2025 State of the Union

~~James West, Midas Letter

It is said that it is a common perception among older people is that they are living in the “end times”. Martin Luther in the 14th century, Issac Newton in the 1700’s, Ronald Regan and a long list of others dating back thousands of years all believed the end was nigh.

And yet, here we all are. Another year, another set of hurdles to leap, opportunities to explore, relationships to maintain or end or start. Funerals to go to. Weddings. Parties. Concerts. Vacations. A full list of life’s events that fill the days until the days come to an end. Every day, some shuffle off this mortal coil, while others begin.

What is remarkable to me is that we spend so much of our lives in vain pursuits of that which ultimately we acknowledge is meaningless, often ignoring the most meaningful and ultimately valuable experiences, or taking them for granted.

The best passage of a life, that passes in the blink of an eye, is to arrive at the point where you can put yourself in the midst of all that you truly value, and that is valuable from the perspective of your physical, emotional, financial, spiritual and mental well being without having to compromise the important relationships and associations that make life truly interesting, and fill it with meaning.

Love, after all, is the only thing that you take with you into the next realm when you die. You leave it behind, and it lingers in the air among those who you knew and who knew and loved you. So one could argue that love is the only worthwhile pursuit.

All that aside, we are unfortunately cursed with the day-to-day requirement to make money, and thus, as somebody who only seems to care about money when I run out, I am rolling up my sleeves for yet another turn at the trough, elbowing my way into the fray to attract sufficient wealth that I can return to my bucolic and pastoral country existence where I am surrounded by all that matters.

So, now we look around the world in 2025, consider some of the news tools on the scene, like AI and crypto, and ponder the best use of energy to achieve the required income.

Where will the money flow?

That is what we want to know.

Obviously, the opportunities inherent in the explosion of AI and all the computing resources that implies – electricity, chips, water, real estate, talent – stands out as a worthwhile segment to consider.

xAI, Open AI, Anthropic (now essentially Amazon AI). All present opportunities to deploy capital and harvest a profit at some point in the future.

As a service provider to the masses of publicly traded and funded companies out there, I gravitate toward where the capital is gravitating, because thats where budgets for content production and distribution are being spent.

Following the money. Like Cariboo following the grass.

From an investment perspective, it’s confusing as ever to get a sense of which direction the market is going to go. With the wild card of Donald Trump bringing the highest possible degree of unpredictability into the mix, a forecast is impossible.

So, as usual, we can look at what we know, acknowledge what we don’t know, and consider that against what has the highest potential to occur.

~~James West, Midas Letter

So, now we look around the world in 2025, consider some of the news tools on the scene, like AI and crypto, and ponder the best use of energy to achieve the required income.

Where will the money flow?

That is what we want to know.

xAI, Open AI, Anthropic (now essentially Amazon AI). All present opportunities to deploy capital and harvest a profit at some point in the future.

Following the money. Like Cariboo following the grass.

So, as usual, we can look at what we know, acknowledge what we don’t know, and consider that against what has the highest potential to occur.

~~James West, Midas Letter

Technology is a double-edged sword. We’re still living in the long tail of a hard money, capitalist society – and reaping new technologies out of it.

But the destruction of the purchasing power of the dollar stands to create a crisis – and drive investors back to safe havens like gold.

All these rumors could work out to Intel’s benefit. That’s something no investor can know. What we can know is that the road to recovery will be a rocky one, fraught with disappointments along the way. It is all but certain that at some point, Intel stock will once again be far cheaper than it is today. And at that later date, investors will have far more information to be able to judge the likely success of the promised comeback. We’re not going to buy the rumors. We will wait for the news.

There’s something about big, round numbers that draws investors like moths to a flame.

In the stock market, every 1,000 points in the Dow or 100 points in the S&P 500 tends to act like a magnet.

Now, after consolidating for five months, gold has broken higher to $4,000.

AI stocks are running hot. They’re not the only game in town… but they’re about half of it.

JPMorgan just reviewed all of the 500 companies in the S&P 500. A full 41 of them are AI-related. While that’s less than 10% of the index by total, it is over 45% of the index by market cap.

Technology is a double-edged sword. We’re still living in the long tail of a hard money, capitalist society – and reaping new technologies out of it.

But the destruction of the purchasing power of the dollar stands to create a crisis – and drive investors back to safe havens like gold.

There’s something about big, round numbers that draws investors like moths to a flame.

In the stock market, every 1,000 points in the Dow or 100 points in the S&P 500 tends to act like a magnet.

Now, after consolidating for five months, gold has broken higher to $4,000.

AI stocks are running hot. They’re not the only game in town… but they’re about half of it.

JPMorgan just reviewed all of the 500 companies in the S&P 500. A full 41 of them are AI-related. While that’s less than 10% of the index by total, it is over 45% of the index by market cap.