The Daily Reckoning

Silver miners are printing money $SIL $SILJ $PAAS dailyreckoning.com/silver-miners-…

Could shut down another very important strait

*TURKEY SOLD OR SWAPPED 58 TONS OF GOLD IN 2 WEEKS TO MARCH 20 And that's why gold plunged

Polymarket traders give Artemis II 83% odds to launch by April 30. This is the mission to send 4 astronauts around the moon. Which side of this bet would you take? (Note: this is launch only, not success.)

Reuters: 'At least 40% of Russia's oil export capacity halted.' And let's not forget the Houthis could join the war and close the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. Our bet: oil's going higher $USO $XLE

Rep. Thomas Massie is on the brink of securing a huge win for small farmers. His PRIME Act is officially included in the 2026 Farm Bill. If this passes, it will deliver a blow to Big Ag’s stranglehold on the meatpacking industry. “This would make it easier for local farmers to sell directly to local consumers using a local slaughterhouse.” How? It would cut the USDA out of inspections for local processing facilities. “You don’t need the USDA to inspect a facility that has seven employees.” “So what I’ve proposed is that you could just have the local health inspection… inspecting these slaughterhouses.” “As long as you don’t cross state lines, you shouldn’t need the federal government’s involvement in this processing.” “The good news is, I got that in the Farm Bill.” @RepThomasMassie

Private equity investors ‘have no rights’: Christopher Whalen foxbusiness.com/video/63915615… #FoxBusiness @cvpayne @FoxBusiness @JuliaLaRoche @whosalexharris

400 million barrels. Largest emergency stockpile release in history. $BRN still at $112. The market is telling you exactly what it's pricing: this won't be enough. Think.

U.S. WORKERS MORE STRUGGLING THAN THRIVING For the first time since Gallup began tracking, 49% of U.S. workers report struggling in life, while only 46% say they’re thriving. This reverses 2022–2023 trends, when a majority were thriving, highlighting a steady post-pandemic decline in workforce well-being.

they will shine again! more in tonight's DR

My hedges trying to keep up with crashing gold miners

TLDR: I am a recovering alcoholic with no fund, no credentials, and no lobbyist. I rebuilt myself from nothing. Then I broke into finance with no degree, no pedigree, and no permission. I parsed SEC filings for a $31.5 billion private credit fund called Cliffwater. Not because anyone asked me to. Because nobody else would. The filings are public, but they are buried in footnotes that are not indexed, not searchable, and not structured for analysis. I have been told by fund managers that nobody even attempts this. Billions of dollars in pension capital, and the people who manage money for a living do not bother to read the filings. So I read them. Every loan. Every amendment. Every semi-annual PIK disclosure. 2,330 positions. I hand-researched fifty. I found 189 loans where borrowers are paying interest with more debt instead of cash. I found over 50 loans that are not generating enough cash to service their debt at all — carried at par on the books of a fund that has never reported a losing month in 41 months. The fund's Sharpe ratio is 3.75. Bernie Madoff — who was fabricating returns and could pick any number he wanted — ran a 3.5. He got caught because the numbers were too smooth by Markopolos. The greatest quant fund in history, Renaissance Technologies, runs a five or six. Cliffwater is claiming risk-adjusted returns that would be impossible even if you insider-traded with perfect information every single time, because the volatility of the underlying markets would still prevent it. Nobody asked questions. Bloomberg confirmed 14% redemptions 48 hours after I published. S&P cut the fund's outlook to negative this week. Cash on hand fell 76% in six months. This is not an isolated fund. This is the structure. $9.4 trillion in private equity. $3.5 trillion in private credit. They all pay their own valuation agents. The valuation agents decide what the funds are worth. No valuation agent has ever been fired for saying the number was too high. The marks produce the NAV. The NAV produces the fees. The fees come from pensions. The pensions come from firefighters and teachers and nurses in Oregon and California and Illinois who will never read a private placement memorandum in their lives. Wall Street ran out of rich people. The endowments were full. The sovereign wealth funds were tapped. So they went downstream — to 401(k)s, to retirement accounts, to interval funds sold to people who have no idea what they own. 1. Direct the SEC and FSOC to examine Level 3 fair value practices across interval funds and BDCs. 2. Require that valuation agents be independent of the funds they mark. 3. State publicly that the current self-marking regime creates systemic risk. 4. Mandate position-level mark disclosure for every fund that accepts pension capital. There are two ways this ends. It breaks all at once like 2008 and we fix it. Or it rots slowly like Japan: one fund blows up, six weeks of quiet, another one, and nobody connects it for a decade while a generation of retirees gets destroyed. I am not asking anyone to take my word for it. I am asking them to read the filings. If you know someone in the administration, a regulator, or anyone on a legislative committee, please send this to them. One person learned this from a one-bedroom apartment. Your government can too. The will is what is missing.

Gold is selling off During a war. With oil at $100+ Confusing? Here's why 🔴 Fed stays hawkish energy inflation = no cuts 🔴 Real yields rising = headwind for non-yielding gold 🔴 Dollar strengthening = gold under pressure 🔴 Crowded longs unwinding = technical flush below 50-day MA Every time equities dropped since the war began, investors sold gold to raise liquidity. The ultimate hedge. Being sold to cover losses elsewhere. This isn't a collapse in gold's long-term thesis. It's a crowded trade getting washed out. War and $100 oil are bullish for gold. But right now the tape doesn't care about theory. It cares about margin calls. 📉 The long-term store of value case is intact. The short-term chart is ugly. Know the difference. ♟️ #gold

Following information from Iran of a projectile incident on Tuesday evening, the IAEA can confirm that a structure 350 metres from the Bushehr NPP reactor was hit and destroyed. “Although there was no damage to the reactor itself nor injuries to staff, any attack at or near nuclear power plants violates the seven indispensable pillars related to ensuring nuclear safety and security during an armed conflict and should never take place,” DG @Rafaelmgrossi said.

Qatar isn't happy with Israel (and the US?). Doha is surely trying to minimize blowback from Iran: both countries share the same gasfield, which the Iranians call "South Pars" and the Qataris call "North Field"

Asian electricity still mostly runs on coal. IEA:

This story, where the journalist was threatened due to prediction market outcomes, is genuinely insane timesofisrael.com/gamblers-tryin…

Today's the day! For today only, my classic book #CurrencyWars, which predicted Ukraine-Russia war years in advance is available on Kindle for just $1.99. Tells the story of the first Pentagon financial war game, which I facilitated at a top secret lab. amazon.com/Currency-Wars-…

"Three months later, Cliffwater said the investment in Ares Commercial Finance had cost $98.6 million and was worth $111.5 million as of Dec. 31. The paper gain had climbed to $12.8 million, again with no explanation of what happened or why the $Ares fund was still alive." wsj.com/finance/invest…