John Rubino Substack - Talk about cross-currents. Oil, which affects the cost of pretty much everything, is down about 15% so far this month. That’s extremely deflationary. Housing, meanwhile, is right up there with oil for its impact on the cost of living. And home price inflation is rapidly headed for zero overall, with many formerly hot markets already […]

John Rubino Substack - Suddenly, gold miner shareholders have the problem everyone wants: They’ve made fairly serious recent money and now must decide whether to convert some of their paper profits to cash. Anyone who’s been round-tripped in a big position understands how serious this question is. Jim Rickards, author of a series of best-selling investment books, just weighed […]

John Rubino Substack - We’re heading into another earnings season, and with gold outperforming pretty much everything else, this one is looking even better for the miners than Q4. For context, here’s the XAU gold/silver miners index for the past six months. Note the nice run that started when excellent Q4 miner earnings combined with a rising gold price: And for […]

John Rubino Substack - Just a quick reminder that in times of market stress, gold and silver will sometimes diverge, with gold catching a safe haven bid and silver selling off as a cyclical industrial commodity. During such times, silver can get very cheap relative to gold, an imbalance that’s usually rectified by silver outperforming for a while. This […]

John Rubino Substack - This post’s title sketches out a formula that ends with the world’s governments panic-printing their currencies. To flesh out the thesis, let’s start with energy’s impact on our cost of living: Energy Is In Everything Pretty much all of life’s necessities have an energy component. A car, for instance, requires electricity and petrochemicals to build […]

John Rubino Substack - Pretty much every “buy” recommendation in this newsletter has come with a version of this caveat: We’re in the late stages of a long credit expansion, which means a potentially brutal recession and/or bear market is likely imminent. So approach these stocks with caution. Don’t jump in all at once. Instead, add to positions in […]

John Rubino Substack - Gold and silver are being pulled down by a general equities bear market this morning. That’s not surprising, but the details are interesting. Some background: Rush to get gold to the U.S. halts abruptly with tariff exemption (Bloomberg) – A massive arbitrage trade that has drawn tens of billions of dollars’ worth of gold and […]

John Rubino Substack - Two strange and unprecedented things (“scandals,” “outrages” — it’s hard to know what to call them) are triggering meme-makers as this is written. First, Elon Musk morphed from industrialist to government efficiency crusader, in the process enraging the segment of the population that owns Teslas, leading them to … vandalize Teslas: The other thing was that government […]

John Rubino Substack - Remember that long, boring stretch where gold couldn’t break resistance at $2,000/oz? Here it is in the context of this century’s bull market — note the definitive breakout in early 2024. What’s driving the bull market? Central bank buying. And what’s driving that? Geopolitics. Emerging market central banks started planning for a post-dollar world when the Ukraine […]

John Rubino Substack - Most of the following charts are from Wolf Street or the Kobeissi letter. Definitely follow those guys. Cratering Condos   There’s no way to overstate how crazy US home prices have become. To take just one metric, the median US household income is $79,200, but it takes an annual income of $124,200 to buy the average American house. That’s […]

John Rubino Substack - Gold hit $3,000/oz last week. I’ve been waiting a long time to write that sentence! Now get ready for a torrent of gold miner cash flow to ignite a takeover boom. Mining analyst Marin Katusa just posted some thoughts on what this means. Here’s an excerpt: Gold Miners, the New Margin Monsters Most gold mines have costs […]

John Rubino Substack - Bubble Bubble Report’s Jesse Colombo just weighed in on the “Why isn’t silver $100!?” debate with a compelling case for manipulation. Here’s an excerpt: The mechanics of silver price suppression Many precious metals investors have heard about silver manipulation or suspected it, but few fully understand how it works or can clearly explain it. Many also […]

John Rubino Substack - Back in the nutritional Dark Ages, my wife and I would take our kids to McDonald’s and give them a choice of Sprite or Coke with their burgers and fries. We didn’t know at the time that the whole menu was just empty calories. Sorry kids! But it’s way worse than that. This is the […]

John Rubino Substack - Copper has had a quietly impressive run so far in 2025. But much more is coming as mainstream investors tune into the story. Consider this, from NPR of all places: Forget about rare earth minerals. We need more copper (NPR) – In recent weeks, you’ve likely heard a lot about rare-earth substances, thanks to President Trump’s stalled […]

John Rubino Substack - Nomi Prins just posted an explanation for the uranium miners’ recent correction, and why it’s a buying opportunity for those who missed the previous big run. Here’s an excerpt: Why NOW is the Time for Uranium   Here’s the latest outlook on uranium and what you need to know about the factors impacting its price. As we round […]

John Rubino Substack - I just watched a disturbingly plausible video about the rising odds of a UK civil war. The source is David Betz, a professor of “war in the modern world” at King’s College, London. He recently published an article titled Civil War Comes to the West in Military Strategy Magazine, in which he claimed that multiculturalism and mass immigration […]

John Rubino Substack - Gold (and now silver) are starting to do things not seen for over a decade. And the resulting charts are just gorgeous. Some recent examples: Foreign central banks are moving out of US Treasuries and into gold: Overindebted countries are cranking the money printing up to panic levels: Gold and silver are responding with identical […]

John Rubino Substack - After World War II, the US and its allies were worried about staying in touch during a nuclear war. So they (I’m vastly over-simplifying here) created networking protocols and tools that eventually became the Internet. At first, these links were limited to scientists and the military. But as the tech was refined, it became clear […]

John Rubino Substack - Germans are known for their aversion to monetary instability, with good reason. They were victims of an epic hyperinflation in the 1920s, and don’t want to go back there. See: Rhyming History: Weimar Germany’s Hyperinflation. Now fast forward to the 2010s, when Germany was widely seen as both the best-run major country and the financial bedrock of […]

John Rubino Substack - Lots of disclosures are being promised…but there’s a bit of skepticism out there: POV: Elon Musk and DOGE arriving at Fort Knox for the audit. pic.twitter.com/Zgl599XMXy — Carl ₿ MENGER ⚡️🇸🇻 (@CarlBMenger) February 17, 2025   NSA Agents Horrified People Spying On Their Personal Conversations (Babylon Bee) – A group of federal employees expressed feelings […]

John Rubino Substack - Real estate is cyclical, which means it has its booms and busts, each of which differs slightly from the last. But today’s US housing market is so outside the norm that its strangeness has become the story’s main theme. Consider: Numerically speaking, housing used to be driven by young families buying starter houses. But today, […]

John Rubino Substack - Now, let’s zoom in on specific sectors that seem to be rolling over. Auto loan delinquency rates are spiking: Housing is frozen, but with inventories of homes for sale rising, a significant price decline looks imminent: Buyers Strike Crushes Green Shoots of Demand for Existing Homes, amid Surging Supply, Active Listings & Days on Market […]

John Rubino Substack - Since the start of this century, gold has outperformed stocks — despite stocks being in an epic bull market: You’d think that gold would have gotten more attention after such an impressive run. But until recently, this has remained a largely neglected asset class. But Now…Damn   In just the past few weeks, the news […]

John Rubino Substack - Betting against overvalued stocks can be insanely profitable — if you use put options and get the timing right. But those are big “ifs”. Here’s a cautionary tale. Back in May of 2023, when this newsletter was new and its recommended Portfolios needed fleshing out, I named the homebuilder stocks as excellent short candidates. Home prices were too high, […]

John Rubino Substack - For readers not familiar with Matt Taibbi, he’s an old-school, 1960s liberal reporter who is appalled by the corruption of his industry. In the following article, he explains why the USAID drama is important and (at least partially) untangles the rat’s nest of interlocking, taxpayer-funded entities that have turned the search for truth into a propaganda sausage […]