Callum Newman

The financial architecture of the post WW2 world rested on three assumptions: - US is a benevolent hegemon with an embedded interest in maintaining global trading order - US controls the world’s sea lanes - US treasuries could always be transformed into commodities at a moment’s notice These assumptions are melting away faster than morals at a bachelor party. So how do we now position portfolios? I wrote the following last weekend and a number of clients asked me to unlock it, so here is the paper research.gavekal.com/article/shatte…

Looks like the return of the TACO chop - the best option for this guy to settle the markets is to just STFU

While all attention is (rightly) on the Strait of Hormuz, Ukraine has hit Russia’s ability to export oil quite hard in recent days (hitting in particular Baltic Sea oil ports that seldom had come under attack during the war)

Australia is a poster child of political shambles... 48.5c in the dollar, pay for your own healthcare, your own retirement, your own education, 10% GST, 30% fuel tax..... Houses are the most expensive in the world, we are a net exporter of coal, uranium, LNG and have expensive electricity Remind me what we get for our 47-48c in the dollar? @AlboMP

EV depreciation is going to be very interesting now. With battery life easily lasting life of vehicle and the more advanced cars at 550KM+ (now 800KM for new gen); and world view on gas/diesel; I am projecting a revised view on useful life of car

A volatile session in the US as investors weigh geopolitics, yields and economic risks. @MarcusPadley outlines the key moves on @ausbiztv. ausbiz.com.au/media/the-open…

RT @globallithium: Congrats to the team @pls_global - this should put to rest any concerns that the market upswing is a short term aberrati…

$BTC is down 50%. @CalNewmanMT explains why that matters – not just for crypto, but for risk, liquidity and markets more broadly. youtube.com/watch?v=wvproZ…

The market giveth and the market taketh away. Longevity in this game is acceptance that account equity in the short term rolls from positive to negative, no different from all seasons in life. Success will come from enduring the bad weather, the traffic jam, the feeling low, the period of poor health, the bad round of golf. What separates those who last from those who don't is the ability to weather the rough patches, the drawdowns, the frustrating stretches, the times when nothing seems to work. Success comes from staying steady through the volatility and trusting that conditions will shift.

With both China and the U.S. now stockpiling metals, the center of gravity shifts from price to delivery. The question becomes who can actually deliver metals not price. That raises uncomfortable issues. Will the U.S. end up buying metals through Shanghai, and even if it tries, will it be permitted to? At the same time, can the LME and CME deliver meaningful physical volumes under stress, or are they structurally set up to clear paper risk rather than allocate supply? That pressure forces change. Western exchanges face a rapid evolution back toward physical allocation, custody, and enforceable delivery, or they risk becoming reference markets detached from the real economy. In parallel, it accelerates a race upstream, locking up metal in the ground before it ever reaches an exchange. Places like DRC , Rwanda becomes critical points of failure or success . 60% of the world Gallium output is from these countries , dial forward a few years NVDIA /AMD will use this years entire world production per annum by themselves . It’s not a tired old speculative commodity boom narrative that may or may not happen . The order demand is already visible. AI infrastructure, electrification, grid expansion, defense systems, and robotics require quantities of copper, aluminum, nickel, rare earths, and specialty metals at levels the existing system was never built to supply. This is identified, mechanical demand, not a story markets are telling themselves. What’s changing is not sentiment. It’s the load placed on a system that was designed for abundance trying to service a world of constraint .

Today's rate hike was not expected by me when we released the boom and bust report later last year. But soon after the release of our annual report, the data started to mount that a rate rise was an increasing probability. That's sometimes how it goes in forecasting! I've been on leave over the last few weeks. On my return, I will release a number of new scenarios covering this rate rise and possibly more rate rises. Needless to say, today's rate rise is a negative for housing demand, and so the outlook for housing prices in 2026.

Today’s 25-basis-point HIKE by Australia’s central bank is an illustration of a phenomenon we should expect to prevail this year: In a reversal of the "moving in tandem" approach of recent years, we are entering a period of greater policy divergence among advanced economy central banks. This is part of a larger phenomenon: A rise in dispersion, both across and within economies — on of three themes I’m expecting to play out this year, alongside volatility and fragmentarion. #economy #markets #centralbanks #australia

The perfect phone cover doesn't exi....

Inflation will continue to be high while new mortgage issuance grows. New bank lending is money creation. If you want inflation to stop you need to get the banks to write about $150 billion less in home loans per annum and the government to cut $90 billion in spending.

Melbs limping along.. Perth still🔥

The usual suspects are out with the pitchers of snake oil, screeching concern about the level of household debt in Australia. At 112% of GDP, it is the 2nd highest in the world. Yup. That's around $3.3 trillion. When the conversation of these snake oil sales people ends there, it unmasks the bias and naked scaremongering from those folk. Against that $3.3 trillion of debt, households have $11.5 trillion in housing assets, $4.5 trillion in superannuation, $4 trillion in bank deposits and direct shareholdings, plus much much more in other household assets - cars, art, furniture, wine, thoroughbred race horses, jewellery, businesses, to name a few. The balance sheet of Australian households is in fantastic shape and while debt appears to be 'high', the asset side is a huge and growing rapidly. Household debt is not a problem, it is peanuts when compared to the assets we own. youtube.com/watch?v=6c60hG…

Some haters. Some trolls. But most of you are good people, and I appreciate you all. Bring on the next 16k!

Today, Dr. COPPER, which is used for electric vehicles, AI, renewable energy, & defense, hit a new all-time high at $6.58/lb. DR. COPPER = LEADING INDICATOR OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC HEALTH.

Quick $MLX.AX Quarter summary 🎉: - Equal highest Qtr prod (#tin t’s) - Equal highest met recoveries 83% - 58% ⬆️ Q/Q EBITDA - AISC A$27,906/t - Avg received price US$40k/t (A$58k/t) - Cash balance ~A$341

I love the Financial Times, and I pay to subscribe to it. Here is why The historical mandate of the FT is to serve capitalists, and particularly financiers. Elites like that might be happy to let the populist press and social media platforms push out bullshit to the broader public, but they don’t like to eat that themselves A fund manager at BlackRock, or a trader at JP Morgan, doesn’t profit by being subjected to right wing propaganda or left wing scare stories or inflammatory hot-takes. They make money by having good information, which is why they will pay for it, and that’s why the FT can paywall its stories and still have loads of people subscribed Importantly, though, this means that the FT journalists actually end up taking pride in their work and take their job seriously. This ethos ends up making a real difference, because it means the FT doesn’t sanitize things - it’s done some of the BEST reporting on Israeli attrocities in Palestine for example - but it also doesn’t sensationalize things So, if I want to get a basic grasp of the situation in any particular country or industry, it’s the first place I go to, and with this solid core of information in place, I can then go supplement it with my lefty podcasts, or esoteric philosophy channels, or ranty Youtubers, like shaking chilli flakes onto a well-balanced meal