of Oman. Another vessel was struck by a drone boat, sparking a fire and explosion. A port worker died when the U.S.-flagged Stena Imperative was attacked twice at the port of Bahrain.

In short: the Strait of Hormuz has become a war zone.

As a result, major container shipping companies—Maersk, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd—have suspended transits through the strait entirely. War-risk insurance premiums have spiked from 0.125% to as high as 0.4% of ship value per transit. For very large oil tankers, that’s an increase of roughly a quarter million dollars per passage. Most insurers have simply pulled war-risk coverage altogether.

The U.S. has offered naval escorts. President Trump even demanded in a Truth Social post that tankers “show some guts” and keep moving. But the reality on the ground—or rather, on the water—is that commercial shipping remains at a near-standstill, as you can see from the graph above.

Oil prices have reacted accordingly. WTI crude briefly spiked to nearly $120 per barrel on Monday—the highest since 2022—before pulling back sharply amid talk of strategic reserve releases. As of this writing, it’s trading around $84-90, still well above pre-crisis levels.

Meanwhile, as I wrote in a recent essay, the clock is ticking for Gulf oil producers. When storage capacity runs out, they’ll be forced to shut down wells. Everyone’s in trouble. The UAE has alternative pipelines but they can’t handle full export volumes. Even Saudi Arabia—which has the most storage capacity and the East-West Pipeline to bypass Hormuz—faces a massive hit to export revenues.

Here’s why that matters beyond just oil prices: For decades, Gulf oil producers have been recycling their oil revenues into U.S. financial assets—Treasuries, stocks, corporate bonds, real estate. They’re some of the largest foreign buyers of American assets. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait alone held over $1 trillion in U.S. financial assets as of late 2024. When their oil revenues collapse, their fiscal balances flip from surplus to deficit almost overnight. And when that happens, they don’t just tighten belts domestically—they start pulling capital back. That means selling U.S. Treasuries, liquidating equity positions, repatriating hundreds of billions of dollars. The result? Treasury yields spike. Corporate borrowing costs surge. Stock markets don’t just face selling pressure—they crash. You get the picture.

And this isn't hypothetical. Iraq has already shut down its largest oil fields—production is down 60% as storage tanks hit capacity. Kuwait and the UAE have followed with their own cuts. Qatar stopped LNG production entirely and declared force majeure on gas contracts. The revenue collapse is happening right now.

Meanwhile, against this backdrop, back over at home, the U.S. economy was already showing significant stress before any of this started. Last month saw 92,000 jobs lost—the third time in five months the economy has shed jobs. People are tapping 401(k)s at record rates. Consumer debt sits at all-time highs. I could go on and on.

Yet the stock market—up until very recently—has acted as if none of this matters.

That’s because the market has been floating on something else entirely: artificial intelligence hype and the handful of mega-cap tech stocks riding it.

The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 now account for roughly 40% of the index’s total weight. At the dot-com peak in 2000, that figure was around 25%. The so-called Magnificent Seven alone contributed roughly 42% of the S&P 500’s total return in 2025.

And those valuations rest entirely on one assumption: that AI spending pays off. Tech giants are projected to spend over $700 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026. The problem? American consumers spend only $12 billion a year on AI services. That’s the gap between vision and reality—between Singapore and Somalia.

We’ve seen this before. In the late 1990s, telecom companies spent hundreds of billions laying fiber optic cable for an internet boom that took years longer to materialize than investors expected. When the revenue didn’t show up on schedule, the entire sector collapsed.

Today’s AI buildout is following the same pattern—except the spending is even larger, and it’s all concentrated in the same handful of stocks propping up the entire index.

It’s an extremely fragile structure.

Add a major geopolitical shock on top of that, and you have a setup where even a modest shift in sentiment could send the whole thing tumbling.

Which brings me to today's recommendation.

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We’ve got another winner that’s more than doubled. If you’re a regular reader, you know what comes next: it’s time to take our Casey Free Ride and let the rest run for free.

But before we get into the details, I want to talk about what just happened to gold.

This past weekend, coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered one of the most dramatic safe-haven rallies in modern history. Gold surged nearly 6%—blasting from around $5,100 per ounce to over $5,390 in a matter of hours. By Monday morning, it briefly reclaimed $5,400 before settling around $5,360.

To put that in perspective: a 6% move in a few hours is extraordinary for gold—especially when the metal was already up 25% year-to-date and sitting near record highs after posting its best annual performance in 46 years in 2025.

Historical data shows that gold averages just 0.3% in the first week of conflicts and 8.98% over 12 months. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, gold rallied 8.2% in the first month. After 9/11, it gained 5.9% over 30 days. During the 1990-91 Gulf War, it rose 7.5% over six months.

For gold to surge this aggressively from an already-extended position tells you something important: markets are treating this conflict differently.

And there’s good reason for that. Unlike previous Middle East tensions, this one threatens the Strait of Hormuz—the chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s oil supply passes. As I detailed in yesterday’s essay, the effective closure of Hormuz represents an unprecedented supply disruption risk. Oil prices spiked 13% on Monday, their largest single-day gain in four years, as tanker traffic ground to a halt and insurers pulled coverage for Gulf shipments.

Your guess is as good as mine as to which of these scenarios currently on the table—short war or long war—becomes reality. But one thing is clear: gold is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, preserve wealth during crisis.

Which brings me to a position that’s benefited from exactly this environment—a junior gold company we recommended a little over a year ago that’s now up 115%, pushing it squarely into Casey Free Ride territory.

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Gold is back above $5,000 per ounce — and then some.

A year ago, that number would have sounded like the kind of forecast you’d hear from a permabull at a mining conference. Today it’s the price on your screen. And the bull market is starting to rotate — away from the large caps that have already had their run, and toward the developers and near-producers that haven’t been repriced yet.

This month’s pick sits right at the heart of that rotation. It’s a fully built, fully permitted gold mine on the cusp of restarting production — and we think the current entry point is one of the more compelling we’ve seen in this cycle.

Once you’ve had a chance to dig into the recommendation, don’t miss our conversation with Doug Casey on how to navigate 2026 — metals, energy, geopolitics, and where he sees the biggest opportunities this year. It’s a long one, but every bit worth your time.

Since this issue covers a lot of ground, I’ll keep this brief and let you dive right in.

Happy investing,

Lau Vegys

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About six months ago, we sent you an alert that started like this:

We rarely send alerts outside of our regular publishing schedule—and we’ve never sent one over a weekend. But every once in a while, a truly unusual opportunity crosses our desks. One so compelling — and so asymmetrical in its risk and reward—that we feel obligated to get it in front of you before our full monthly issue.

This is one of those occasions.

The company in question is a small firm with a breakthrough technology that could unlock an entirely new industry.

What happened next put that “asymmetrical” thesis to the test.

Within hours of that recommendation, the stock was hit by a coordinated short-seller attack. Allegations. Panic selling. Shares plunged over 50% in days.

But we didn’t panic. We called management. We demanded answers and concrete commitments—specific milestones with actual timelines we could track. We followed up in writing. We kept the pressure on—asking the hard questions, getting clarity for our subscribers, and reporting back every step of the way. This enabled us to hold through the volatility while others sold under pressure. And those who followed our tranche strategy bought more shares at dramatically lower prices when the fear peaked.

Today, despite everything, the position has more than doubled from our average entry.

If you took that weekend alert seriously and followed our tranche strategy, it’s now time to lock in your gains. And yes, that’s why you’re getting another weekend alert from us—this time to take the profits.

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We've got another winner that's doubled. If you're a regular reader, you probably know what comes next: it's time to take our Casey Free Ride and let the rest run for free.

But before we get into the details, I have good news to share: Gold seems to finally be going mainstream.

The “barbarous relic,” as British economist and intellectual architect of today’s debt-and-deficit regime John Maynard Keynes once called gold, is finally getting the attention of Wall Street. Global financial giants are falling over each other with increasingly bullish forecasts. JP Morgan just raised its year-end 2026 target to $6,300 per ounce. Deutsche Bank is calling for $6,000, with an upside scenario near $6,900. Société Générale also sees $6,000. Bank of America predicts gold will hit that level by spring.

Behind this rally is a structural shift in demand. Central banks, particularly in emerging markets, continue to accumulate gold at a pace not seen in decades. Just this past month, People’s Bank of China extended its gold purchases for a 15th consecutive month in January 2026.

Now, if you’ve been with us for any length of time, you probably know this isn’t temporary—it’s a fundamental shift in how central banks around the world are allocating reserves, moving away from dollar dominance and toward hard assets.

And this shift has been building for some time now.

For three consecutive years now, central banks have purchased over 1,000 tons of gold annually. For context, the average annual buying in the decade before 2022 was just 400-500 tons. They’ve more than doubled their accumulation rate.

And as I told you in an essay several months ago, 2025 marked the year when—for the first time since 1996—central banks around the world now hold more gold than U.S. Treasuries as a percentage of their reserves.

I’ve covered this central bank buying phenomenon extensively over the past year. It’s also why we positioned our portfolio so aggressively around gold—recommending new companies and highlighting the ones we already owned that stood to benefit most.

Which brings me to a conversation I had exactly one year ago. In February 2025, I sat down with the CEO of a small exploration company that had just executed a complete strategic pivot—walking away from decades of work in Mexico to start fresh in the Western United States. At the time, they were quietly staking copper-gold porphyry targets across Nevada and Arizona using a specialized exploration methodology. Since that conversation, the stock is up over 260%, pushing it squarely into Casey Free Ride territory.

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One of our gold positions has doubled since we recommended it last year. If you’re a regular reader, you probably know what comes next: it’s time to lock in profits on half your position via a Casey Free Ride and let the rest ride for free.

This validates exactly what we’ve been positioning for.

For most of the past decade, you see, gold mining stocks frustrated investors. Gold would rally 20%, and miners would barely move 15%. The leverage everyone expected simply wasn’t there. More often than not, capital was wasted on questionable projects, costs spiraled, and shareholders got burned.

That changed in 2025. Gold miners finally delivered. The NYSE Arca Gold Miners Index gained 158%—more than double gold’s 65% return.

The reason? Margins.

Gold averaged $3,440/oz last year while sector costs (AISC) sat around $1,600/oz. That's an $1,840/oz margin—among the widest in industry history. For context, in the decade from 2013-2023, AISC averaged around $900-1,100/oz while gold traded in the $1,200-$1,950 range. Margins typically ran $300-800/oz (midpoint ~$550). Today's margins are roughly 3x wider.

With gold now above $5,000? Low-cost producers with sub-$1,300 AISC—like the one we’re taking a Casey Free Ride on today—are generating $3,700+/oz in per-ounce cash margins. These companies are printing money—and yet they’re still trading at 0.7-0.9x NAV, well below historical bull market averages of 1.2-1.5x.

But here’s what makes this moment particularly interesting.

As I mentioned in a recent piece, leverage is leverage—but for mining stocks, that roughly 2-to-1 ratio we observed last year is still, well… underwhelming.

Historically, miners have delivered 3-to-1, 5-to-1, or even 10-to-1 returns—or higher—in true bull markets.

In a sense, this is understandable. The early-to-middle stages of precious metals bull markets usually play out the same way: investors pile into the metal first, and the stocks follow later—starting with the large caps, then the rest of the universe. That’s when the moves can turn truly violent.

We’re still not at that stage. And that’s the opportunity.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s turn to the position that just doubled. For paid subscribers, below you’ll find the specific stock name, full Casey Free Ride calculations, and the action to take.

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One of our silver positions has more than doubled since our October recommendation, climbing 105% in just three months. If you’re a regular reader, you probably know what comes next: it’s time to lock in profits on half your position via a Casey Free Ride and let the rest ride for free.

But before we get to the specifics, I wanted to share what’s happening in the silver market right now.

We just got confirmation that 2025 marked silver’s fifth consecutive year of structural supply deficit. The cumulative deficit since 2021 now exceeds 800 million ounces—nearly a full year of global production that’s effectively been pulled from above-ground inventories. And this coincided with exchange stockpiles in London and COMEX getting drained to historic lows.

Meanwhile, on the demand side, industrial consumption now accounts for nearly 60% of total silver use—up roughly 50% since 2015. Solar installations, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure, and AI data centers all require silver. And unlike investment demand, which ebbs and flows with sentiment, industrial demand is structurally sticky.

And in its own way, supply is sticky too.

Roughly 70-80% of global silver production comes as a by-product of base metal mining. That means silver supply is structurally inelastic—miners can't simply "produce more silver" when prices rise unless the economics of lead, zinc, copper, and gold justify higher production too. And instead of rising, mine supply actually fell by roughly 3% in 2025.

Put all of that together, and it shouldn’t be surprising that silver soared roughly 160% last year.

Strangely, that may be the least interesting part.

Because even with silver moving sharply higher—yes, with pullbacks along the way—silver miners still remain near parity with the metal itself. I’m talking, of course, about averages here, but they reflect the same broader pattern we’re seeing in our own Crisis Investing portfolio: the leverage from our silver picks hasn’t come in full force yet.

Still, some positions have done well. Late last month, we issued a Casey Free Ride alert on one of our silver picks. And today, we’re issuing another—on a position that has just doubled.

For paid subscribers, below you’ll find the specific stock name, full Casey Free Ride calculations, and the rest of the details.

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Welcome to the new year—and to many of you, welcome to Crisis Investing.

If you’ve just joined us over the past few weeks, you’re arriving at a remarkable moment. Gold has broken above $5,000 per ounce for the first time in history. Silver crossed $100. The forces we’ve been tracking for years aren’t speculation anymore—they’re delivering in real time.

This month’s issue does three things.

First, Matt Smith maps out our thesis for 2026—what’s changed, what’s intensified, and how we’re positioning for what comes next. He also walks through our 2025 predictions, so you can see the framework in action. If you’re new here, this piece is your roadmap.

Second, we're taking profits. We're locking in Casey Free Rides on two uranium holdings that have more than doubled since we recommended them. Time to secure gains and let the rest ride.

Third, for those who’ve just come aboard: we hear you. We know you’re eager to start building positions, but everything’s run up significantly. That's why we've been working through our existing holdings to identify opportunities we can responsibly open up (while continuing to look for new ones).

Yesterday, we sent a special alert on two silver positions—moving both from HOLD to BUY specifically for new subscribers looking to establish positions. Today, we’re raising buy-up-to guidance on two gold positions for anyone who doesn’t yet own them—whether you’re a new subscriber or an existing one who passed on the original recommendations.

Combined, that gives you four quality entry points in precious metals—two in silver, two in gold. We won’t recommend buying just to give you something to do—only when it actually makes sense, as is the case now.

This issue is packed, so let's get to it.

Lau Vegys

Part I: Our 2025 Thesis in Review

Matt here.

As I sat down to write about what we see unfolding in 2026, something happened. Something we’ve anticipated for over a year, yet something that still commands attention when it arrives: gold broke above $5,000 per ounce for the first time in history.

Now, if you recall last February, we laid out what we called the “Mar-a-Lago Accord” - a deliberate effort by the Trump administration to devalue the dollar and bring gold back to the center of the monetary system. Here’s what we wrote at the time:

If the U.S. devalues the dollar first—since this would be a Plaza Accord on steroids—I wouldn’t be surprised to see gold spike to $5,000–$8,000 per ounce just from speculative trading on that news alone.

Twelve months later, we’re there - and that’s all the proof you need that our 2025 thesis played out.

But that $5,000 breakthrough isn’t the end of the story though. It’s confirmation that the forces we identified are now in motion. And so going into 2026, it’s worth reviewing exactly what we predicted, what the data shows, and what likely comes next.

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We’re witnessing history unfold in real time.

Gold just broke through $5,000 per ounce for the first time ever. Silver crossed $100—a level it’s never seen before—and is now trading around $119. Both metals have delivered extraordinary returns over the past year, with gold up 87% and silver up 282%. I’ve been covering this in recent essays (catch up here, and here)—the momentum has been extraordinary.

But what’s even more remarkable is the price action we’ve seen just this month. Since January 1st, gold has surged from around $4,330 to over $5,500—a nearly 30% gain in less than 30 days. Silver’s move has been even more dramatic, climbing from around $71 to $118—a 66% jump in the same period.

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who read our Trump's Reset report last year, in which we outlined our bullish case for precious metals in 2025 and beyond. (By the way, we’ll also be diving into our full 2026 thesis in tomorrow’s issue—look out for that.) So I won’t bore you with outlining the catalysts and drivers behind this move today—you get plenty of information on that in our podcasts, essays, and other content.

But the key point is this: the speed and magnitude of this move suggests we're entering a new phase of the precious metals bull market—one where fear of missing out (FOMO), momentum, and paradigm shifts like China's strategic silver export controls (which I wrote about recently) converge to drive prices into territory that seemed impossible just months ago.

Now, for those tracking our Crisis Investing portfolio—specifically our precious metals section—you’ve probably noticed something: most positions have delivered at least a double and are thus rated Casey Free Rides (our systematic profit-taking protocol where you sell half when a stock doubles and HOLD the rest). As stocks have run up alongside the metals, this has created a challenge for newer subscribers looking to establish positions—and I’ve heard from many of you about it.

Here’s what we’re doing about it.

Tomorrow, we’re publishing the January issue where Matt Smith will be outlining our Crisis Investing thesis for 2026. We’ll also be revising several of our gold and precious metals positions from HOLD to BUY based on this month’s extraordinary price action in the underlying metals. We’re still finalizing which positions make the cut, and we'll share those updates with you tomorrow.

But I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to give you guidance on our silver positions. Silver’s move has been even more dramatic than gold’s—crossing the psychologically significant $100 milestone for the first time in history—and as I’ve been pointing out in recent essays, silver mining stocks are still dramatically lagging the metal itself.

That unusual valuation gap represents one of the best risk/reward setups in the market right now—and it won’t stay open forever. We’re comfortable enough with our two silver positions that we’re updating them today, ahead of tomorrow’s full issue.

This alert covers:

• How to lock in profits on the silver position that’s already doubled.

• Why silver mining stocks are still dirt cheap despite silver’s historic rally.

• Updated BUY guidance on our two silver positions for new subscribers.

• Specific buy-up-to price levels based on current market conditions.

If you’re a paid subscriber, read on. If not, consider subscribing—we’re entering what could be the most explosive phase of the precious metals bull market, and you don’t want to be on the sidelines for what comes next.

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As we wrap up 2025 and turn our attention to what lies ahead, now’s a good moment to look back at how the year unfolded.

2025 was an extraordinary year for precious metals—one of the strongest performances in decades.

Gold surged from around $2,600 per ounce at the start of the year to over $4,300, up roughly 65%. That’s the strongest annual gain since 1979. The yellow metal set multiple all-time highs throughout the year, driven by Trump’s tariffs, geopolitical turmoil, and general boat-rocking, while central banks kept buying at a robust pace despite gold trading near record levels.

Silver’s performance was even more remarkable. The white metal climbed from around $29 per ounce to nearly $75—a gain of roughly 160%. That also marked silver’s strongest year since 1979. Unlike gold’s relatively steady march higher, silver experienced a dramatic squeeze during the second half of the year, particularly in China, as exchange vaults were emptied and industrial demand from solar, EVs, and data centers collided with surging investment flows.

I’m particularly happy about this one, since I’ve spent a lot of time banging the table on silver — explaining its gold-lagging but explosive nature across several essays. If you missed any of them, catch up here, here, here, and here.

You can see silver’s annual performance since 2010 in the chart below.

Those are spectacular numbers for the metals themselves. But what about our portfolio?

In last December's issue, I pointed to the massive disconnect between precious metals prices and mining stocks:

This disconnect presents some great ‘buy low’ opportunities. This is the essential first step in the ‘buy low, sell high’ formula - one that could pay off handsomely in 2025 for those who follow it.

That’s exactly what happened. Since then, our precious metals portfolio has delivered an average gain of about 140%.

But our wins this year weren't limited to precious metals. We also captured exceptional gains in critical minerals, copper, and other strategic sectors—proving that crisis investing isn't about betting on a single commodity, but identifying opportunities the market is mispricing across multiple areas.

Several individual positions delivered triple-digit returns, with gains of 468%, 365%, 320%, 259%, 152%, and 151%. Returns like that enabled us to take chips off the table along the way. This year we took Casey Free Rides on 11 positions after they doubled, allowing subscribers to lock in their initial capital while letting the remaining shares ride for free.

Note: Just earlier this month we took our two most recent CFRs—details here.

For context, if you’d owned all 11 from our original recommendations, you’d be averaging over 200% gains—with zero capital still at risk.

With that out of the way, starting this year we’re introducing a new December tradition: highlighting our top gainer as both a teaching example and a way of saying thank you to those of you who follow Doug Casey’s Crisis Investing but aren’t yet on the inside.

For 2025, that spotlight goes to MP Materials (MP)—up 152% from our May recommendation and a textbook example of crisis investing in action.

MP Materials is North America’s only active rare earth mine (and processing operation of scale), operating the Mountain Pass mine in California. When we recommended the stock in late May, the critical-minerals thesis was clear—but it still wasn’t fully appreciated by the market.

Yet for those willing to look, the pieces were already falling into place. The U.S. Department of Defense had committed funding to help MP build out domestic magnet manufacturing—essential for everything from EV motors to guided missiles. At the same time, major automakers were actively searching for non-Chinese rare earth supply for their EV programs.

In fact, just one month after our recommendation, Doug singled out MP Materials as his top pick in the Other Plays section of the portfolio during our portfolio review discussion.

He was right. The stock ran to nearly $100 per share in October—turning into a four-bagger before taking a breather. Along the way, we took profits as MP secured strategic supply agreements with defense contractors and auto manufacturers, continued advancing its magnet facility (expected to come online in 2026), and benefited from China announcing new export restrictions on rare earths.

This wasn’t luck. It was about identifying an undervalued company at the center of a strategic trend, entering at a reasonable valuation, and letting the thesis play out. That’s crisis investing in a nutshell.

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Good news keeps coming—and we’ve got another opportunity to lock in ~100% gains.

In the latest issue of Crisis Investing, I mentioned that two positions were approaching Casey Free Ride territory and that we’d issue an alert if they continued climbing. Well, they did—and then some.

But before we get into the specifics, it’s worth understanding the backdrop—because it’s directly relevant to why we own these positions.

As I wrote in Thursday’s essay, on Wednesday the Fed cut rates for the third time this year, dropping the federal funds rate to a range of 3.5%–3.75%. But the real story wasn’t the rate cut itself. It was what the Fed announced alongside it: stealth money printing.

In fact, starting yesterday, December 12th, the Fed already began purchasing $40 billion in Treasury bills per month. They’re calling it “reserve management” and insisting it’s temporary. Let’s be clear: this is money printing. The Fed’s balance sheet is expanding again—and they didn’t even provide an end date for when the purchases will stop.

Powell can claim this is just “plumbing” or “seasonal liquidity management” all he wants, but history tells us this is the exact same playbook the Fed used before QE1 in 2008 and before COVID-era QE in 2019—start with “technical operations,” then transition to full-scale quantitative easing (QE).

Note: I went into this in more detail in Thursday’s piece, so if you missed it, be sure to catch up.

Precious metals got the message immediately. Gold jumped to a one-month high following the announcement, while silver hit a record high above $64 per ounce. Even platinum, a metal not usually thought of as a monetary hedge, climbed above $1,750—its strongest level since 2011.

That’s exactly the response we position for—and why we own precious metals and mining stocks, including the two names I mentioned at the beginning.

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Americans owe $1.66 trillion in auto debt.

That’s trillion with a T. To give you an idea of how crazy that is, it’s even slightly more than the scandalous levels of student loan debt (at about $1.65 trillion). And right now, a product once considered one of the safest in consumer credit is quietly becoming one of the riskiest.

For one, auto loan delinquencies just hit levels we haven’t seen since the Great Financial Crisis. Take a look at Fitch Ratings’ auto loan delinquency index:

Subprime borrowers are getting crushed, with 6.65% of loans at least 60 days delinquent as of October 2025. That’s the highest level in over 30 years—worse than anything we saw during the Great Financial Crisis.

Even prime and super-prime borrowers are starting to crack. Severe-stage delinquencies among super-prime borrowers have more than doubled year-over-year. When your best customers start missing payments, something fundamental has broken.

Meanwhile, the average monthly payment for a new car now exceeds $750. For used cars, it’s $540. Average loan amounts have hit $41,983 for new vehicles and $26,795 for used ones. Many borrowers are locked into 7-year loans—that’s 84 months of payments on a depreciating asset.

And it gets worse. A growing number of car buyers are underwater, owing more on their loans than their vehicles are worth. Take a look at this chart from Edmunds—one of the leading automotive data and pricing firms—tracking the share of trade-ins with negative equity and the average amount owed over the vehicle’s value:

Nearly 28% of all trade-ins are now underwater—meaning more than 1 in 4 car owners owe more than their vehicle is worth. And the average amount of negative equity has surged to almost $7,000, up from around $4,000 during the pandemic lows.

So why is this happening?

Once again, it all goes back to the COVID years—the peak era of loose lending standards, inflated vehicle prices, and stimulus-fueled demand. Used car prices spiked more than 50% as supply chains collapsed and new-car production froze. Buyers paid whatever they had to, financed at whatever rate they could get, and many dealers pushed loans that should never have been written.

Now those inflated prices are coming back to earth, but the loan balances aren’t. When car values depreciate faster than loan balances decline, you get trapped. You can’t sell without taking a loss, and you can’t refinance into better terms.

Note: The Fed’s own research confirms what many suspected: loans originated in 2021-2023 are performing terribly.

Meanwhile, the broader economy has been showing serious cracks. As stimulus money faded and interest rates reset higher, reality started to bite. Real wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. Savings built up during the pandemic are gone. Credit-card balances are at all-time highs, and delinquencies are rising across the board.

The point is, consumers are stretched thin—and when tough choices have to be made about which bills to pay, the car payment increasingly gets pushed to the back of the line.

In other words, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.

The data backs this up. According to VantageScore—one of the major U.S. credit-scoring firms—consumers are now “prioritizing their debt obligations, and auto loans are decreasing in priority.” Translation: people are choosing to pay their mortgages and credit cards first, letting their car payments slip.

The Consumer Federation of America put it bluntly in their recent report: U.S. auto financing is at a “breaking point.”

They’re right about that. Because here’s the thing about systemic problems in consumer credit markets: they don’t resolve themselves gently. They break. Companies built on shaky foundations of overleveraged consumers and questionable lending practices tend to come apart fast once the tide goes out.

For contrarian investors who understand crisis, this kind of environment creates real opportunity—to profit from the unwinding of business models that were never built to last.

Below, in this month’s issue of Crisis Investing, I’ll walk you through a company that Doug, Matt, and I uncovered—one that embodies everything wrong with this market—and how to position yourself to profit when it all comes apart.

Happy investing,

Lau Vegys

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We’ve got some good news to share—and a smart move to make.

Two positions in the Crisis Investing portfolio have doubled since our original recommendations: the Global X Silver Miners ETF …

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We’re living in times of acceleration. And I don’t just mean how fast young people grow up or how quickly technology moves. Because one thing that’s accelerating even faster is U.S. government debt.

Last week, it crossed $38 trillion for the first time in history.

We added $500 billion in October alone—$23 billion per day. That’s one of the fastest surges outside the pandemic years.

Here’s how fast it’s piling up: $34 trillion in January 2024. $35 trillion by July. $36 trillion by November that year. $37 trillion in August 2025. And now $38 trillion in October.

Clearly, the pace is accelerating.

And the same thing shows up when you zoom out.

Back in 2015, the U.S. national debt was about $18.1 trillion. Today it’s $38 trillion and counting. That’s more than a double in just ten years—a staggering pace compared to previous decades.

So when people ask whether gold and silver still have room to run, I just point to this chart. You can literally see the acceleration right there.

Point is, there’s no way all of this debt gets paid off without massive currency devaluation. None. Zero. Zilch.

But that’s just the debt.

Because we all know what the real killer is—the interest.

Right now, the U.S. is spending over $1 trillion a year just to service the federal debt—that’s more than it spends on the military.

Note: Even after the Fed’s latest rate cut, average borrowing costs are still more than double what they were in 2021—sitting around 3.4% today.

Over the past decade, Washington has paid roughly $5 trillion in interest. But again, everything’s accelerating. Over the next ten years, that figure is projected to soar to around $14 trillion.

All of this debt. All of this interest.

Again, there’s simply no way all of this gets paid off without massive currency devaluation.

The math doesn’t work any other way. They can’t cut spending enough—it’s politically impossible. They can’t tax enough—it’s economically destructive. And they certainly can’t default—that would be globally catastrophic.

And as crazy as it sounds, it actually gets worse. Remember, that $38 trillion figure only covers federal government debt. Add in corporate, household, and financial sector debt, and America’s total debt now stands near $100 trillion. That’s about 324% of GDP—more than three times the size of the entire U.S. economy.

That leaves the powers that be with only one option: inflate it away. Debase the currency and let inflation quietly chip away at the real value of what we owe.

It’s already happening—and like everything I mentioned above—the debt, the interest expense, all of it—it’s going to accelerate.

This environment is rocket fuel for assets that can’t be printed—things with real scarcity and no counterparty risk. The trick is, you need to have exposure… or, as the younger crowd likes to say, you’re cooked.

Last month, we recommended a gold play to capitalize on this dynamic. This month, I want to focus on silver.

Because silver is setting up for its most explosive move in decades. Yes, it’s already up about 60% this year—but I think that’s only the beginning.

Now, I’ve written about silver at length before—so I won’t rehash what’s already been said (you can catch up here and here). But I will remind you that silver is known for its gold-lagging behavior. It tends to trail gold early in precious-metals bull markets, then catches up with explosive force that often leaves gold in the dust.

For example:

• During the 1970s bull market, gold climbed about 440% from its 1976 low near $100/oz to over $540/oz by 1980. Silver, meanwhile, soared more than 700%, exploding from around $4 to nearly $35.

• In the 2000s bull market, gold rose roughly 600% between 2001 and 2011 (from $255 to $1,900), while silver skyrocketed about 1,050%, from $4.10 to almost $48.

• Even in the pandemic rally of 2020, gold gained around 40% from its 2018 low to 2020’s peak, while silver jumped roughly 125% from its March 2020 bottom to August that same year.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head—there have been more.

But here’s the point: with U.S. debt at an all-time high and the Fed warming up the money printer, gold is going higher. It just is. I’ve been saying it for almost two years now, and while the trend’s already played out beautifully, the real fireworks likely haven’t even begun.

And silver? Well, its catch-up phase is just getting started—but if everything else is accelerating, you can bet its gains probably will too.

Remember — the metal only broke above its 2011 all-time high last month. Gold did that back in 2020 — five years ago. And silver stocks? They still haven’t broken through. Despite gaining over 70% in the past year, the Global X Silver Miners ETF (SIL) is still sitting about 30% below its 2011 peak.

This creates exactly the kind of asymmetric opportunity we look for.

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Gold did it again.

On September 29th — just yesterday — the metal touched $3,833 per ounce, marking yet another all-time high in what has become an extraordinary bull run.

In fact, September alone saw gold notch ten separate record highs.

Naturally, the question you might be asking: Have we missed the boat?

My answer: we’re just leaving the dock.

Let me explain.

You see, there’s something that makes this rally different from every other gold run in recent memory. It’s not being fueled primarily by Western investors panicking into a safe haven — not yet at least. No — the real story is unfolding quietly in the vaults of central banks around the world.

The Central Bank Buying Spree

For three consecutive years, central banks have purchased over 1,000 tons of gold annually. To put that in perspective, the average annual buying in the decade before 2022 was just 400-500 tons. In other words, they’ve more than doubled their accumulation rate.

And they’re not slowing down.

In fact, central banks are now buying roughly 80 metric tons per month, equivalent to ~$9.8 billion at current prices. Poland added 67 tons in the first half of 2025 alone. Turkey has been a net buyer for 26 consecutive months. China continued purchases for nine straight months through mid-2025, though many analysts believe their actual buying is substantially higher than officially reported.

As for what’s ahead, the World Gold Council’s latest survey showed a record 43% of central bankers plan to increase their gold reserves over the next 12 months — up from just 29% a year ago. And 95% believe global official gold reserves will continue to increase.

Think about that for a moment. The institutions that manage trillions in reserves – the most risk-averse financial managers on the planet – are nearly unanimous in their conviction that gold accumulation will accelerate.

Why They’re Buying

The official line is always “diversification.” But look deeper and the real motivation becomes clear: central banks are preparing for a multipolar world — one where the dollar’s dominance is a thing of the past.

The wheels have been turning on this for a while. Consider this…

The dollar’s share of global reserves has fallen from over 70% in 2000 to about 58% today. Over the same period, gold’s share has risen from roughly 8% to nearly 15%. And in the World Gold Council’s latest survey, 73% of central bankers said they expect global dollar holdings to be moderately or significantly lower within the next five years.

So when Doug Casey, Matt Smith, and I talk about the coming end of dollar dominance, it isn’t anti-American sentiment. It’s simply an acknowledgment of mathematical reality.

Remember, right now the U.S. government is burning through $1.2 trillion a year just to service its $37 trillion debt load — more than the entire defense budget. There’s no path to fiscal sustainability that doesn’t involve either massive spending cuts (politically impossible) or debasing the currency through inflation (politically convenient).

Central banks understand this. That’s why they’re loading up on the one asset that can’t be printed away: gold.

And Then Came the Fed Cut

This brings us neatly to the Federal Reserve — the world’s most important central bank (for the time being, at least).

On September 17th, the Fed gave the market exactly what it wanted: a rate cut. The move was 25 basis points, bringing the target range down to 4.00–4.25%.

The official justification was “softening labor markets” and “downside risks.” But here’s the uncomfortable truth the Fed can’t say out loud: they’re cutting rates even as their own projections show GDP growth rising from 1.4% to 1.6%. They’re cutting with inflation stuck at 3.0% — the same as three months ago and still a full point above target. Core PCE inflation is 2.9%, with projections pushing it up to 3.1% by year-end.

In other words, the economy is growing faster than expected and inflation is getting worse, yet they’re cutting anyway. This isn’t the data-dependent monetary policy the Fed likes to pretend it follows. This is President Trump forcing the Fed’s hand.

And everyone knows more cuts are coming. The Fed’s own projections now show two additional cuts by year-end, up from one just a few months ago. The message is clear: The era of tight money is over.

The Inevitable Return of Money Printing

But rate cuts are just the opening act.

Remember, the Fed only controls short-term rates. Long-term rates — like 10-year Treasurys and mortgages — are set by the market.

The Fed can’t just wave a magic wand at an FOMC meeting and force interest rates lower across the entire yield curve. Case in point: between September and December 2024, the Fed cut rates three times — a full percentage point — yet U.S. government bond yields actually rose by 1%.

And so the real show will begin when it becomes clear that cutting short-term rates isn’t enough to bring down the long-term borrowing costs that matter most — mortgages and government financing.

When that moment comes, the Fed will be left with one option: direct intervention in the bond market through large-scale asset purchases. Quantitative easing. Or in plain English: money printing.

And here’s the kicker.

When they restart QE — and they will — it won’t be into a drained system. They’ll be injecting new money into one already bloated with $2.6 trillion in excess pandemic-era liquidity.

And that’s the problem.

Because last time they conjured up trillions out of thin air during the pandemic, inflation ripped to 9% — the highest in forty years. With so much cash still sloshing around from back then, starting another money-printing cycle all but guarantees double-digit inflation.

We’re talking potential currency destruction on a scale — and at a speed — America has never seen.

Gold Isn’t Expensive Right Now

Which brings us full circle to gold — the best hedge against inflation, currency debasement, and fiscal recklessness.

Major investment banks are starting to revise their forecasts upward. J.P. Morgan now projects gold will hit $4,000 by mid-2026. Goldman Sachs has laid out similar targets.

But here’s what makes even those forecasts look conservative: they assume central bank buying slows and Fed policy normalizes without a hitch. Neither assumption looks realistic given the current trajectory.

If central banks maintain their current pace of accumulation — and every sign suggests many will — that adds nearly $117 billion in annual demand at today’s gold price. Layer in retail investors waking up to inflation (and by most measures, they haven’t yet), plus the likely return of QE, and you have the foundation for a sustained bull market. That kind of setup could push gold well past $4,000 by early 2026, and perhaps even toward $5,000 by year-end — depending on how much demand surprises to the upside.

The bottom line: gold isn’t expensive at $3,800. It’s just catching up to the monetary reality central banks have been pricing in for years.

The Best Way to Play It

And so, going into 2026, the key question for investors isn’t whether to own gold exposure — it’s how to own it.

Physical gold is great for preserving wealth and anchoring a long-term portfolio. But it generates no cash flow. This means no leverage.

And I don’t know about you, but with mining companies as a percentage of global stock market value trading at levels not seen in over 120 years (as I showed you in last week’s Chart of the Week), I want some leverage.

So what to buy?

Junior explorers and developers can deliver explosive gains when everything aligns — 5x, 10x, or more. But they’re hit-or-miss. Many burn through cash and go bust even in bull markets.

Developers have their own hurdles: long timelines, big costs, and the constant risk of share dilution to fund construction. Even strong projects can be delayed for years by permits or financing.

The point is, both juniors and developers have their place. But when gold looks like a sure thing — as it does right now — you want something different: certainty of leverage. Not just theoretical upside, but tangible, predictable exposure to rising gold prices with fewer unknowns.

That’s exactly what traditional gold producers offer. When margins double or triple and production holds steady, free cash flow explodes. Stock prices of well-run producers can climb 100%, 150%, or more — far outpacing the metal itself.

But sometimes, when valuations line up, there’s an even better option. Which brings us to this month’s recommendation.

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Now, these situations require careful analysis.

Because when a company you’ve recommended gets hit by a professional short selling campaign, it presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is obvious—watching a position drop double digits in days tests any investor’s resolve. The opportunity is less obvious but potentially more valuable: when management answers and hits near-term milestones, uncertainty lifts, shorts cover, and the result can be a sharp re-pricing to new highs.

Short sellers profit from price declines, creating a direct financial incentive to publish reports that will cause stocks to fall. This isn’t necessarily improper—legitimate short sellers provide valuable market function by identifying overvalued companies and fraud. Doug Casey himself has spoken favorably of short selling as a market mechanism.

But many short sellers also thrive on fear and confusion, blending real concerns with inflammatory language meant to spark panic selling.

Our job is to separate signal from noise, address valid criticisms head-on, and determine whether the underlying investment thesis remains intact.

That’s why, when situations like this arise, we call management directly, have detailed conversations, and then follow up in writing with more questions.

This alert documents what that approach revealed in this case. I’d originally planned to run it in Tuesday’s monthly issue, but it’s long and time-sensitive—so I’m sending it today, Sunday, so you have it before the new trading week begins.

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