Bitcoin’s Looking Great. Gold Not So Much.

A Tale of Two Assets. Plus an update on gold miners.

Today, we are going to look at gold, bitcoin, and our way of playing it, MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR), which has now 10xd (!) since we first covered it last year. Amazing.Finally, there’ll be a short update on gold miners. Remember them?

Let’s start with gold.

Gold – and most other metals – has been hit since the U.S. election last week. It’s down $200, or about 7%, with U.S. dollar strength being a big factor (the dollar has been storming higher since October).

While I think this bull market might be punctured, as I put it last week, and that gold probably has a bit further to fall, I am not unduly worried. 2024 has hitherto been a great year for gold, and it remains an essential long-term core holding.

It is an even more essential holding for UK investors. I think sterling has big problems ahead of it, and gold serves as your hedge against crap governments.

Labour or Tory – I’m no fan of either.

They’re both as bad as each other, in my view. The less government there is, the better things run. But that’s irrelevant idealism. Of greater concern here is reality: there has never been a Labour Government that did not devalue sterling.

· Blair and Brown crashed sterling in 2007-8 (though until then their record was okay);

· Under Wilson, Callaghan, and Healey, we ended up going to the IMF in 1976. Callaghan and Wilson also devalued in 1967.

· Cripps and Attlee devalued in 1949.

· Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, which followed Labour from 1929-31, took us off the gold standard in 1931.

Why should this Labour Government be any different? If anything, it is even less competent. Sterling devaluation is coming. How exactly might not yet be clear. I rather suspect it’ll be an attempt to make us competitive against an ultra-streamlined US, but that’s just a guess. You must own some gold (and some bitcoin) in such an environment: non-government money.

Bitcoin’s Looking Great. Gold Not So Much.

A Tale of Two Assets. Plus an update on gold miners.

Let’s start with gold.

It is an even more essential holding for UK investors. I think sterling has big problems ahead of it, and gold serves as your hedge against crap governments.

Labour or Tory – I’m no fan of either.

· Blair and Brown crashed sterling in 2007-8 (though until then their record was okay);

· Under Wilson, Callaghan, and Healey, we ended up going to the IMF in 1976. Callaghan and Wilson also devalued in 1967.

· Cripps and Attlee devalued in 1949.

· Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, which followed Labour from 1929-31, took us off the gold standard in 1931.

The cause of this problem is not hard to find. The Fed caused the first mortgage finance crisis by dropping its key rate from 6% in 2001 to only 1% in 2003. This set the housing market a-tingling. Remember the ‘lo-doc’ mortgage loans? All it took to get a mortgage — guaranteed by the feds — was an application. Then, when the Fed tried to bring rates back into a normal zone, it triggered widespread bankruptcies, defaults and foreclosures.

So, the Fed cut rates again…from over 5% in 2007 to under 1% in 2009. Adjusted for inflation, rates remained under zero for most of the next fifteen years. This led to a huge new bid for housing…much of it coming from institutional buyers able to tap into the Fed’s low rates. The new demand led to the highest prices ever — now averaging about $100,000 more than the typical family can afford.

Don’t panic. Don’t average down. Don’t hold. Don’t hope.

Instead:

Review your open positions. Are any of them hitting your stop loss? Cut them.
Sit in cash if there’s no clear setup. Patience beats forcing trades.
Paper trade if you need the reps. Build your pattern recognition without risking capital.
Watch for opportunities. Red days often create the volatility needed for explosive small-cap moves.

This market will have plenty more red days. That’s guaranteed.

Our Dollar 2.0 investment thesis is well intact. Just getting started, actually. And if you’ve been watching the crypto space lately, you’re aware that the stocks highlighted in our Dollar 2.0 research reports are selling at a nice discount right now.

First, some background.

Washington has a habit of passing laws with names that promise fireworks but paragraphs that deliver footnotes.

The Genius Act was treated exactly that way.

It’s been a year for Google. In July, Google avoided an antitrust breakup. Buffett’s successor at Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel, added the search ecosystem to its portfolio in Q3.

Last week, Google unveiled AI chip lines that are competitive with Nvidia.

All good for your 401(k), even if the historic level of market concentration in Mag 7 stocks got more pronounced.