From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
From the creators of The Daily Reckoning, I.O.U.S.A, Empire of Debt and The Daily Missive
December 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
A conversation with Frank Holmes on crypto, commodities, and today’s investment opportunities.
February 6, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The most important moment in finance this week didn’t happen in a committee room or on cable television. It took place over coffee last week in Davos.
Brian Armstrong, the founder and CEO of Coinbase, was mid-conversation with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair when Jamie Dimon stepped in, pointed a finger, and said, “You are full of s—.”
Dimon wasn’t debating crypto theory. He was defending deposits.
Armstrong had spent the week accusing large banks of leaning on lawmakers to kneecap digital-asset legislation that threatens their core franchise. Dimon, whose firm sits atop the U.S. deposit pile, heard enough. According to people familiar with the exchange, he told Armstrong to stop lying on television.
February 5, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 4, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 6, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Bitcoin is now selling off at a pace last seen at bear-market bottoms in 2018 and 2022.
Our trading channel was buzzing yesterday. Traders are actively seeking the bottom and trying to plot a way back in!
Indeed, bitcoin is rebounding and back up to $68,000 in today’s trading. Nail-biting stuff.
February 5, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 4, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
February 3, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
In Singapore, Bloomberg reported that retail buyers crowded United Overseas Bank, the city’s only bank selling physical gold, until customers without pre-orders were turned away.
In Sydney, lines stretched into the street outside ABC Bullion after Friday’s selloff. Thai investors held existing positions instead of selling into weakness. In China’s Shuibei district, ahead of the Lunar New Year, buyers stepped in, and local prices held premiums over exchange benchmarks.
“It’s still a buying market,” said Globlex Securities CEO Thanapisal Koohapremkit. Quiet accumulation doesn’t announce itself. It just keeps happening.
February 3, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
AI tools are incredibly useful and AI stocks remain richly valued. Yes.
New tech will also create new, productive and higher paying jobs. Ones we haven’t even dreamed up yet.
In the meantime, the jobs market is being measured by the tools needed to calculate the economy without knowing what the new jobs will be.
February 2, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
For months, speculation swirled like chimney smoke in a snowstorm. Would Trump tap a dove? A loyalist? A Wall Street man in a red hat? Warsh checks none of those boxes — and all of them.
He’s a former Fed governor, a Goldman alum, and a card-carrying skeptic of central bank omnipotence.
He’s said, “The Fed is not independent from government. It is independent within government,” which sounds like something out of a fortune cookie written by Hayek.
He doesn’t want the Fed playing God, and he’s not keen on printing money to mop up Congress’s mess. He believes in limits. In credibility. In consequences.
February 2, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Corporate insiders began ringing the cash register just as the S&P 500 touched 7,000. Given that the market is up over 40% from last April’s “Liberation Day” lows, a modicum of profit-taking is wise.
January 30, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Kevin Warsh, former Fed governor and one-time Morgan Stanley hand, is officially President Trump’s pick to replace Jerome Powell as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
The choice is meant to be brazen, if not entirely unexpected. Despite having been nominated in his first go in the Oval Office, Trump has been gunning for Jerome Powell since Day One of his second term.
Now, Warsh, whose libertarian-leaning critique of the Fed has hovered like a drone over Jackson Hole for years, will succeed Powell should the Senate confirm him before May 15, 2026.
January 30, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The analysis we’ve published of the main drivers for gold applies to silver and bitcoin, too. The latter two, however, remain more speculative and gap down and spike up more dramatically.
If you’re leveraged to silver, whether through mining companies, ETFs, or the like, it may be prudent to take some profits off the table. And keep your eyes peeled for future moves upward.
January 29, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
In one refrain from our book Empire of Debt, we warned that late-stage credit systems always suffer the same fate: the debasement of money disguised as growth. Ray Dalio said the quiet part out loud in an interview yesterday:
“If you depreciate the money, it makes everything look like it’s going up.”
Which is precisely why the markets get jittery at the top. And why politics are as wacky and polarized as they have been.
In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is demanding higher taxes on the rich to plug budget holes left by former Mayor Adams. He wants billions from Albany. Governor Hochul has yet to weigh in.
In California, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and other Silicon Valley billionaires are backing a new pro-business PAC to fight a proposed 5% wealth tax on the state’s 200 richest residents. Larry Page has already moved to Florida. The line to Nevada is forming.
Ray Dalio, again, with the map:
“When governments run large deficits and the debt is no longer bought willingly, they have two choices: raise taxes and cut spending, or print money. Those that can print, do. Those that can’t, fall apart.”
Populist politics surge. Moderates vanish. Scapegoating begins. The wealth gap widens until it becomes an impassable chasm.
January 29, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
The S&P 500 topped 7,000 for the first time yesterday, adding to its stack of all-time highs this year and continuing the trend set in 2025.
But… those highs are measured in dollars. When priced in gold, which topped $5,500 — also a historic number— this morning, stocks are actually at a 12-year low.
January 28, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
Trump is trying to force two converging economic events that haven’t aligned like this in over 40 years.
The first is the cost of borrowing. After the fastest rate-hiking cycle in decades, rates are rolling over. Trump wants them at 1%. Jerome Powell’s term ends at the Fed on May 15. The path is being cleared for a true believer in lower interest rates to take his spot.
The second is the cost of living. Oil has fallen from $95 to just over $60 in a year. Gas is averaging $2.88 nationally. And because oil feeds into everything — shipping, food, plastics — falling prices cascade across the economy. The capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro is not a coincidence. Venezuela is one of the leading exporters in the OPEC block of oil producers.
January 28, 2026 • Addison Wiggin
A push for lower interest rates, jawboning by Trump administration officials, and concerns over U.S. debt levels are giving the dollar a good thrashing.
Dollar-denominated assets, from global commodities to U.S. stocks — even competing fiat currencies — will see prices rise versus the U.S. variety until this trend shifts.
