The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more
Readings of brilliant articles from the Flying Frisby. Occasional super-fascinating interviews. Market commentary, investment ideas, alternative health, some social commentary and more, all with a massive libertarian bias. www.theflyingfrisby.com
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How To Invest In Namibia
<p>Following my recent pieces on Namibia, several readers got in touch asking pretty much the same question: Fine. But how do you actually invest there?</p><p>Frontier markets are notoriously difficult to access. Interesting companies are privately owned, illiquid, unlisted or buried on obscure exchanges your broker has never heard of, or they carry their own small company risk that does not reflect the broader themes of the country.</p><p>To try and answer the question properly, I spoke to economist Rowland Brown, founder of Cirrus Capital, the country’s largest stockbroker, to discuss the best ways to...
I've Outsourced My Judgement to AI. So Has Everyone Else.
<p>My youngest daughter, who is supremely intelligent, refuses to use AI. She doesn’t want it plagiarising her, she says, and she doesn’t want her mind to get lazy. She’s currently taking her finals at Cambridge, where, she tells me, almost everybody is using it for everything. But she won’t. And good for her.</p><p>Another friend won’t touch it either, because she is so fiercely protective of her privacy and doesn’t like AI and social media having so much access to our inner lives. </p><p>But these people are exceptions. Almost everyone I k...
Copper: The Metal AI Actually Runs On
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com<br/><br/><p>There’s a lot more to AI than software. </p><p>AI requires electricity, transformers, substations, cooling systems, data centres and more. That all means copper. Lots and lots of copper.</p><p>Right on cue, the copper price hit fresh highs last week at $6.68/lb, before pulling back. </p><p>So today I am going to take a long overdue look at copper. Was last week’s action just a spike that will soon fade away? Or was it part of s...
Namibia: Africa’s Empty Frontier
<p>Namibia sits on the south-west coast of Africa. Below Angola, above South Africa, with Botswana to the east.</p><p>Portuguese explorers first reached the coast here in the 1480s. No natural harbour, brutal surf, cold Atlantic fog, the Namib Desert running straight into the sea, little access to fresh water. They planted crosses to mark their claims, turned around and went home again, never to return.</p><p>Today that coast is known as the Skeleton Coast because of shipwrecks and whale bones.</p><p>Three hundred years later, having decided there was too much tropical disease in...
Gold and Humanity
<p>As I’m sure you know, it is all but impossible to destroy gold. Yes, yes, nuclear explosions, blah blah, mercury, aqua regia, but to all intents and purposes gold is permanent. It’s been here since before the earth itself, and it’ll be about long after it’s gone, shining away.</p><p>That also means that all the gold that has ever been mined still exists. Some of it has been lost, of course, but it’s still there somewhere, even if it’s sitting in sunken Spanish galleon off the coast of Tobago.</p><p>There are ju...
Gold Waits While Britain Cracks
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com<br/><br/><p>It is always nice to be a national of a country that is leading the pack. It makes one proud to be a world leader.</p><p>When it comes to cracking sovereign debt markets, however, you do not want to be leading the pack.</p><p>But that is where we are in the UK.</p><p>Even Mohamed El-Erian is tweeting about it.</p><p>Yields on 30-year gilts, ie UK long-term government borrowing costs, hit 5.75% this week, the...
The Problem with Mining Bull Markets
<p>Something of a thought experiment today, motivated by the fact that I don’t want to go through another bear market in mining. I’m done with them. The false dawns, the endless grinding declines, the frustration.</p><p>You might remember me saying, mid bear market a few years ago, “One more bull market and I’m done.”</p><p>So the question I’m asking today is, “when can we expect this bull market to end?” It might already be over, for all I know. Or there might be another five years in the tank.</p><p>I’m asking this...
Constable Country, the Cracks Beneath and Opportunity
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com<br/><br/><p>This weekend, on the advice of ChatGPT, I visited Constable country. That is Essex, the villages of Dedham and East Bergholt, by the River Stour, which John Constable so famously painted.</p><p>Having just spent a fortnight in Namibia, I’ve become attuned to stunning landscapes. Even so, I was blown away by the beauty of the place.</p><p>Here are some snaps to get you in the zone.</p><p>I went with a French friend who wanted to...
What I’m Doing With My Money Right Now (Mostly Nothing)
<p>Happy St George’s Day to you.</p><p>My apologies for the late arrival of this week’s missive but I found myself without electricity this morning due to, and I quote, “a fault with the electricity”Never mind. Here we are.Everything seems so headline driven and yet contradictory at the moment. With every change in circumstance, especially at the Strait of Hormuz, a different narrative seems to emerge only for it to peter away almost as quickly.</p><p>You’ve got to be long oil and gas. Buy. There’s no point. The strait is open. Sell.<...
Namibia and the Resource Curse
<p>Good Sunday to youI’m still finding my feet having just got back from Namibia. I’ve got a full country report coming, as well as a portfolio piece. But I’ve been thinking further about the country’s potential since Wednesday’s note.</p><p>Namibia has almost everything. Resources. Location. Roads. A small population. On paper, it should work.</p><p>And yet.</p><p>Driving through Windhoek, the capital, my guide pointed out a hospital: the Katutura State Hospital.</p><p>“You don’t want to get sick here,” he said.</p><p>It didn’t look too bad from...
