Happy Days

fire in the middle of the city during night time

Our resolve can wear down a lot after a couple of months of being hammered in the market. Choppy action for months can be harder than a steady grind down. You get your hopes up that the sector is decoupling from the general market just to get the rug pulled out from under you.

It is hard to see that equity prices go towards, or below, prices the equities were at a year ago. Getting closer, or below, your entry price is even worse. When you are up by a lot you are playing with the house money. It does not give that much consolation that commodity stocks are performing a lot better than the overvalued tech stocks or the other overvalued sectors. The only thing that matters is that we do not lose money. If you give it all back, you get angry at yourself that you did not take some of it off the table.

Still, keeping things in perspective is very important. Yes, a recession, or a several year long depression is a possibility. In that case a lot of wealth will be wiped out in the world, but we will still need food and energy to survive. I do not believe that uranium and other essential commodities will fall as much as many of the speculative options out there. (We do however see the uranium sector has outsized beta to the up- and downside again and again). If they do, I believe they will bounce quicker. Why? Because they are essential for our way of living. Most of the speculative cryptocurrencies and tech companies (with unproven business models) can not proclaim the same place in the Maslow hierarchy. Well funded companies with great management in a sector essential for the world energy supply will survive. Compared to other investments many commodities have few to no substitutes, and many of them also have very inelastic price demand. Demand can go down a certain amount during a recession, but if the commodity already is in a major supply deficit, there is a bigger margin of safety compared to other investments. You still have to pick the right companies. (Picking the wrong one, who has to do a capital raise at the worst possible time, can be the difference between bad and spectacular returns).

With hindsight on the last couple of years, I would maybe have been a little less aggressive and been more patient with putting on my positions. Lobo Tiggre, the Independent Speculator, is someone I want to emulate more. The markets have time and again given us great buying opportunities. I am however not changing my overall strategy. As with diets or fitness programs, the best strategy is the one you are able to follow. What helps a lot for me is having a job with a cash flow coming in every month. I have diversified some of my new funds into the oil sector, but I am still buying uranium. If we continue lower, I will have some money ready to take advantage of it.

Getting on the offensive

One of my older posts “The Big Commodity Short” has been shared this week. I think that most of it is still on point. If I could have made one change for my own part, I might have invested more in the oil and gas sector that has been on a tear the last year. Still, I think that I also may have dodged a bullet. The cheapest and most undervalued oil and gas equities were in Russia. When I wrote this piece we knew that rising commodity prices would lead to higher prices on other products. That this again would put pressure on the central bank banks to curb runaway prices was a given.The question is still if the central banks will continue to increase rates and cause a major recession.

One should not be in the situation where you doubt the thesis every time the market is going down. The markets do not move up or down in a straight line. I see proof almost every week that the thesis is unfolding:

On Thursday June 16th Borja (@piterloskot82) reported that CGN (China General Nuclear) and CGNPC (China General Nuclear Power Corporation) have entered into a new sales framework agreement for three years between 2023 and 2025 for 3.12 million pounds per year. The interesting part was that 40% of the contract was fixed at $61.78/lb multiplied by an inflation multiplier, but the majority (60%) of the contract was linked to the spot price:

I have two takeaways from this contract: The first one is that the fixed part of the contract is way higher than the spot price at the moment ($61.78/lb versus $46.98/lb). The second part is that CGN has the majority of the contract linked to the spot price at the future delivery date. CGN would not have 60% linked to the spot price if they did not think it would be a lot higher than $61.78 during the contract period 2023-2025.

We also got the news that Global Atomic has received a Letter of Intent from a major North American utility to produce 2.1 million pounds of uranium from 2025 to 2030. Utilities are looking for pounds outside the major producers with developers to diversify supply. (Previously we have seen companies like Encore Energy contracting pounds for delivery in 2023). We did not see a lot of this before 2021. Focusing on just the general markets and the spot price of uranium going down (while SPUT is getting stink bids filled) becomes very myopic with this backdrop.

The challenge now is to get on the offensive. When looking back at the time we are now five years in the future, what do you think will be the best decision you can make today? Do you believe this is a buying opportunity or should we abandon ship and wait for better times? I am looking for more cash to deploy more steadily, but I will try to be a bit patient the next couple of months.

Why do I still own gold and silver?

white and gray bird on the bag of brown and black pig swimming on the beach during daytime

The majority of my articles are about uranium. My second biggest position is, even if I do not write a lot about it, in physical precious metals and the miners. Owning precious metals after August 2020 has been frustrating to say the least. Why do I still hold these positions when they are underperforming?

To defend an allocation to the physical gold and silver positions, we have to understand that all investments are not for maximizing the upside. Our allocation to physical should be considered more of an insurance. Something you only want for protection against a negative event like a currency devaluation. (The situation in Venezuela comes to mind). Investments in the miners are more for speculation and participating in the upside.

Inflation protection

Many people own precious metals as a hedge against inflation. In that environment, veteran investors will be quick to tell you that investments in energy and other commodities perform even better than precious metals. (A good reason to hold uranium, oil and other commodities).

The other benefit you get by owning precious metals is for diversification, and that it still performs in a deflationary environment. Let us compare the S&P 500 to the performance of gold during the financial crisis of 2008.

Gold during the 2008 Financial Crisis

During the 2008 financial crisis the stock market fell by more than 50% after the housing bubble popped.

From the top og $1549 in October 2007 it took about 16 months before the S&P 500 bottomed out at $735 in February 2009, down 52,5% from the 2007 top. From there, it would take another 49 months before the S&P 500 got back to break even in March 2013. In total, the S&P 500 spent more than 5 years underwater before it managed to get back above its 2007 highs.

The price of gold during the same time told a completely different story. From the S&P 500 top in October 2007, to the bottom in February 2007, gold went up 27%. By the time the S&P 500 was back at break even in March 2013, gold had gone up by more than 120%.

This is not an example to show how much you could have made if you rode the gold bull market perfectly. This is how part of your portfolio could have performed (not inflation adjusted) during the time of the financial crisis if you were diversified into physical gold. Owning an asset that protects you like this can make a big difference if you want to protect your wealth.

Caveat – Gold stocks are still stocks

It is important to emphasize that physical gold performed well as a hedge, not gold mining stocks. The gold stocks performed very similarly to the general stock market, they just fell even more. (On the positive side, they bottomed out and got back to break even earlier than the general market). Gold stocks were not a good hedge during the financial crisis.

What I am doing

Markets do not move when we want them to. I have a position in physical gold and silver for protection, and in the miners for upside. (I look to add to this, and to my cash position in 2022). Many talk about scaling out of some of their commodity positions, and into gold and silver miners later. I do not know if the market will be there for them when that time comes. I therefore have some exposure to gold and silver at all times.

My portfolio is a mix of physical and Sprott’s gold or silver trusts. In addition I own some miners. For miners the big ETFs are where most of the funds have gone. I also have some select companies who have jockeys with a track record for making money for their shareholders. (Rick Rule has mentioned some of these jockeys in earlier interviews). Like everything else, you can get these companies at reasonable valuations if you buy them during weakness in the market.

Silver: Do we want to have a free market or do we want shortages?

I am back with my tinfoil hat to write a bit more on the silver market. Doombergs recent article on the copper and oil markets have put things into a bigger perspective for me. In addition I have relied on the work of Nate Fisher and Ronan Manly on the silver market.

Oil

I will start with referencing Doombergs 25. October 2021 article “Doctor Copper Is Sick“ where they started with explaining what happened in April 2020 when the oil price traded negative $37.63 a barrel:

«The front-month May 2020 West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in Cushing, Oklahoma is the contract that traded negative and – critically – the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) allowed it to happen.»

«Whatever you might think about the CME’s decision, few doubt the sanctity of that market now. Participants understood the rules, the rules didn’t change, a clearing price was found, and life went on. Production of oil was curtailed, creative storage solutions were implemented, prices recovered, and excess inventory was worked off in an orderly fashion as the economy rebounded.»
Doomberg

In this case long traders were punished because they did not have a place to take delivery of the oil they had purchased. For anyone who believes in capitalism, this is how you do it. You do not interfere with the price or change the rules. Price is the market clearing mechanism. Everyone in the market knows the rules already, and you do not change them when some of the participants are in trouble. The market was allowed to find a market clearing price at negative $37.63 a barrel, and this was reached without outside interference.

Copper

On the The London Metal Exchange (LME) however, the price was not allowed to find a clearing price in the copper market:

«somebody was caught naked short and could not make delivery. They collected money from another trader at some point in the past on the promise that they would have copper to give them, but when the time came, they couldn’t make good on their contractual obligations.»
Doomberg

Market participants have to know the rules in the market they operate in. If a naked short sees the price of copper goes up, they have to run around to sellers of physical copper to buy from them. If they can’t find anyone to sell them copper, they can’t deliver on their obligations. (To use GameStop as an example: the short sellers were forced to buy back the shares they were short at prices way above what they had already sold). Those are the rules, and they have not changed. This led the copper price at the short end of the curve to go vertical.

LME interfered and allowed participants with short positions to avoid delivery. The rules were changed. People who have followed the commodities markets have expected copper going up with increased demand, and have taken long positions in anticipation of this. (As we saw in the oil market, being long is not without its risks). Interference to protect short sellers does damage to the market. Inventories of copper were low because supply could not keep up with demand. Increased demand for a product is not manipulation.

«the LME damaged its credibility in the marketplace. It either facilitates price discovery and thereby serves a useful purpose, or it doesn’t. Apparently, it doesn’t.»
Doomberg

The positive take away from the oil and copper market is at least that it is communicated to the market. Many find it is a lot worse in the silver market.

Silver

Moving on to silver I will follow the example of Nate Fisher and make the disclaimer that everything I write about the silver market are allegations only.

I am using the articles “The Great Silver Conspiracy – should we have hit $50 silver in February? Yup.” by Nate Fisher and “LBMA misleads Silver Market with False Claims about Record Silver Stocks” by Ronan Manly as my reference.

They are very thorough articles so I hope you will read them for reference. I am doing the cliff notes version here:

Starting at $24.85 on 28. January, the price of silver spiked up. Silver was going into the weekend 30. and 31. January at about $27.00. Over the weekend there were massive retail raids of physical silver all over the world, and several sellers sold out their inventory. This had the effect that retail sellers would have to source new inventory. Into Monday 1. February the price of silver went up even more, and hit $30 before ending the day at about $29. A massive move in a short amount of time. The next day on 2. February the paper price on silver was smashed down over $3.50. – This was at a time where there was massive physical interest with retail silver selling out, and money was pouring into vehicles like the SLV and PSLV.

The reason for people buying SLV and PSLV was simple:

(this) “led many of us to buy SLV or SLV call options expecting the float in the LBMA warehouses to be exhausted and force SLV to go to the open spot market to buy silver at increasing prices. Potentially hundreds of millions of ounces would need to be sourced, and it led investors to believe that the price of SLV would thus go sky high.“

“Now, with SLV, investors at the time were led to believe that if they bought shares in SLV, that SLV would then add the appropriate ounces to the trust.“
Nate Fisher

Over a three trading days period between 29. February and 3. February SLV claimed to have sourced a massive 118 Moz, and barely moved the paper prize of silver in the process. (With a yearly consumption of 1,000 Moz, a three day shock of more than 10% of this is huge). People who did not believe this were asked to take off our tinfoil hats.

“However, it appears that somewhere around February 1st, SLV changed their prospectus to suggest that “not all of the silver is there.”
Nate Fisher

What a coincidence. A fund that at one time had in their prospectus that they had fully allocated to silver, suddenly changed to say it might not be all there.

Later, in April when they closed the books for March, someone found a 110 Moz accounting error in “one of the LBMA vaults”. (Tinfoil hat back on).

«In short, instead of silver holdings in LBMA vaults having risen by 3,863 tonnes (or 11%) in March, the new LBMA claim is that the silver inventories rose by 561 tonnes (or 1.6%). Which is 6.88 times less.
Instead of a 124.2 million oz increase, the increase was 18 million, a difference of a massive 106.1 million ozs. Instead of record silver holdings in London, there was no record. Therefore, the folks at the Guinness Book of Records are not needed. The record still belongs to March 2020, when 1.175 million ozs of silver was claimed by the LBMA to be stored in London.»
Ronan Manly

There are a lot more factors in play here, but I suggest you read the two articles I have linked on the subject. In short what happened was the following:

SLV misled investors to think they had added 118 Moz of silver, and they did not. (If they had gone out into the spot market to buy these 118 Moz, the silver price would have moved significantly, and sharply higher. In turn, this much higher price would have attracted even more buyers and speculators – driving the price even higher. Silver and many commodities act like a Giffen good: A good that people consume more of as the price rises). Furthermore, SLV changed their prospectus during this time, before they months later discovered the accounting error.

I can attest to, as a person who works in accounting, and has reporting every month, that in even smaller companies you will have some quality control over what you report. If there is a big change month over month in a reported number, it will always be investigated, verified and commented on. «I see we have a 10% increase in inventory this month. What is the reason for this?» Is something that will be asked in situations like this. Especially if holding bullion is your main business. The responsible for purchasing and logistics then have to confirm it. People make the entries, and we always have to double check for human error.

The only thing I am unsure of in this case is what price we could have seen in February. Could it have hit $50? One can never know how things would have played out without interference. I am sure that when price was not allowed to spike up, and find willing sellers, we have just kicked the can down the road. The market has not been given price signals to increase production, and companies like First Majestic are holding back part of their production. People around the world are seeing rising prices. Those who have read up on history are buying real assets, cryptocurrencies, commodities and precious metals. I am sure we will see situations later where we will have a similar run on silver, and there will not be enough to go around. The playing card with “accounting error” will not be possible to use again. Silver investors have also learned not to use vehicles like SLV, and will only buy physical or use PSLV that actually stack silver for their customers.