Furio's Gambit

The Sopranos, Saint Sebastian, and the (Nuclear) Renaissance

“They had no idea who painted this.”

~ Federico Castelluccio

I don’t watch too many movies and TV shows these days. Sadly, most of what's out there can be described as "content" at best or woke garbage at worst.

I do occasionally revisit some older stuff though. Just recently, I started watching The Sopranos again. The show follows the life and times of a depressed New Jersey mob boss, Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini.

Making Out Like a Bandit

Last night, as I tuned into one of the episodes, they introduced a character named Furio Giunta. If you aren’t familiar, Furio is an effective and ruthless Italian mafioso from Naples who becomes Tony Soprano's main bodyguard and enforcer. You can watch this video compilation to judge his “effectiveness” for yourself.

Furio is portrayed by Italian-born actor Federico Castelluccio. Beyond his impressive acting skills, Federico's life story rivals that of his on-screen character.

Here's one (pertinent) example.

Back in 2014, Federico was traveling through Frankfurt, Germany and decided to stop by a rather obscure art gallery. As he wandered through the small space, one painting in particular caught his eye.

It depicted depicting a bloody and dying Saint Sebastian. The auction house listed the painting as an “anonymous 18th-century work.”

Source: Wikimedia Commons

But Federico felt differently. Something about the brushstrokes and the overall style just didn't sit right with him.

The more he looked, the more convinced he became that the painting might be a work by the famous Italian baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, commonly known as Guercino.

He decided to go with his hunch and picked up the painting at auction for about $68,000. After covering restoration, insurance, shipping, and other expenses, his total bill came to $140,000.

Federico then spent about 4 years researching the painting and having it authenticated by experts. This involved techniques like infrared reflectography, X-rays, and pigment analysis.

Turns out, he was right on the money (pun intended). The painting was indeed a genuine Guercino, crafted between 1632 and 1634. And its estimated value? Around $10 million.

That’s a 71x return on his original $140,000 investment. Much like his character in The Sopranos, Federico Castelluccio made out like a bandit.

The Next Best Thing if Art Ain't Your Thing

The only place that could come close to these gains today (without having to speculate on art and crypto) is uranium, all thanks to what I call the "Nuclear Renaissance.”

The best part is, it's almost a certain thing...

You see, countries are practically falling over each other to build more nuclear reactors. China, Russia, India, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates to name just a few.

And you can see why. With a nearly 50% projected increase in global energy use by 2050, there’s no way major economies can keep their economies running solely on renewables.

In fact, they've already acknowledged it. Last December, 22 nations, including the U.S., the U.K., France, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and South Korea, committed to tripling their nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

This was as close as governments will ever come to admitting that reaching their ridiculous net-zero targets is impossible without nuclear energy.

As I write this, there are 60 nuclear power plants currently being built around the world. Plus, there are another 110 in the pipeline and over 300 more proposed.

And that's great news for uranium, the main fuel for nuclear power plants.

Now, one thing you should know about uranium is that it undergoes massive - and I mean truly massive - swings between bull and bear markets. This unique quirk enables savvy investors to make fortunes in the uranium market. Here’s Doug Casey:

I wrote a very long and thorough article on uranium and nuclear power in October 1998 for my newsletter, where I recommended several uranium stocks. About two years later, they all exploded upwards in value and kept running.

At that time, uranium was selling for $10 or $12 a pound. But it cost $20 to $25 a pound to mine a pound of U308. It was obvious that the price had to go up, or over 400 nuclear power plants around the world would have to shut down, and with them, about 10% of the world’s electrical power.

The market went up from there and peaked in 2007 at $140 a pound. One of the best on my list was Paladin Resources, which went from 10 cents to $10. But many, many companies went up between 10 and 50 times.

To truly appreciate Doug's insight, here's a quick visual to give you an idea of what that ride must have felt like for those invested.

Note that this just shows how well the metal itself did. And that's impressive on its own, but uranium miners’ share prices exploded.  Many Doug’s subscribers made a killing with companies like Paladin Resources, as he mentioned earlier. In fact, even the worst-performing companies in the uranium sector delivered 20-to-1 returns.

These are the kind of gains reminiscent of Federico’s/Furio’s success.

Now, it’s true that when he walked into that art gallery in Germany a decade ago, Federico was no ordinary guy… A painter himself, he knew quite a bit about European art.

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity," as the well-known adage goes.

But in the end, it all boiled down to him trusting what he knew was true, even with limited information and everything in that gallery telling him he was wrong.

Anyone banking on the uranium bull market is in a far better position today.

Until next time,

Lau Vegys

P.S. Our excitement about the other yellow metal is so big that we’ve recently added a uranium pick to our Crisis Investing portfolio and plan to include two more soon. I'm also currently working on a special report about uranium, which I'll be sure to share with you once it's ready. As for entertainment, there's another older HBO show Doug recently brought to my attention called "Deadwood." After watching it, I'd say it’s one of the greatest shows ever to grace the small screen. I can't recommend it enough.