A Note Before We Start

This month’s article (for paid/premium subscribers) presents the entire Crisis Investing Portfolio in a new table format containing all our active holdings and recommendations, along with expanded information compared to the tables we have published in the past.

We also provide a brief monthly update for each portfolio position.

But those monthly updates only help if you know the rest of the story. So, separately, we will be providing to the premium subscribers (on a different day) a narrative summary of every holding in the portfolio and, where applicable, a compact version of the 9Ps for each company. This has been part of my ongoing 360-degree examination of the portfolio. That darn thing is now more than 80 pages long.

I’m not going to choke you with that part today. Instead, I’ll present it in a more useful format soon. How soon? I don’t know. The content is ready now; it just isn’t presented in a way that I find pleasing.

The Crisis Investing Portfolio has done remarkably well, even in light of the 2026 precious-metals pullback. I’m fortunate to have joined in its success.

Now We Start

Usually, our newsletter provides a new stock recommendation each month. That process is of course one reason why there are so many positions in the Crisis Investing Portfolio. We’ve got a superb selection of companies already.

So, the new recommendation for this month is not for a new stock to cram into the portfolio.

It is instead a recommendation for how to increase your holdings of your favorite Crisis Investing Portfolio positions without adding any fresh capital to your brokerage account. No new funds sent to your brokerage; no wires from your bank.

What I will present is my modification of what is known as the options wheel. It’s a good time to start riding the options wheel.

Some of you trade options better than I do. This article is not written for you, and I apologize in advance for the passages where I stop and define a word you learned twenty years ago. For the options pros, skip down to the portfolio comments and the new table, and know that more information on each position will come to you soon.

Everyone else, we’ll start on the wheel: nothing here assumes you have ever placed an options trade. I will define every term the first time it appears, and then use it often enough that it sticks. Once the words stop sounding strange, the mechanics are easy.

I will repeat it here so we don’t forget the purpose. This strategy provides a way to increase the number of shares of stock in your Crisis Investing Portfolio, without wiring in funds to do it.

I. Start Where You Already Are

You likely already do two things that form the foundation of this strategy. You just do them for free.

The first sounds like this: “I would buy Hecla Mining at $15. Not at $18.” So you enter a limit order at 15 and wait.

The second sounds like this: “I would be content selling my Kinross at $30.” So you enter a limit order at 30, and wait.

You already decided what you would pay and what you would accept and that you were willing to wait. The options market will pay you cash, today, to make those decisions binding.

The promise to buy at $15 is known as selling (or writing) a put. The promise to sell at $30 is known as selling a call.

Some people like to buy options. I like to sell them. I have a few reasons for that.

1) Routinely writing (aka selling) options is more like being the house in Las Vegas. People pay you for the privilege of playing. As time passes, you earn money by being at the table. In contrast, routinely buying options is being the gambler at the table. As time passes, they statistically lose money. Casinos make their money from that guy. (Yes, the brokerage is the house too, also making bank on every transaction.)

2) Selling options results in buying stocks lowish and selling them highish. By which I mean that you won’t be buying a stock at the lowest, and you won’t sell at the highest. Buying lowish and selling highish is a strategy consistent with reality: few people know when the low and the high are going to hit. So we might as well earn some dough by accepting that we can’t time the stocks perfectly. Buy lowish, sell highish is a winning and reasonable strategy. Selling options provides the buying and selling discipline so you carry out in fact what had previously only been an intent.

3) Selling options comes with a payment for just … existing. This is called theta, and is discussed below. It’s nice to be paid for just chillin’.

4) For me, selling options is fun, interesting, educational, easy, quick, low stress, and it positions me so that I don’t care too much whether the market goes up or down in a given week. For me, it takes a few minutes of my time, a couple of times a week. That’s it.

5) As the optimist that I prefer to be, I see market downward moves as opportunities, and being on the writing side of options makes income from these opportunities.

6) Overall, selling options is a quick, conservative, and cautious way to either increase cash flow from a portfolio, or to expand a portfolio.

On the other side of your promise (a promise you make each time you sell an option) sits someone who wants certainty and will pay you for it. He may be hedging a position or covering a risk his mandate requires him to cover. Or he may know something you don’t know, speculating on a move (as Charles Knight did in Speculator—the first novel I wrote with Doug). More likely, he’s a gambler, convinced by a dude on the internet that he can get rich in the options game. His reasons are his own business. Regardless of his reason, he pays cash for your promise, and that cash is yours the moment the trade fills, whatever happens afterward.

I’ll use another metaphor. In this arrangement you are the insurance company. He is the policyholder. Insurance companies collect premiums up front and pay claims later. Insurance companies tend to be conservative and profitable.

II. The Words, One at a Time

Some terms. Then we are finished with definitions.

Option. A contract giving its buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a stock at a set price by a set date. The seller of that contract carries the matching obligation.

Call and put. If you sell a call, you have given its buyer the right to buy shares from you at a set price on or before a set date. A put gives its buyer the right to sell shares to you. The owner of the call can call your shares away from you; the owner of a put can put his shares to you (sell them to you). To be clear, when you are an option writer (seller) who gets “put on your options” you have to buy the shares. When your shares are called, you have to sell them. The transactions are done automatically by your broker if and when the option buyer exercises his right to sell you shares (the put) or buy your shares (the call).

Contract. One option contract covers one hundred shares. Prices are quoted per share, so an option you sell that is quoted at fourteen cents pays you fourteen dollars. This trips up everyone. Once.

Strike price. The price set in the promise. The $15 in “I would buy Hecla at fifteen.”

Expiration. The date the promise ends. Weekly options expire every Friday. Monthly options expire the third Friday of the month. After expiration the contract is gone and so is your obligation.

Premium. What the buyer pays you for the promise. It arrives in your account the moment the trade fills, not at expiration. It’s cash paid to you in advance.

In the money and out of the money. A $15 put is in the money (ITM) when the stock is below $15. A $30 call is in the money when the stock is above $30. Out of the money (OTM) is the reverse: exercising an out of the money option would be pointless. Almost every option we sell starts out of the money, for reasons that will become clear.

Exercise and assignment. The buyer exercises an option. You are assigned on an option. Same option, same event, opposite ends. If you sell a $15 put and watch the stock close at $13 on expiration, the option will be assigned: one hundred shares arrive in your account and $1500 cash leaves your account. If you sell a $30 call and the stock closes at $33 on the day of expiration, you will be assigned the other direction—your stock will be called, and one hundred shares leave your account and $3000 arrives.

Cash-secured and covered. A put is cash-secured when the money to buy the shares is sitting in the account, untouched, waiting. A call is covered when you already own the hundred shares. Both words mean one thing: you can honor the promise without borrowing. Selling options without that backing is known as selling naked, which is both the technical term and an accurate description of the exposure. I’m modest. I prefer to not be naked.

The words will attach themselves to something real in the next two sections, and that is when they will stay.

This is where the free version of today’s newsletter ends. What follows for Premium subscribers includes:

1) My version of the options wheel: a way that is designed to increase your Crisis Investing holdings without needing you to add new currency, and while buying lowish, and selling highish.

2) Pitfalls to avoid; rules that I have learned by riding this wheel and that others have taught.

3) A list of companies in the CI Portfolio that have options chains amenable to running my style of the options wheel.

4) Updates on the Crisis Investing Portfolio companies including the new table format.

Please join the Crisis Investing Premium Subscribers by signing up here.

Premium subscribers, please read on.

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Let me set the table before John takes over.

Most people don’t speculate. They gamble — then call it investing when it works and bad luck when it doesn’t. That distinction is everything in the mining business, the place where a few who understand it grow rich and the masses get fleeced, cycle after cycle, while blaming everyone but themselves.

It’s one reason why I asked Dr. John Hunt to edit Crisis Investing. John is a rare animal: a teaching physician who has started businesses, and understands Austrian economics, sound money, and the chasm between owning a real asset and owning a hope. He doesn’t run with the herd, and he knows the difference between a story worth telling and a company worth owning.

In the letter that follows, John takes one gold stock and uses it to teach the whole game. Depending on how you play the game, you can get separated from your money, or get rich quick, or quit in frustration, or patiently accumulate shares of a company creating value. The company John highlights this month makes a fine teacher precisely because it’s the rarer thing — a real company, with real ounces and real production, that the market has handed us at a speculator’s price.

Read it twice. The lesson alone will make you money. The stock might too.

-Doug Casey

Dear Reader,

Buy Low. Sell High.

I prefer the phrase: Buy Lowish. Sell Highish. It’s more realistic. It conveys the truth that we can’t predict valleys and peaks anywhere near perfectly. Buying Lowish and Selling Highish is success. And it avoids the feelings of disappointment when you don’t catch a bottom or if you blow out your shares before the top.

It should be easy to sell highish, if we just remember to do so and don’t get too cocky. It’s harder to buy lowish. Today, there is an opportunity to buy low. I’m sorry. Lowish.

Every fiat currency in history has died the same death. Not by decree, but by dilution — a slow, administered erosion in which the unit of account is quietly debased to siphon off wealth to fund obligations that politicians pretend they care about. The gold price is the scoreboard. When it runs from US$2,000 to nearly US$5,600 at its January high — and is now at US$4,000 after a hard pullback — that is not gold becoming more valuable. That is the dollar, the euro, the yen and the rest confessing what they are: pieces of crap supported by momentum, ignorance, and the ability of governments to extract wealth from their citizens via force, just as has been done since government was invented. And the assurance that the US will always pay its debts because it can always inflate the currency by printing new currency units.

Fiat currencies move like earthquakes. The pressure builds over years—invisibly but assuredly—until the landmass fractures and the earth suddenly moves. When that happens to the US dollar, an assured result is that gold — the generally honest metric for the value of the dollar — shoots up in dollar terms. Or, as I wish we would all someday say, the US dollar goes down in gold terms.

When the fault moves, it can overshoot for a time and gold might go up to US$5,600, and then pull back for a while as the pressure starts to build again. That the pressure will grow on fiat currency is as certain as a future California earthquake. The power of the printing press is always abused. Fiat currency always fails. The timing of the next big quake is the only question.

The Fed says it targets 2% increase in the CPI each year (they call it “inflation” because they are Keynesians.) Why do they want inflation? There are many reasons, none of them good. But one reason is that they don’t want the pressure to build up too fast while they are printing new currency units (btw, currency printing or money expansion is the actual inflation by our Austrian school definition). The Fed wants the quakes to happen imperceptibly, but by bit, instead of suddenly fracturing. 2% price level increase is what decades of research has proven that we—the great unwashed, the plebes, the capite censi, the sheep, the boiling frogs—will readily tolerate.

By the way, a 2% price level increase is just part of the inflation trickling through the economy from the Federal Reserve’s hose. The economy is supposed to be getting more efficient each year, which in a non-fiat economy would bring the price levels down. So the 2% increase in price levels that hurts us is in addition to the neutralization of substantial productivity-related price reductions that we should have benefited from.

We own bullion as a wealth preserver against the historically proven reality that fiat currencies will fail. We don’t hold gold as an investment. Is it even possible to say that enough times? Physical gold is a wealth preserver, not an investment. If I have an ounce of gold, it matters not (or very little) to me whether that ounce of gold today is “worth” US$5,600 or US$4,000. To me an ounce of gold is worth an ounce of gold.

In fits and starts over the years and decades, gold bullion tracks the debasement of the dollar (or your nation’s coerced fiat currency). To invest and profit from fiat debasement, it makes sense to acquire ownership in companies that pull new ounces of gold out of the ground — particularly a low-cost producer in a jurisdiction that is unlikely to nationalize it (steal it). That is the case for converting fiat currency (so-called cash) into ownership of selected mining companies.

Before the central bank fiat currencies existed, people mined gold to create new money of their own, because gold was the money. But after the onset of fiat, mining gold still provides new money, but also protection against the decline of wealth held in the form of fiat (dollars). Gold has become more important now than it has ever been, as a way to prevent the continual theft of your wealth by governments intent on preserving their power and expanding their control by means of counterfeiting the currency (inflation).

For our paid subscribers this month, I (meaning John) have performed a full analysis on a company that I have watched since its birth (I’m a pediatrician, so watching from birth is in my training). This company also provides an excellent course in resource stock speculation and investment. It’s available to premium subscribers. Consider joining us.

Premium subscribers, please read on.

A gold story de-risked itself, moves toward production, has little promotion. The stock price is far lower while the situation is far stronger. This soon-to-be-producer is worth your attention. Along the way, its price chart will teach us how hope gets mistaken for value while the real value slowly matures and prepares to become cash.

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It’s the little things that often get you. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost — then the rider, the battle, and the kingdom. Something trivial that’s taken for granted may turn out to be critical for the whole system. When it goes, everything downstream goes with it.

That may be where we are right now with sulfur. I realize that sounds absurd. Sulfur wouldn’t seem to be a chokepoint of modern civilization.

I first encountered the element as a 9-year-old. It was one of the chemicals in my Chemcraft chemistry set. It was interesting to watch the yellow powder melt under the low flame of an alcohol-fueled burner, releasing the acrid smell of brimstone. Brimstone means “burning stone”; it’s the Biblical element that Yahweh favored for smiting wayward cities. Some say the unrighteous will boil in a lake of brimstone for eternity…

Despite its ancient credentials, most people can’t tell you where it comes from or how it’s now used. It’s produced mainly from sour natural gas processing — and as a byproduct of refining sour crude (like Venezuelan). It’s a costly nuisance for oil men that needs to be removed during refining. It’s also an unwanted byproduct from refining metal ores, which are mostly sulfides. It’s the fifth most common element on the planet. Before the ongoing Hormuz crisis, it was quite literally cheaper than dirt, often selling for around $50 a tonne.

Even though it can be a bothersome pollutant to oil and gas men, it’s valuable and essential to the world at large. It depends on where it is, and how much it costs to transport and transform into sulfuric acid — the most-produced industrial chemical on earth. Half of it is made into fertilizer. It also mines your copper (if the ore is an oxide, as opposed to a sulfide). It refines uranium, rare earths, nickel, cobalt, and reacts with lead for automotive batteries. It underwrites the entire industrial economy.

Until three months ago, about half of the world’s seaborne sulfur passed through the Strait of Hormuz, a byproduct of oil and natural gas production and refining around the Gulf. Then Washington, guided by Tel Aviv, launched what may be the most dangerous and outrageous war in recent memory — an unprovoked attack on Iran in the middle of active negotiations. It was a foolish decision Americans will spend decades trying to justify, rationalize, and pay for.

You know what happened next. Iran shut the Strait. And Trump’s threats, ultimatums, and shifting deadlines can’t pry it back open. It’s been closed for almost three months. It’s now more than just supply disruption — it’s turning into supply destruction. Refining and production infrastructure across the Gulf is being hit, and the damage to that kind of capacity isn’t measured in days or weeks. It will take months or years to return to the status quo ante. Persian Gulf sulfur exports are down roughly two-thirds. At the same time, China, by far the world’s leading sulfuric acid exporter, announced an outright ban on exports. Partially to protect its own farmers, and partially (I suspect) to intimidate other countries. Another three million tonnes of supply, gone overnight.

So now the price of sulfur itself is up almost 100%, and sulfuric acid is up roughly 160%. Every industry that depends on it is now forced to either pay whatever it costs, ration, or shut down.

This creates tension between food producers and metal producers. A little more than half of sulfuric acid goes to fertilizer. Much of the rest goes to mining. Both need it, both will get less and pay more. The decision over who gets priority will mostly be made by governments, not by markets. I know which way most governments lean.

For my part, I’ve bought the corn ETF we own in the portfolio (CORN). I’m also long rice in the futures market, because rice is a fertilizer hog. In fact, all the grains impress me as being underpriced. Shortages, and higher prices, are very likely because of the US/Israel versus Iran war.

The bottom line is that the damage is already locked in. The Strait could reopen tomorrow — it won’t but pretend it could — and the daisy chain of consequences would still play out for years. Sulfur capacity, like that of the oil and gas it comes from, doesn’t switch back on with a press release. Fertilizer not applied this spring isn’t a harvest deferred. It’s a harvest lost. Mines that idle their leach circuits don’t restart them in a week. The world spent years and tens of billions of dollars building the relevant infrastructure. Rebuilding it will take much, much longer than the war.

Yet the markets are still mostly sleepwalking. There’s a lot of apathy because people seem unable to fully grasp the situation. The shelves are still stocked, and the gas station pumps still work. The human brain is famously bad at reacting to slow-moving catastrophes.

For what it’s worth, the sulfur cascade is just one of several running in parallel. Energy lockdowns are starting to show up across Asia — four-day work weeks for state employees, jet fuel rationing, calls to cut air travel. Trucking is wobbling on six-dollar diesel. There’s a motor-oil shortage almost nobody is talking about yet, because the high-grade base stocks for modern synthetic oils mostly come from the Persian Gulf.

The supply cascades from the closed Strait will be with us for years. And I expect they’ll get worse before they get better. Trump is highly unpredictable; he could do anything now that he’s punched a giant tarbaby. However, I feel confident that the Iranians aren’t going to roll over. They’re righteously offended and expect more than a ceasefire. They’ll want reparations.

Sulfur is the element in this drama that most people aren’t watching. The cascade is already in the data — the wheat plantings, the cuts at acid-dependent mines, the empty acid storage tanks in Chile. The question isn’t whether any of this affects you; it will. The real question is whether you’ve positioned yourself to benefit while most people are getting crushed by it.

A small number of companies are going to come out the other side of this substantially richer than they went in. The one Lau walks you through this month is one of them. Details below.

Regards,

Doug Casey

Recommendation

Hi,

Lau here.

When we started building the case for this issue, the first question I asked was the obvious one: what’s the most direct way to play a sulfuric acid crisis? It turns out the obvious answers are mostly bad.

You can short the operators that need acid as an input. But their margins are still buffered by long-term contracts and pass-through clauses for the next few quarters. And shorting commodity producers in a generally bullish commodity tape is a great way to get carried out. You can chase the acid spot price directly. But no liquid ETF or futures contract gives you that exposure. Acid is too corrosive, too bulky, too regional to trade like a financial commodity.

You can try to find a pure-play sulfur producer. But pure-play sulfur miners are essentially extinct. Frasch mining (the old process of bringing elemental sulfur to the surface) shut down two decades ago. The biggest sour-gas processors that produce sulfur as a byproduct (Saudi Aramco, Qatar Energy, the Iranian oil entities) aren’t investable for U.S. retail. And the Western alternatives are integrated oil and gas plays where sulfur revenue is a footnote, not a story.

You can’t really get a clean sulfur play from the major sulfuric acid producers like Mosaic and Nutrien either. They’re actually on the wrong side of the trade. They consume sulfur to make acid in-house, then consume the acid to make phosphate fertilizer. They’re net consumers, not net producers.

That leaves the small handful of mining majors that own and operate their own integrated smelters: Freeport, Glencore, a couple of others. They do have some acid byproduct exposure. But at their scale, the acid revenue line is a footnote against the rest of their business. And none of them sit in a region where the acid market has truly seized up the way it has in the corners of the world hit hardest by the Hormuz cascade.

What you actually want is a company that produces acid as a side-product of something else profitable (ideally something you’re already bullish on independently), in one of those acid-starved regions, with structurally fixed costs that don’t move when the acid price triples. And the acid line itself has to be meaningful enough relative to the rest of the business to actually move the stock when the economics improve. Not just show up as a footnote.

That company exists. And it’s been quietly sitting at the center of one of the most important deposits of the metal that powers global electrification.

We’ll get to the name in a moment. First, a few pages on the math. Understanding why this combination is suddenly worth billions of dollars more than it was six months ago is what makes the rest of the case obvious.

If you’ve never thought hard about how modern smelters work, this is the part of the issue that’s going to change how you read every commodity headline that follows.

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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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