Global Intelligence Letter

Welcome to my dedicated feed on global investing, global economics, and the social, financial, and political trends propelling our world toward crisis. As an economic Futurist and a writer with 40+ years of experience (17 at The Wall Street Journal), I dive into central banking trends, gold and silver markets, bitcoin/crypto dynamics, and strategies to navigate the opportunities and risks that exist today. Join my monthly Global Intelligence Letter for in-depth analysis and picks: bit.ly/GlobalIntelLtr #GlobalEcon #Investing #Gold #Silver #Crypto #CentralBank #Fed #Economy #Inflation #Futurist #copper #InterestRates

For those who have asked me over the years, this is where I buy and store my silver. Been a client there since 2020 or so. Based in Singapore - an excellent location for offshore metals storage. (My affiliate link if you want to use this gift from the metals gods to grab some gold and silver coins/bullion.) bullionstar.com/?r=660

Gold and silver prices dip - and demand at our Bullion Center hasn't slowed down. We're seeing two buyers for every seller - meaning more accumulation than liquidation. Physical buyers are using this dip as an opportunity to add more.

A point of perspective to keep in mind as all this gold handwringing plays out: Between 1999 and today, the price of a typical house in the US more than doubled in dollar terms. In gold terms, the price of an average American house fell to 80 ounces of gold from 750 ounces back in 1999 - a 90% price reduction. Or take the Ford F-150 truck, which Americans love to buy. In 1999, a stripped-down version sold for about $21,000. Today, it's $30,000. But in gold terms, an F-150 today costs about 6.5 ounces or so vs. 75 ounces in 1999... another 90% price reduction. Why? Because of the first quarter of this century, America's fiscal situation has continually and constantly degraded. That is not suddenly going to change. It's actually going to get worse, 100% guaranteed. The moral of our story: This moment in gold's trajectory is entirely irrelevant to the bigger picture - the ever-worsening US debt situation and the crisis/dollar reset that is guaranteed to emerge, possibly/likely before this decade ends. Buy gold. Seriously, use this moment to buy protection for what's coming. As the last quarter century has proven, you will preserve your purchasing power. #Gold #PreciousMetals #GoldPrice #XAUUSD #SoundMoney #DebtCrisis #DollarCollapse #Inflation #WealthProtection #Investing

Everyone is explaining why gold fell. Few are telling you why you should be a buyer into the bloodshed: The gold story is not over. Far from it. Gold has been hijacked by the ramifications of war in a particular troublesome part of the world. But war is exogenous to the gold story. That story: extreme and ever-worsening US debt that will 100% end in a crisis or a dollar reset. No different than 1933 and 1971. There is no other path at this point. The minute the war ends, the uptrend resumes because the fundamental story has not changed. It has actually strengthened because the US debt situation is now worse than when the war began. #gold #investing #debt #IranWar‌

Gold just had its worst week since 1983. During an active war. That's insane. This was supposed to be gold's moment. Here's the logic: Gold at $5,500 wasn't priced for safety. It was priced for a trade. A very crowded one. Central banks bought gold after Russia's assets were frozen in 2022. Everyone piled on. ETF flows went extreme. Gold ETFs hit records. Now the war is forcing those same central banks to spend reserves, not add to them. Gulf oil states that can't export through Hormuz may flip from buyers to sellers. When the crowd that drove the rally needs liquidity, they sell what they own. Gold got hit first because it went up most.

Sorry, but the silver story did not break. It has been sidelined by a leverage event. But in saying the story broke is saying that post-war there is no more AI, EV, green-energy revolution. When the war ends, or the market gets tired of the war thesis, gold and silver resume their uptrend. Copper too. The dollar resumes its downtrend.

BREAKING: Silver has lost 43 percent of its value since January 29th. It set an all-time high of $121.67 that day. It closed Friday at $69.50. In less than eight weeks, nearly half the value of the world’s most hyped precious metal evaporated while Chinese banks sold out 600 kilograms of gold bars every morning in under a minute. Two metals that were supposed to move together in a war moved in opposite directions so violently that the divergence is no longer a market event. It is a verdict. Gold is money. Silver is an industrial metal that cosplays as money until the moment it has to choose. The moment arrived on February 28 when the first bombs fell on Iran. Silver chose the factory. Upwards of 60 percent of silver demand is industrial. JP Morgan’s commodities desk confirmed the figure this year: electronics, AI chip packaging, solar panels, electric vehicle wiring, semiconductor conductivity, data centre contacts. When energy prices spike from a Gulf war that closed the Strait of Hormuz, every factory that consumes silver faces higher input costs. When those costs trigger stagflation, central banks respond with rate hikes. The Federal Reserve now prices a 50 percent probability of hiking by October. The ECB and Bank of England are repricing three or more hikes each in 2026. Higher rates strengthen the dollar. A stronger dollar crushes metals priced in dollars. Silver’s monetary thesis collapsed under the weight of its own industrial identity. Gold has no industrial identity to collapse. Gold sits in vaults. It does not cool wafers. It does not conduct current through chip packaging. It does not solder solar cells. Gold fell from $5,589 in January to approximately $4,494 this week. But Chinese retail buyers bought the dip in under 60 seconds every morning. The PBOC extended its purchasing streak to 16 consecutive months. Seventy-seven percent of central banks intend to increase gold reserves. The paper price dropped. The physical demand did not. Gold’s floor is not a price. It is a policy. Silver has no central bank buyer of last resort. No PBOC purchasing 16 months straight. No 600-kilogram quotas selling out at dawn. Silver’s floor is factory demand, and factory demand just absorbed three simultaneous shocks: energy costs from the war, rate hikes from the inflation the war caused, and a helium shortage from the same war that is strangling the semiconductor fabs where silver is consumed. Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex supplied 30 to 33 percent of global helium before Iran struck it. Helium is irreplaceable in chip fabrication: wafer cooling, vacuum environments, lithography stability, leak detection. SK Hynix sourced 64.7 percent of its helium from Qatar. Fabs are reporting two to three months of buffer. When helium runs short, production slows. When production slows, silver demand for chip packaging falls. The helium trap does not just threaten NVIDIA’s GPU supply chain. It threatens the industrial demand that is silver’s only remaining thesis. From $121.67 to $69.50 in less than eight weeks. Gold fell too but found a floor built by a billion Chinese citizens and 77 percent of the world’s central banks. Silver found no floor because no sovereign institution accumulates silver as a strategic reserve. No nation builds monetary sovereignty from a metal that loses half its value when the factories that use it shut down. The war revealed what silver is. It is a commodity with a monetary story attached. The story holds during calm. The story breaks during war. Gold needs no story. Gold is the story. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

China understands the math of supply/demand. It understands the fundamentals that are propelling the silver story well into the future. And it understands that no massive silver mines are coming online anytime soon and that silver supplies are inadequate for what’s happening now and what’s coming. Buy TF out of cheap silver stocks line Metalla Royalty, Pan American Silver and Endeavor Silver while you still can.

🔥 China’s ravenous appetite for silver lifted overseas purchases to an eight-year high at the start of 2026, as importers fed a surge in industrial and investment demand. February had a record month, nearly 470 tons… - Bloomberg

Lots and lots of academics research underscores your point. Amateurs invest at the top, confident in their acumen, and then panic sell at the bottom. If you’re savvy and you understand the future we’re racing towards, you’re a buyer of gold and silver right now, and you’re selling an artificially strong dollar to buy Swiss francs and bitcoin.

RETAIL INVESTORS SELLING ALL THEIR GOLD AND SILVER AT THE EXACT BOTTOM.

@GordonGekko Gold sees new ATH before the year is over. Silver resumes its uptrend and is back above $100. The fundamentals for both metals have not changed.

🩸 Can anyone explain why Gold and silver are in FREE FALL? This is just the beginning. Everything is playing out exactly as I predicted. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when the bottom is in.

War remains gold’s ally. The cost of war is causing certain countries to unwind their golden wealth to shore up their currencies. That’s exogenous. Gold sees new ATH this year because war only exacerbates the fundamentals driving gold higher - namely America in decline because of extreme debt that is propelling the country toward a crisis and a dollar reset.

The paradox nobody saw coming. The very war meant to drive gold higher is the force dragging it down. Gold just posted its WORST week since 1983. Down ~11% this week to around $4,488/oz, marking its BIGGEST DROP in 43 years. That's over 15% crash since the US-Israel strikes on Iran began, erasing nearly $6T in market cap. Here's the chain reaction: → Iran war spiked oil, reigniting inflation → Inflation means NO Fed rate cuts → No rate cuts mean bonds beat gold → Stronger dollar makes gold expensive globally → Panic selling did the rest War was gold's oldest ally. Until this one.

@Silver__Santa But is crypto crashing? BTC has been flat. Doesn’t really speak to crashing does it?

Gold is crashing. Silver is crashing. Crypto is crashing. Stocks are crashing. Dollar is crashing. Real Estate is crashing.

Why? I’ve been invested in gold since it was $1k. In silver since $16. In BTC at less than $20k. So exactly how am I fucked? Not sure I understand your point. Moreover the fundamentals for all three are extremely bullish though the end of this decade because the fundamentals of American debt is highly problematic for the world.

Everyone invested in Gold, Silver, or Bitcoin is FUCKED.

This is what I’ve been saying and telling my newsletter subs. Inflation is heating up, but… The jobs market is for shit, recession is incoming, and stagflation is house-hunting as it prepares to settle in for a long spell. The rest of this decade is going to be highly problematic for the US economy and for the Fed. And with US debt at $39 trillion and rising, the Fed has no hopes of raising rates without causing deeper financial problems/monetary crisis for Uncle Sam. Gold sees $10k before it ever sees $1k again. Miners are on deep sale today relative to their future.

Just a reminder for people who have a case of The Sky is Falling and who think gold is dead… $100’from the year 2000 would buy you $53 worth of goods today. $100 worth of gold in 2000 would buy you $1,600 worth of goods today. Perspective is important. Understanding why you own an asset - despite volatility - is equally important. Gold’s long term uptrend remains fully intact because the dollar’s struggles with far too much US debt is only worsening by the day.

This is short-term thinking. It presupposes that today reflects every tomorrow. Those who understand the fundamentals driving gold, silver, bitcoin, medical/pharma, etc. are calm in the storm because we understand what’s coming and why. This moment means nothing in the larger picture.

Gold fell below $5,000 while oil surged past $112. Treasury yields rose. Gold sold off. When bonds AND gold fail as hedges simultaneously, the only safe haven left is cash. And cash is losing to inflation.

Not even remotely a capitulation moment. The investors who were in gold for the wrong reasons are gone or fleeing in panic because they never understood the fundamentals that have driven gold to one ATH after another for the last 25 years. (A trend destined to continue.) Those who own gold for the right reasons have gone nowhere. We’re still here, ignoring the noise because the noise says precisely nothing about the future. Gold very likely sees new ATH before the year is out.

Wow. We just saw the largest outflows from gold funds since October. Is this a capitulation moment? 🤔

This is the moment to look past the exogenous noise and focus on long term fundamentals driving the silver market… and use that rationale to own silver exposure by way of stocks like @metallaroyalty (MTA). Down 25% for no fundamental reason beyond panicked-investor reaction to a war that does nothing to change the trajectory of AI, EVs or the green energy revolution that demand silver to survive. Long-term thinking is where wealth is made. Short-term thinking is where wealth opportunities are missed. #silver

🇨🇳CHINA PULLS SILVER FROM GLOBAL MARKETS TO MEET SURGING DEMAND- Bloomberg Silver's dip back below $70 is only going to exacerbate China's relentless demand...

I see all these smooth-brain posts all over Xitter these days saying silver is dead. It tells me that the person posting is reading a chart and completely ignoring (not even remotely understanding) the industrial fundamentals driving silver. AI, EVs, the green energy revolution - they all exist because of silver. Without silver, they’re effectively dead. Yet silver supplies cannot keep up with demand, and silver miners can’t open new mines at the flip of a switch (most silver is a byproduct of gold/copper/zinc mining, so it’s not a priority, just a happy accident. Exploding demand > supply fundamentals… and the laws of supply/demand say silver prices go mooning soon enough. Well into triple digits. Use this moment to build positions in silver miners and silver streamers like Pan American Silver, Endeavor Silver and Metalla Royalty and Streaming.

China silver imports hit record high – nearly 800 tonnes – in January and February China's silver imports hit an eight-year high in the first two months of 2026 as burgeoning demand from the industrial and investment sectors boosted local price premiums, drained domestic silver stockpiles, and drove unprecedented foreign purchases, according to the latest customs data released Friday. In January and February, #China imported over 790 tonnes of #silver, the data showed, with February alone accounting for a year-over-year record of 470 tonnes in imports... Full story at Kitco: kitco.com/news/article/2…

Not likely. Silver has massive tailwinds. AI survives on silver. EV cars survive on silver. The green energy revolution survives on silver. Yet supplies of silver cannot meet demand, and not enough new silver mines are coming on line to ramp up supplies adequately. Your thesis is based on a chart that says nothing about supply/demand fundamentals driving the market long term. Charting is a measure of temporary popularity and/or investor attention span. Silver is well above $100 again soon enough, and could very well see $200. Industry fundamentals > charts.

Silver to $35 long term

Exactly what I’ve been saying for years. In the 1960s central banks were gobbling up gold at a record pace because they saw where the dollar was headed. And in 1971 Nixon proved the bankers were wise when he closed the gold window and devalued the dollar. Today central bankers are again buying gold at a record pace because they know the next dollar reset is soon to arrive. Dollar will lose value, gold will soar to maintain purchasing power. This is 20/20 foresight. And it’s easy to see.

When central banks hoard gold, even they know the game is over.

Peter, gold is down sharply while Bitcoin is holding steady around with minimal drawdown. That's not 'Bitcoin down so little' — it's Bitcoin showing far better relative strength during this risk-off / liquidity squeeze move. Gold is getting sold harder despite the macro narrative because Bitcoin already sold off late last year. Now it’s stability in the storm. BTC isn't a 'gift horse' here; it's behaving more like digital gold in a world where even physical gold gets liquidated when margin calls hit. HODLers aren't ignoring reality — they're seeing one asset actually preserve purchasing power better in this moment.

Not sure what's more surprising, that gold is down so much or that Bitcoin is down so little. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth HODLers. Just sell your Bitcoin now and buy gold! schiffgold.com