Member Info for goldgnome

Billionaire mining investor Pierre Lassonde predicts gold will reach $17,250 per ounce by 2030, which he considers an absolute floor. He attributes this massive projected surge to the U.S. debt crisis, a global shift of central banks away from the dollar, and a massive transfer of price-setting power to China

Ripley, you beauuuuuty !!! Well done ...

Ripley, you are not up with the Donald ...

President Donald Trump disclosed a staggering flurry of over 3,700 stock trades during the first three months of the year, spanning tens of millions of dollars in cumulative value. This unprecedented level of active trading by a sitting president, which averages more than 40 trades per day, has raised ethics (what?!) concerns regarding his portfolio holdings and market-moving policy decisions

Nvidia and Tech Stocks: The portfolio scooped up between $1 million and $5 million in Nvidia shares. The timing of these transactions sparked controversy, as the purchases occurred in close proximity to Commerce Department approvals for chip sales to China and a major processing deal with Meta.

Iran War Dip: Filings indicate that his trust heavily purchased the stock market dip caused by the outbreak of the Iran war, buying into energy and defense stocks like Phillips 66, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Lockheed Martin.

Defense Contracts: Purchases were also made in military contractors like Palantir, which holds substantial federal AI and defense contracts.

Every recent U.S. president prior to Trump either divested individual stocks, put assets into broadly diversified mutual funds, or established formal blind trusts before taking office

If its good enough for the King, then why not the plebs ... You can imagine the shenanikans going on eh?

Everyone for him or herself, as the ship sinks

LOL

Ripley, thats 10% in a few days!!! ...imagine if you do this every few days ...you could be rich and famous ... bugg&r!

So money of different flavours is getting pulled out of the market, to follow the greatest hype ever

International Man: SpaceX appears poised to become the largest IPO in history, potentially coming public at a valuation far beyond anything we’ve seen in a traditional tech listing. What’s your overall take on this surge in mega-cap tech IPOs, and SpaceX in particular?

Doug Casey: Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved space, rockets, and science fiction. However, parts of SpaceX’s offering document read like a sci-fi novel. It’s pretty far out—as is the price of the offering.

That said, I applaud Elon’s successes, not least of which is SpaceX. But engineering success is not necessarily a predictor of stock market success. Remember the old saying: "High tech? Big wreck!" High-tech bubbles are often the final bell ringing at the top of the market.

As for SpaceX, the company is basically divided into three parts. One is SpaceX itself, which is about launching rockets; that part is mildly profitable, and I see a real future for it. The second part is Starlink, where they make significant money. I use it, and it’s great. But the bulk of their spending, use of funds, and losses is for AI. I want no part of it.

SpaceX is basically a conglomerate with three unrelated businesses. Might as well add on an airline, a screen door company, and maybe a submarine builder for diversification. Who cares if you’re raising megamillions?

The other two gigantic offerings coming soon, Anthropic and OpenAI, are pure bets on AI. Include me out.

So we’ve got three trillion-dollar IPOs coming out this summer. And as much as I love some aspects of AI, it’s pretty clear that this is beyond a bubble. It’s a super bubble. And I think I hear not just one, but a symphony of bells ringing at the top of this market.

Elon has a quirky sense of humor. Maybe, among the billion robots he expects to build, he will reincarnate that clunky robot from the old series "Lost in Space". Just to warn us, "Danger, Will Robinson. Extreme Danger!" as we heard in almost every episode. Now would be a good time for its AI to look at the market and give us that retro-sounding verbal warning.

International Man: When you look at SpaceX, AI companies, and the broader wave of tech listings, do you see echoes of the late-1990s dot-com boom?

Doug Casey: Yes, and not just the dot-com boom. The 1920s stock market boom was loaded with the tech companies of the time—car manufacturers. There were hundreds of small automotive companies. They all went bust, leaving only GM, Ford, and Stellantis. FWIW, today they’re all managed by women, DEI hires, and people who hate cars. It’s the circle of hi-tech life.

RCA, Radio Corporation of America, was the Nvidia of its day, going 200-1 in the 20’s. The gigantic tech boom of the 60’s featured scores of meme stocks with suffixes like -onics or -ex. The public bought anything with a name that signaled technology. FAMILIAR?

If you are a traditional value or growth investor looking at standard financial metrics, the $1.75 trillion price tag looks wildly inflated, to say the least. Analysts at Morningstar, for example, recently pinned SpaceX's fair intrinsic value closer to $780 billion—less than half of the IPO target. Best guess for some other analysts of note is that it is 30-40% over priced.

1. Price-to-Sales (P/S) DisconnectTrading at roughly 95x to 100x trailing sales is almost unprecedented for a capital-intensive hardware and infrastructure company. For context, even high-flying mega-cap tech stocks rarely sustain a P/S ratio above 30x.

2. Massive Net Losses and AI Cash BurnWhile SpaceX generates positive EBITDA on its core operations, its GAAP numbers tell a different story. The company posted a $4.94 billion net loss for the full year 2025, and lost a staggering $4.28 billion in Q1 2026 alone. The primary culprit? Its February 2026 merger with xAI (cough splutter). The AI division and the massive Colossus data centers are currently burning through roughly $2.5 billion per quarter.

3. Starship Execution Risk....The entire valuation assumes that Starship becomes fully operational, rapidly reusable, and dramatically drives down payload costs per kilogram. If Starship encounters prolonged regulatory, technical, or launch setbacks, the growth engine stalls. If a rocket explodes....

Watchout anyone who is invested in Indices that will have an immediate (highly unusual) SpaceX weighting

cheers

the gnome

Part of the nonsense that is perpetuated from paper trading in the country of hot money.

The upcoming SpaceX IPO (scheduled for June 12, 2026, under the ticker SPCX) is targeting a staggering $1.75 trillion to $1.77 trillion valuation at $135 a share. No independent person has justified this. To put that in perspective, a $1.75+ trillion valuation instantly makes SpaceX one of the top ten most valuable public companies on Earth, larger than Tesla, and roughly 95 times its 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion. Whether that price is "justifiable" depends entirely on whether you look at the company through the lens of current fundamental valuation or its future multi-industry monopoly narrative.

Lets look from a Tesla perspective. New EV's to the world, Save the planet. Monopoly. Give us your money and so on ... what happened ? Chinese companies dominate the global EV market.

There is a staggering amount of BS woven into the market, that few can see genuine value in.

Relevance to the next most marvellous thing .. Space X

Chinese will watch, will learn and will dominate.

Relevant to me. I like companies that make money, dont destroy environments, employ people with dignity....

I am a buyer, not of SpaceX, as I am very wary of this hot air

General mayhem ensues ....Trillion-Dollar Techs Lose a Trillion — Heard on the Street Recap

Selling on Friday was particularly pronounced among megacap tech stocks. The nine trillion-dollar tech companies in the S&P 500 averaged a loss of 5.3% Friday, totaling about $1.1 trillion in lost market value. AI chip names felt it the most: Nvidia shed about 6%, Broadcom fell nearly 8% and Micron plunged 13%.

Jitters grew Friday after a hot jobs report stoked fears of inflation. The 10-year Treasury yield jumped past 4.5% in response to the Labor Department saying employers added 172,000 jobs in May, more than double the 80,000 forecast by economists. The 2-year yield, which tends to rise and fall with expectations for rates set by the Fed, climbed to 4.16%, its highest level in a year.

Investors now expect the Federal Reserve to keep rates high throughout 2026, and increased bets that the central bank will have to raise them. Traders now see a roughly 70% chance officials will hike rates by the end of the year, compared with a little less than 50% before the report’s release, according to CME data.

President Trump posted: "With a great Jobs Report, like just announced, stocks should go up, not down." He added: "Growth does not mean inflation!"

When you have delusion from the top, an expensive war that does not make any sense, so much hot air you could provide the world with energy for a few millenia and a few other things ... what does one expect ... mayhem in the markets?

CLASSIC CONFLICTOF INTEREST BUT WHO IS COUNTING ....To support the $1.77 trillion valuation Elon Musk’s SpaceX is targeting in its initial public offering, bankers are telling investors to look to the future.

SpaceX’s revenue could reach $3.4 trillion in 2040, according to a Morgan Stanley MS 3.87%increase; green up pointing triangle analysis shared with top investors Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Morgan Stanley told investors the rocket maker’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2040 could top $2.7 trillion, the people said.

It could also be -$2 Trillion. Probabilities are equal ....

SpaceX posted revenue of $18.7 billion in 2025 and a loss of $4.9 billion. It is aiming to raise around $75 billion next week in what would be the largest IPO ever. And why not with G%d on our side...

beyond any logic ...purely belief in a value proposition that is yet to prove itself ...

I could even convert to being a trader LOL

Just keeps playing into my hands ...

A friend did a quick correlation run, and found there is a correlation between Trumps mind changes and the POG.

Phase 1: Aggressive Ultimatums (The Dollar Crowds Out Gold)

When Trump issues sharp, direct military threats—such as his recent ultimatum regarding the Strait of Hormuz or stating Iran could be "taken out in one night"—gold has frequently declined or faced sharp resistance.

Phase 2: Postponements and Ceasefires (The Liquidity Rebound)

Conversely, when posts or remarks signal a tactical pause, a delay in strikes, or progress toward a memorandum of understanding (such as the recent 60-day ceasefire extension brokered via regional mediators), gold has routinely rebounded or spiked.

High-Frequency Trading & Keyword Volatility

The correlation is less about human macro-analysis and more about algorithmic mechanics. High-frequency trading (HFT) platforms and quant funds continuously scrape social feeds and news wires for specific high-weight semantic pairs.

The Broader Underlying Drivers (yawn, scratch, scratch etc)

While the short-term volatility is tightly bound to changing rhetoric, the baseline pricing of gold remains anchored to deeper structural factors:

Central Bank Accumulation: De-dollarization and structural diversification by emerging market central banks provide a massive physical floor for gold, decoupling it from temporary futures market liquidations.

Interest Rate Expectations: Ultimately, the market views Trump's foreign policy through the lens of domestic monetary policy. If an Iran escalation threatens a persistent energy shock, the market prices in higher-for-longer interest rates from the Fed, which caps gold's upside regardless of the headline tension....BUT.....

China's long-term strategy completely overrides the Fed's monetary policy.

1. The PBOC’s Existential De-Dollarization Strategy

For the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), buying gold is not a tactical trade to beat inflation—it is a long-term geopolitical imperative.

2. The Structural Shift: The PBOC has been on an unprecedented, multi-year gold buying spree, systematically swapping US Treasury debt for physical gold. Because this is a national security strategy designed to insulate China from potential Western sanctions, the PBOC does not care if the Fed funds rate is 2% or 5.5%. They are buying the floor of the market out from under Western short-sellers.

When Western institutional funds sell paper gold or dump ETF shares because the Fed delays a rate cut, algorithms capture the drop and sell further. In the past, this would trigger a multi-month bear market.

Today, the moment Western selling creates a minor dip in the paper price, Chinese commercial banks, retail buyers, and the PBOC step in to buy the physical metal at a relative discount. This massive Eastern bid acts as a permanent macro safety net.

Ultimately, interest rate cycles are temporary—they go up, they cap growth, they come down.

Anglo shares just follow gold price. My guess is the gold price will continue to trend up long term, with the usual oscillations due to the paper traders on COMEX. The western financial system is awash with debt with no way out. We have a bunch of amateurs, to be polite, in government who seem to have as much knowledge about how the ecomony works as a house brick. It seems with the increasing inflation rate, the stupidity of the US and Israel against Iran, that inflation and interest rates will stay up, and to boot, the govt has outlawed negative gearing and rejigged Cap Gains Tax...So House prices are going down, auction clearances down, and so on.

So what does a poor man do? I just continue to buy anglo shares when they get in the 90-92 range, and sit ....Its a great business in a commodity for the times.

Thats an austere life when you cant treat yourself to a pint!

all the best

the gnome

What a stupid world we live in....

A $17,250 gold price target is two predictions wearing one number.

Pierre Lassonde — co-founder of Franco-Nevada, former president of Newmont — told Kitco this week that gold reaches $17,250 USD within three years.

The number isn't arbitrary. It comes from the Dow-to-Gold ratio reverting toward 2:1 — a level last seen in 1980.

But here's what the headline skips.

At a 2:1 ratio, $17,250 gold only works if the Dow itself also falls roughly 25–30%. The ratio compresses from both ends. So the target isn't purely a gold call — it's a gold call AND an equity-market call, bundled into one figure.

I'm not going to argue the target. Price predictions are the easiest thing to produce in this sector, and the hardest to be held accountable for.

What's worth noticing is the mechanism underneath it. Central banks are accumulating gold because they want a monetary asset that isn't someone else's debt. That's a structural bid — not a sentiment trade.

Structure is the part I work on.

There's a mispricing in this sector that has nothing to do with the gold price. It's in what acquirers actually pay for gold still in the ground.

They pay about $93 USD an ounce. Gross operating margins justify about $729 USD. That's an 87% compression.

That gap doesn't move on anyone's forecast. It's already here — and it's measured.

Is the Dow-to-Gold ratio a genuine signal, or a story we tell ourselves after the fact? Curious how you read it

Goldman Sachs recently revised their forecasts upwards, projecting that central bank purchases will average 60 tonnes a month through 2026, driven by underreported sovereign vault outflows.

UNSW BusinessThink

+3

Key Drivers & Trends

De-dollarization & Sanctions: Emerging market and developing economies are reducing their reliance on U.S. dollar-denominated assets. The 2022 freezing of Russia's Western-held reserves significantly accelerated this trend.

Institutional Resilience: Despite gold trading near record highs, central banks view it as a neutral, indispensable reserve asset that protects against fiscal instability.

Top Buyers: Accumulation is led by emerging market banks, with notable heavy buying from the People's Bank of China, the National Bank of Poland, Türkiye, and the Reserve Bank of India.

World Gold Council

+8

Up-To-Date Data & Discrepancies

Goldman Sachs Estimates: Nowcasting estimates indicate a massive data gap due to unrecorded over-the-counter flows originating in the U.K. (London) vaults. Actual average monthly purchases were revised upward to 50 tonnes and are expected to hit 60 tonnes moving forward.

World Gold Council (WGC): The WGC noted a remarkably strong start to the year, with estimated net purchases of 244 tonnes in the first quarter. This outpaced historical averages despite heightened geopolitical and market turbulence

1. The Death of the "Real" Interest Rate Argument

Traditionally, the mainstream financial consensus states that higher interest rates are bad for gold because gold yields no interest; investors would rather hold yielding Treasury bonds. Schiff’s logic completely upends this:

Negative Real Yields: If nominal interest rates are at 5% but true structural inflation is running closer to 7% or higher, the real interest rate is firmly negative. Investors holding paper bonds are guaranteed to lose purchasing power.

The Flight from Debt: As the total U.S. liability climbs past $150 trillion, the risk of holding long-term paper debt skyrockets. Gold serves as the ultimate beneficiary because it carries zero counterparty or default risk.

2. Forced Fed Intervention (The "Fed Put" for Bonds)

Schiff states that the Federal Reserve cannot allow the bond market to freely crash because the U.S. government cannot afford the interest expense on its debt. Therefore, the Fed must step in to cap yields by launching massive bond-buying programs (Quantitative Easing).

The Ultimate Gold Catalyst: To buy those bonds, the Fed must print trillions of new dollars, expanding the money supply at an accelerating rate. This rapid dilution of the dollar is the exact fuel that drives explosive, parabolic moves in the nominal price of gold. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2

3. De-Dollarization by Global Central Banks

One of the most concrete drivers Schiff references is the behavior of foreign central banks.

Central banks see the same structural trap: a runaway debt spiral and an inevitable choice between explicit default or hyper-inflationary devaluation.

As a result, global institutions are actively dumping U.S. Treasuries and diversifying directly into physical gold reserves. This institutional shift replaces paper trust with a tangible asset, creating a massive, relentless floor of physical demand that drives prices structurally higher.

4. The Stagflationary Trap

Schiff's warnings of a weaker economy combined with rising energy and food costs point directly to stagflation (stagnant growth plus high inflation). Historically, stagflationary decades (like the 1970s) are the absolute best-performing environments for precious metals. When equities drop in real terms and cash loses value at the supermarket, capital seeks refuge in hard assets.

Summary of the Mechanism

In Schiff’s view, you shouldn't view gold as becoming "more expensive." Instead, you are witnessing the accelerating devaluation of the denominator (the U.S. dollar). Because gold has a finite structural supply and cannot be printed by a central bank to finance political promises, its price must inevitably adjust upward to reflect the sheer volume of fiat currency being injected into the global financial architecture.

Interesting trip to China? Trump appeared on the backfoot throughout his time in Beijing. He didn't update Truth Social after his initial meeting with Xi — unusual for him — and he was noticeably effusive and deferential throughout. Time

Beijing didn't need big tangible outcomes to achieve major wins. China projected itself as an equal to the US on the global stage, directed the tone of the relationship including around Taiwan, and Trump arrived with a phalanx of top American CEOs who he told Xi were there to "pay their respect" to Xi and to China — a display of deference that Beijing will relish

The visit reinforced several gold-positive dynamics simultaneously:

The de-dollarisation signal deepens. When the US president travels to Beijing with tech billionaires in tow to "pay respect," makes chip concessions, goes quiet on Taiwan arms sales, and comes away with 200 Boeing jets and some agricultural purchases — that's not the posture of a hegemon dictating terms. It's the posture of two roughly equal powers negotiating. That shift in perceived US dominance feeds directly into the long-term gold thesis.

The Taiwan uncertainty has actually increased, not decreased. Trump told reporters he hadn't approved the pending $14 billion Taiwan arms sale — "We're going to see what happens" — calling it "a very good negotiating chip." Using an ally's security as a bargaining chip is precisely the kind of behaviour that erodes confidence in US commitments globally and accelerates the move by other nations away from dollar-denominated security arrangements.

A predictable relationship with the US buys Beijing time to continue its rise across technological, military, and geopolitical fronts — and that's exactly what Xi got from this visit.

The honest bottom line?

The visit was less about any revelation of Chinese infrastructure and more about a broader, visible shift in power dynamics. China got most of what it wanted — stability, time, status, and implicit concessions on its core interests. The US got a Boeing order and some soybeans. Whether Trump personally walked away impressed by Beijing's gleaming streets is almost beside the point — the structural message the world took from the visit was that the centre of gravity in global affairs is shifting East. That is exactly the kind of prolonged, systemic uncertainty that historically sustains multi-year gold bull markets rather than producing short spikes.

Dont take your eyes of this relationship, but I obv believe it is good to great for gold

do your own research of course

the gnome

Once the fog of war clears and the immediate energy shock dissipates, the market will re-focus entirely on the structural, long-term reality: the domestic and international policy trajectory (s) under President Trump.

This landscape is defined by deep, systemic uncertainties that are fundamentally bullish for hard assets:

The Debt Floor: The baseline reality remains a massive, expanding U.S. national debt. Emergency military spending and structural deficits cannot be unwound by lower energy prices.

The Tariff Architecture: The administration's aggressive, unilateral tariff policies are structurally inflationary over the long term. Unlike a temporary war-driven energy spike, tariffs permanently alter supply chains and raise the baseline cost of imported goods, weakening the purchasing power of the dollar.

Weaponization & The Multipolar Shift: The unilateral style of governance continues to accelerate the "de-dollarization" trend. Central banks aren't buying gold because of short-term oil spikes; they are buying it because the global financial system is fracturing into a multipolar architecture where neutral reserve assets are non-negotiable.

This explains why institutional desks like J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo haven’t panicked during this consolidation phase, maintaining year-end targets between $6,100 and $6,300/oz. The current consolidation is a classic pause. While the war creates a noisy, short-term correlation where "bad news is temporarily bad for gold" due to the Fed's rate reaction, the resolution of the conflict will trigger the exact monetary conditions required for gold to challenge its previous all-time highs.

The postitive uncertainty-gold relationship isn't just correlation, it's now structural. The combined effect of heightened geopolitical risk and US dollar weakness accounted for roughly 16 percentage points of gold's performance in 2025 alone — underscoring the outsized influence of politics and macro uncertainty specifically during Trump's second term. World Gold Council

The US is now the source of the uncertainty, not just a bystander

This is the critical shift from previous gold bull runs. In past cycles (Gulf War, 9/11, Ukraine), the US was broadly seen as the stabilising force — investors fled TO the dollar and US Treasuries alongside gold. That dynamic has now inverted:

The US dollar is falling under the weight of soaring debt levels and mounting interest costs, a growing confidence crisis in American financial leadership, and a fast-spreading global de-dollarisation push. Even after a devastating 10% freefall in 2025, Morgan Stanley believes the USD could plummet another 11% in the next 12 months. SBC Gold

Trump's unpredictable policy style, particularly on tariffs and trade, with no clear economic direction and constantly shifting rules, has left companies and investors in a risk-off stance, favouring safe-haven assets such as gold over equities. SBC Gold

The de-dollarisation signal is historic

For the first time since 1996, gold now accounts for a larger share of central bank reserves than US Treasuries — a powerful signal of confidence in the metal's long-term value. Central banks around the world are quietly voting with their balance sheets that the dollar is no longer the unquestioned safe haven it once was.

What the major institutions think gold should do

Given the conditions, here's where the big players stand:

J.P. Morgan expects gold to push toward $5,000/oz by Q4 2026, with $6,000/oz a possibility longer term, driven by continued central bank and ETF demand. J.P. Morgan

Wells Fargo has lifted its year-end 2026 target to $6,100–$6,300/oz, reflecting strong central bank buying and policy uncertainty. SBC Gold

Citi has raised its short-term target to $5,000, citing heightened geopolitical risks, physical market shortages, and renewed uncertainty about Fed independence. SBC Gold

The World Gold Council's scenario for a global recession and geopolitical shocks implies a +15% to +30% increase from current levels.

the current US situation — internal political polarisation, unpredictable trade policy, fiscal trajectory, weakening dollar credibility, and external conflicts — represents an unusually broad and durable source of uncertainty. Unlike a single war or crisis, this is systemic. And systemic, prolonged uncertainty is exactly the environment where gold performs best over multi-year periods rather than just in brief spikes.

The current pullback from $5,600 to ~$4,488 is better understood as consolidation within a major structural bull market rather than a reversal of the trend.

DYOR, the gnome