Biggest loss in a day

Down over 100K last night.  Its the largest dollar (not percentage) loss I've ever had.

Mostly from metals: 34K from gold, 22K from silver, 15K from Platinum/Palladium, 8K from copper.

Silver down 28% looks like forced liquidation due to margin changes.

Part of this game is learning to deal with the volatility.

I'm still up over 200K this month.

Short term, I think theres a 40% chance that the metals and stock markets go down on Monday (more margin calls), and a 60% chance they bounce.  VIX is still below 20.

Long term, I am still bullish for 2027:

• Will hold my gold, as I'm expecting the bull market to continue.  Maybe after a few months of consolidation.  GVZ dropped a little yesterday but is still in the 40s, it needs to go into the 20s.
• Still buying copper.
• Look to sell my silver in the $100-$200 range.

Started to sell some gold

Gold is up 10% in the past week and 33% in the past month.

Crazy, but not a record.  I'm selling 1/3rd of Equinox.  Its the highest beta gold stock I own, and some of its upside has been removed by recent divestments.

Honestly, I have no idea when to sell.  Today could be gold's top, or it can go to 6000, 7000, or 10000.

There is no quantitive way to measure that gold is "too expensive" or "over owned".

Gold has no fundamentals. There is no "high price" where demand gets substituted or destroyed.

It is going up despite low inflation.

It has gone parabolic, and can go more parabolic. In the last month of the 70-80's bull market, it rose 66% in a month.

COT data tells you that its over owned, and has been over owned forever. GVZ has surpassing its previous peak before the correction in Oct - a mere 10% two-month correction. Even if you sold beforehand, you probably didn't get back in.

‌What can make it keep going up?

• Increased liquidity - especially China and Japan. People buy gold when their currencies are shit.
• CBs holding currencies down to offset their trade surplus wit the US by buying a neutral reserve currency instead of USTs.
• War or threat of war.

What can make it go down?

• Japan stops spraying liquidity (think its from BOJ issuing shorter term bonds)
• USD drops enough so no more trade defecit. Asian CBs no longer need to intervene in their currency markets.
• US successfully delevers, so USTs look more attractive.
• World peace. Old-Man-Xi dies (will happen) and his successor says he won't invade Taiwan (dunno). Iran regime overthrown (likely). Putin leave Ukraine (no sign yet).

Best I can do is look for signs of technical weakness or over-exuberance.  Like:

• Gold bugs telling people to "Have Fun Staying Poor".
• Gold doesn't rise on good news (good news for gold, ie: bad news).
• The price rise gets stupidly parabolic (like in the 70s). Or GVZ makes all time highs.

‌My gut feeling is that we still have some way to go. This is not yet like Crypto in 2021. But in a bull market, your gut feelings are probably wrong.

‌At some point, I have to say that "this is getting ridiculous", slowly sell my gold holdings, and maybe keep a small position just to trade. The trouble is, there are no numbers to tell you where that point is.

Start Selling My Silver

I bought Silver (SLV) eight months ago as a trade from Hedgeye.  Its up 3 times since then.  It was 2% of my portfolio, now its 5%.

When something goes parabolic theres no way to know when it ends.  You'll always miss the top.  Even a local top.  Hedgeye risk manages by frequent trading, but I don't like trading so I need another way.  Don't want to overstay my welcome and become like the sad crypto bros of 2025.

Fundamentally, for commodities, high prices cure high prices.  Demand destruction for silver in solar panels begins around  $100 to $135.  But supply incentives are harder to guess, as silver is a by-product of other metal mining:

Gold (10-15% of silver supply) has hit its incentive price.  Zinc (30-40%) is hitting it now.  Copper is nowhere near.  And of course silver mines (25-28% of silver supply) are incentivised.  So we have 65-83% of silver supply being incentivised.  The supply is not immediate - probably takes 9-15 years for a new mine to open.  But existing mines can increase output.

At $109 silver (tonight), we are at-or-near prices where demand replacement occurs, and at current silver/gold/zinc prices the majority of the worlds silver production is incentivised to produce more.   Neither will happen overnight, but it will happen.  I'm comfortable slowly trimming my silver position.  Sold a quarter of my holdings (pre-market), and will sell more if if rises.  It can still keep going higher.

Trader Ferg wrote a excellent piece about handling parabolic price rises.  Don't get too greedy.  Inner peace.

When would I sell my gold companies?  I don't know.  Gold is a currency, not a commodity, so has no fundamental price targets.

Sold Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ)

I've held Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ) since late 2022 based on excellent fundamentals.  Its an efficient low-cost producer in a safe jurisdiction, with effectively infinite reserves, that pays dividends and buys back shares.

But there's now political risk.  The upcoming July USMCA negotiations were already looking shaky:

• USMCA expires on July 1st.  In preparation, the USTR January report has listed areas of contention: lumber subsidies, diary protection, the digital services tax, imports rerouted from China, and fentanyl.
• 70-75% of Canada's exports go to the US.  Canada has no choice but to bend.  The issues can probably be worked through.  For example, the Digital Services tax has not been collected, and there are efforts underway to remove it from the books.  It depends on the support Carney can get.
• If the USMCA is not renewed by 1st July, it enters a 10-year "zombie state", whereby the three countries have to meet once a year for a "rolling renewal".  CNQ will be effectively licensed to sell 3/4th of their output to the US on a year-by-year basis.

Quick numbers on Canada's oil exports.  Most of their exports go straight to the US through the Mainline and Keystone pipelines.  Canada's total production is 4+m bbl/day.   The only way for them to bypass the US is through the TMX pipeline (890k bbl/day), and that is constrained as the port can only take up to Aframax sized tankers. So for long distances, they usually shuttle the oil to California to load onto VLCCs to China.   They may be able to dredge the port by 2027 to allow slightly larger Aframaxes in.  New pipelines are at least 8-10 years out.

Now Carney has gone to China and lowered tariffs on China EVs.  This is a slap in the face for Trump.  The US cannot tolerate Chinese influence on their neighbour.

I still think the USMCA is going to work out, but there'll be fireworks beforehand.  In between today and July, Trump will unleash tweets about destroying Canada's economy.  Canada is going to get bitch-slapped, then ass-fucked.  I may look to buy CNQ again when Canada rolls over or Alberta becomes the 51st state.

2025 Review and Predictions

I made fuckloads of money this year.  A 31% return.  In dollar terms, more than triple what I got from my day job.

What worked?

• Gold: In late 2H24 and 1H25, I decided to buy gold.  Wanted miners and royalty companies for more torque, so I signed up for Mining Stock Monkey and bought 4 mid-cap companies.  Gold shot up, my mid-caps got taken over or merged, and my 10% position (at cost price) went up three times, giving me 70% of my returns this year, equivalent to 25% of my portfolio at the start of the year.

• Latam: I subscribed to Ian Bezek's Substack this year.  He forsaw a several South American countries moving to the right, with simple stock picks to benefit.  Most of these stock picks are up 30%, the thesis is probably halfway played out now.  Its responsible for 10% my portfolio returns, equivalent to 3% of my starting portfolio.

• Just Be Long: Hedgeye modelled Quads 3-2-1 around April, which basically means "buy the dip".  Buy anything thats going up - commodities, gold, silver, tech, small-caps, healthcare, banks, crypto - sell therm if they go down, keep them if they're still going up.  Rinse and repeat.  Its more complex but I'm keeping it short.  Gave me 20% of my returns this year, equivalent to 6% of my portfolio.  The tough thing is - to really make money, I sometimes ignore the Hedgeye trends and signals - for gold or Latam above.  Hedgeye is more about earning decent return through trading while limiting drawdowns.  Those last 2 words become more important as we head closer to the end of the bull market.

What didn't work?

• US Gas Pipelines: 1/3rd of my portfolio.  Flat, after doubling last year.  They keep paying dividends.
• South East Asia: My Singapore stocks(mostly Delfi) flatlined.  Sold off my Indonesian and the Philippines holdings after no movement.  Hartalega bombed.  Malaysia smelting Corp (tin) is doing OK now.
• Oil: 8% of my portfolio.  Low and Flat.  Luckily my stock picks are low cost producers: Var Energi and CNQ.

Predictions

What do I see in the future?  These are not so much predictions to trade off, but the way I see the world now.  And a reminder to keep our minds open to any possibilities.

• Trade war continues - the US and China are too far apart to reach a deal.  The US needs to re-industrialise to satisfy its long-suffering workers and keep military supremacy.  China needs to shove its exports down the throats of the rest of the rest-of-the-world, to prop up GDP growth and employment after a generational property crash.  Can't meet halfway.

• I believe there is a method to Trump's madness, his team has a plan.  If this is true we should see: 
• "Warp-speed" production for areas of US weakness.  Rare Earths.  Simple Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients.  Mid-stream minerals processing.  Uranium conversion and enrichment.  Haven't found ways to trade these yet.  (Had a small position in LEU, sold it after it tripled...priced in).
• Trump should become a little less crazy next year.  The craziness was to throw China off balance, but they realised what the game was by November.  I expect clarity on Tariffs, enough so that goods can cross borders multiple times while being manufactured, at least in USMCA (NAFTA).
• Triggering trans-shipment clauses to prevent countries that export to the US from importing from China.  Mexico already started.  NAFTA should be next.  Maybe Vietnam.  And maybe these countries will implement China tariffs anyway, if they don't want to de-industrialise.
• Maybe he triggers a US dollar devaluation.  Its long been argued that its required to balance the trade deficit and shrink the debt.   Probably good the for the stock market.  Small chance it crashes the market.
• Trump needs to deal with Canada.  Either till they cry uncle, or Alberta becomes the 51st state.  Either one helps my CNQ position.

• Trump needs to win the November mid-terms.  Expect helicopter money - he can mail a cheque to every working household.  So expect the economy to boom.  The only catch is that he does not need the stock market to boom - there's more workers than investors.  I'm sure he'd like it to boom, but its not a necessity.

• China Invades Taiwan - the odds of this are higher than appreciated, maybe 40%.  This is the Sword of Damocles that hangs over everything.  But its a 2027-2032 problem, not next year.  Haven't found a way to make money off this.  If war breaks out, physical gold will go up, but anything traded online (including GLD and my gold companies) will get hammered.

• AI is probably a bubble.  Data center growth may be responsible for half-to-all of US GDP growth.  I'll follow Hedgeye to see when it bursts I don't think its next year, but we'll see.

• Although I think LLMs are a bubble and not that useful yet, there are real benefits applying AI to specific problems.  Previously, software would automate anything that could be specified - now it will automate anything that can measured and be verified.  For example:
• Sorting fruit.  We can't specify exactly what a good fruit is, but theres enough examples to get teach an AI to do it.
• Missile targeting.  Feed it hundreds of images of enemy rocket launchers, so it can learn to recognise them,
• Speeding up drug research, development and testing.  Possibly halving time to approval.

Playing it may be as simple as just buying shares in any company that benefits from AI productivity.  Or looking downstream to the choke points (eg: If we get more new drugs released, the oligopoly of drug distributors should eventually benefit).

• Natty boom: AI datacenter buildout needs baseload energy, and natty is the only one fast enough to build.  I'll keep my Natural Gas pipeline stocks (1/3rd of my portfolio) and a Natural Gas producer (5%).

• Oil remains low till the mid-terms.  This depends on the Saudis, who are hurting, but I think Trump can make a deal.  This reduces inflation and strangles Putin.  After the mid-terms, maybe we get $80-100 per barrel.

Plan for Next Year

I'm 125% invested now.  Next year may be the last year of the bull market.

• Reduce exposure, sell my Hedge trading positions if they spike or roll over.
• Keep my gold positions, still in a bull market.  Its a hedge against exploding US govt debt, a neutral reserve currency, and a way for people in China to save amidst financial repression. 
• Sell my LATAM positions as they play out.
• Keep natty, oil positions.  Sell my natty pipelines and producer if we get a boom and their EV/EBITDAs go to unreasonable levels.
• Need to think about when I'd sell my tin miner.  Whats an unsustainably high price for tin?   [slide 18]

Every year its one or two themes that give the majority of my returns, and I don't know what they'll be till they play out.

Its been a tough year, working full time while trading has tired me out.

This is year 3 of the bull market (2022 bear).  Or year 5 if we measure from the 2020 covid crash.  The cycle will turn, maybe 2026, probably 2027.  The next bear will not be like 2008:

• It may be a real recession with nominal growth (1990 or 2001), or
• It may be a stock market correction with no recession (a slow motion 1987), or 
• It may be World War III (-10% GDP while printing fuckloads of money).  

We'll see as we move forward.  Cross the river by feeling the stones.  Just keep swimming.

Portfolio Update. Broken Record.

 Markets up again, stocks up.

Position changes:

• Sold some South-East Asian stocks.  Moved them into trading the US market.  Buy stuff thats going up.
• Increased exposure to LATAM.
• Reduced crypto, and sold Bitcoin.  Shorted Microstrategy.

Might change these soon:

• Reduce exposure to China and healthcare.  Chin has done well but the next quarter's outlook is negative.  Healthcare keeps getting whipped around by Trump.
• Increase my Microstrategy short, as it rebounds tonight.

I am just buying stuff thats going up and not overbought.  Its boring, and it doesn't give me much to write about, but I'd rather make money.  The stock market is not a place to look for excitement in life.

My aim is to ride the bull market up, then sit out or short the next bear or correction.  Possibly in 2Q26.  If I can do that, I can quit my day job.

Portfolio Update

Market is up, portfolio is following it, so I'm happy:

  - Gold making new highs: My 2 gold royalty stocks (sandstorm and EMX) have received buyout offers, unfortunately shares not cash.  Will probably hold the acquirers' shares - still wanna be long gold and there's not much left in the mid-cap royalty space to buy.  My other gold stock (Equinox) merged with another company, then hit new highs after relasing better than expected results. I got all these from Mining Stock Monkey's substack (he also has a free youtube channel)

  - LATAM all up.  Holding Chile/Columbian banks, waiting for the next election for the governments to turn to the right.  Nubank (Brazil) released excellent results - but next year's election is a coin toss - hold for now.

  - Small China position (Didi) up.  Fundamentally it can still double from here, especially if it can re-list in HK.  I'll hold it till Hedgeye signals to sell (KBA).  China is always a trade for me.

  - My fat-fingered Ethereum trade up bigly.  Will start selling around 5K, or when Hedgeye's signal weakens.

  - Nam Cheong up.

‌

Whats NOT working:

  - SEA.  Indonesia and Malaysia:

     * Indonesia riots.  Will probably sell my longer term Indonesian holding, country is a poor, corrupt powder keg.  Against this, medium term, it'll go up if the USD falls.

     * Hartalega (gloves).  Hit ten year lows!  Probably Trump.  Malaysia has signed a trade deal with Trump (19% tariffs), but they are courting China.  There is political risk here.  Malaysia is the perfect small, inconsequential country for Trump to smack around a bit to show what happens if you sit on the fence....after he's finished with India and Canada.   Not sure if I should keep this one, its hard to value a cyclical.

    * Delfi results sucked as expected, from high cocoa prices.

  - Oil stocks.  Especially CNQ (Canada).  Probably Trump Tariffs again, combined with the newly-elected gay Canadian government - most Canadian oil is exported/refined in the US.  My Norwegian oil stock is flat.  Hedgeye's trend for oil recently went bullish, dunno if it will stay that way.  I can hold these 2 stocks long term.

  - US Gas Pipelines: Flat, paying dividends,fairly valued not over-valued yet.  Just hold.

  - Turkey (TUR), I fucked up, bought a 2% position too high, fomo.  To cut loss.

  - Probably sell my Seatrium, a 1% position too small to monitor.