ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
January 27, 2026 | Why Private Credit Wants You to Buy In
Our month-end letter for January discusses the links between private equity, private credit and elevated financial risks for the rest of us. The segment below offers a primer. Opacity and complexity in financial products often cloak elevated risk and even deceit. Private credit, a form of lending by non-bank financial institutions to businesses outside of […]
January 27, 2026 | Zelensky – NATO’s puppet
QUESTION: The Kremlin refuses to end the war in Ukraine unless the Donbas region is surrendered. Zelensky has previously stated he will not hand over the Donbas region to Moscow. This looks like what you have said. No resolution. Are we headed into more warfare in February/March? DG ANSWER: Zelensky is a piece of shit […]
January 26, 2026 | China is Coming for Our Gold Miners
With the world hurtling towards a monetary reset, everyone suddenly wants the gold miners. Just this morning: China’s Zijin Gold to buy Canadian miner Allied Gold for about $4 billion (Reuters) – Chinese miner Zijin Gold will buy Canadian miner Allied gold for C$5.5 billion ($4.02 billion) in cash, the companies said on Monday, as […]
January 26, 2026 | The Compounding Costs of Sanctioned Gambling
Empirical research suggests that expanded gambling access—particularly low-friction, online sports betting—has been associated with measurable increases in consumer financial distress, including higher bankruptcy filings in U.S. states following legalization. The evidence is strongest where gambling becomes more accessible and continuous, rather than episodic (e.g., mobile wagering versus destination casinos). At the individual level, a robust […]
January 26, 2026 | Extinction Level Event
Happy Monday Morning! Last week we wrote a piece titled ‘Plan B’ in which we highlighted the flood of rental supply driving rents lower. Much of this has been derived from developers shifting new projects from pre-sales to rentals amidst the sudden disappearance of investors. We already knew the pre-sale market was bad, but even […]
January 25, 2026 | Silver & Confiscations
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, I am new to Socrates. Everyone told me you have done more research and have real-world experience unmatched in the finance world. Your post on silver and the long-term blew my mind. Nobody has ever explained the real history of silver and confiscations. Is this why you have been saying ‘by silver […]
January 25, 2026 | Big Time Change
Today we continue anticipating 2026, this time shifting for the first part of the letter from economic issues to geopolitics before making some of my personal general forecasts. Economics and geopolitics are closely related. Geopolitics is about the way national leaders interact with their counterparts, but economic trends also define and constrain their goals. […]
January 25, 2026 | What Rough Beast?
If you can’t guess what commodity the chart shows, you must be living on Mars. It is in fact a long-term picture of silver, which went ballistic in December. The price has doubled since, blowing out a $50 top that had stood since 1980. That price became a part of silver’s legend, since it is […]
January 24, 2026 | Trading Desk Notes for January 24, 2026
Trump fatigue? The S&P gapped lower and closed on its lows on Tuesday after the MLK long weekend (blue ellipse), following Trump’s bellicosity over Greenland and ahead of his scheduled Davos speech on Wednesday. (US bonds and the USD also fell sharply on Tuesday in a “sell the USA” wave.) The S&P rallied on Wednesday, when […]
January 24, 2026 | United States Withdrawal from the World Health Organization
The United States Withdrawal from the World Health Organization: A Cyclical Analysis of Sovereignty and Global Health Governance January 23, 2026 The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization represents far more than a simple policy shift. This marks a critical inflection point in the post-World War II international […]
January 24, 2026 | The British Civil War Enters Its Satirical Phase
About a year ago, a political scientist predicted civil war in the UK. Here’s the intro of a post I published at the time: I just watched a disturbingly plausible video about the rising odds of a UK civil war. The source is David Betz, a professor of “war in the modern world” at King’s College, London. He […]
January 24, 2026 | Tech Talk for Saturday January 24th 2026
The Bottom Line Economic focus this week is on the FOMC decision on interest rates released on Wednesday at 2:00 PM EST. Quarterly earnings focuses this week are on Microsoft and Meta Platform on Wednesday, Apple and Amazon on Thursday and ExxonMobil and Chevron on Friday. Earnings and Revenues Consensus for S&P 500 companiesSource: www.factset.com […]
January 23, 2026 | Carney Takes a Risky Gamble with a Bet on China
High Risk, High Reward: Carney’s China Gamble Prime Minister Mark Carney has defied Washington by striking a sweeping trade deal with China—slashing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and dismantling long-standing barriers on agricultural exports. Under the agreement, China will cut import levies on Canadian canola, canola meal, lobster, crab, and peas. In return, Canada will sharply reduce […]
January 23, 2026 | Gold, Silver, and Their Big Round Numbers
The odds that $5,000 gold and $100 silver would happen on the same day seemed pretty slim. Yet here we are, with that being a very real possibility: There’s no deep message here. It’s just pretty cool to be right side of history in such a decisive way. Even wilder times are no doubt coming. […]
January 23, 2026 | Grantham Reflects on Six Decades of Investing
Far-reaching, worthwhile discussion in this segment. On episode 226 of The Compound and Friends, Michael Batnick and Downtown Josh Brown are joined by Jeremy Grantham to discuss: stock market bubbles, the ups and downs of managing money, how the wealth divide has grown so wide, the future of clean energy tech, and much more! Here […]
January 23, 2026 | The US Real Estate Investor Ban
Donald Trump declared at Davos that America would not become a nation of renters, much to the dismay of the “you will own nothing and be happy” audience. Trump is now talking about banning large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, claiming this is about restoring the American Dream and ending the insanity where […]
January 22, 2026 | What Should We Do With Our Silver Volatility Spread?
Back in December, I suggested a strategy for addressing silver’s epic bull market (and resulting correction risk) that involved betting on action, not direction. From that post: Enter the Volatility Spread There’s a simple options strategy for times like this. It’s called a volatility spread, and involves buying mirror-image calls and puts for a given security. […]
January 22, 2026 | US Real Estate – 37.2% More Sellers than Buyers
Redfin estimates there were 37.2% more home sellers than buyers in November, which is the largest gap since 2013 outside of last summer. The computer warned that the US would experience a buyer’s market until 2028. The imbalance does not translate into some 2008 era real estate crisis, but it highlights the confidence cycle […]
January 22, 2026 | Investor Emotional Cycle is Alive and Well
Madness and mayhem are the order of the day, while consumer and business sentiment are dour, and for-sale signs are popping up like measles. Meanwhile, equity markets are priced for nirvana, and participants are the most long of all time. Households and nonprofit organizations entered 2026 with a record near half of their financial assets […]
January 21, 2026 | Danish Pension Fund Divests $100 M in US Treasuries
A Danish pension fund, AkademikerPension, is reportedly divesting its US Treasury holdings to the tune of $100 million. Anders Schelde, AkademikerPension’s investing chief, claims they are concerned about the condition of US government finances and rising credit risk. They even admitted the Greenland political tensions simply made the decision easier, but the core point remains […]
January 21, 2026 | The “Dollar Debasement Trade” Goes Full “Sell America”
Suddenly, the whole world is either selling US assets or threatening to do so. And based on Donald Trump’s recent World Economic Forum speech, in which he demanded control of Greenland and ridiculed multiple globalist scams, “sell America” is a trend with legs. The main beneficiary? Gold, of course. See this from Kitco: Gold blasts through […]
January 20, 2026 | Silver Just Blew Through $100
It’s amazing how fast the human mind acclimates to “new normals”. Silver is an obvious case in point. A year ago, $40/oz seemed like a good intermediate-term target. Now, if the price drops below $90, it will be a “crash.” So let’s take a beat and acknowledge the fact that silver — if you actually […]
January 20, 2026 | Grantham Sees an AI Bubble — and a Familiar Ending
For more than four decades, Jeremy Grantham has been one of the most contrarian voices in global investing. The co-founder of Boston-based asset manager GMO, he built his reputation warning about bubbles before they burst, from Japanese equities in the late 1980s to US tech stocks in 2000 and housing in the run-up to the […]
January 20, 2026 | Trump Invites Russia to Join Board of Peace
The Board of Peace was established in November 2025 to champion the Gaza-Israel ceasefire. Donald Trump will act as the first chairman and has begun inviting nations to join, including Russia. The headlines are reacting as if this is some radical, unprecedented concept. I have said repeatedly that the real objective for decades has […]
January 19, 2026 | Gold Miner Q4 Earnings: Worth Waiting For A generational bull market
We still have a while to wait for the gold/silver miners’ Q4 and full-year 2025 earnings. Newmont, one of the early reporters, is scheduled to release its results on February 19. But after that, the deluge. And a fun deluge it’s going to be. Sticking with Newmont, here’s a chart of its past year’s earnings versus […]