$OIL / $GOLD + $OIL / $SILVER | A 1970s lesson A lot of comparisons with the 1970s are being made, and not without reason: persistent inflation, stagflation risk, geopolitical stress, oil-supply shocks, weak real purchasing power and fiscal/monetary pressure... What I find interesting is the relative-performance picture. For much of the 1970s, oil actually outperformed both gold and silver. Precious metals only really went vertical toward the latter stages of the decade, particularly silver into 1979/80. The oil/silver ratio respected that long-term structure remarkably well before silver’s final blow-off changed the picture dramatically. That may be the more useful lesson: real assets can all work in the same macro regime, but they don’t necessarily lead at the same time. And today? Both oil/metal ratios are starting to hint that #energy is taking the baton again. I’d still like to see this confirmed over several months, not several weeks, but the higher-timeframe breakout is difficult to ignore. Not calling the next three weeks. I’m talking about the potential next leg of the cycle....

Told subscribers before the weekend I was buying $USO calls because I really liked the structure here, both in $OIL and USO. Friday gave us that sharp flush, but the broader setup still looked constructive to me, so I added to the longs. Now Trump says he has rejected Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Weekend oil is already +2%... Structure seemed to be forecasting the move. The news may have just sealed the deal...

INFLATION: THE DONALD DUCK TEST 🦆 During my Master’s in Economics, roughly 20 years ago, I got into an argument with a professor about inflation. His view was basically: inflation = rising consumer prices. My argument was that rising prices are the symptom, while monetary expansion and the declining purchasing power of money are part of the underlying mechanism. He told me I was wrong. A few weeks later he came back and admitted: “You were right” I was also that annoying student showing professors ShadowStats alongside official CPI numbers... Fast-forward to 2026. I stumbled across some old Donald Duck magazines, something virtually every Dutch 🇳🇱 person knows, and decided to run a simple reality check... In 2009 a Donald Duck subscription cost €96.20 per year. In 2018: €158. Today the regular annual tariff is about €239.40. €96.20 → €239.40 in 17 years = +149%. Now compare that with official Dutch inflation. Using CBS CPI data, the general price level increased by roughly 52% over approximately the same period. So €96.20 adjusted by official inflation gets you to roughly €146 today, not €239. That means today’s Donald Duck subscription is roughly 64% more expensive than the 2009 price would be if it had simply followed official CPI (CP Lie...). And remember what sits underneath official inflation statistics: quality adjustments, changing expenditure weights, product replacement, substitution effects and different statistical treatments of housing. In the US you can also add hedonic quality adjustments, geometric averaging and Owners’ Equivalent Rent... These techniques are published, not secret, but they matter enormously for what CPI actually measures... That is the key point: CPI is a constructed statistical index. It is not necessarily the same thing as measuring how much more expensive the exact same lifestyle has become for you. If steak becomes too expensive and households switch to chicken, spending patterns change. If a €1,000 laptop becomes a €1,200 laptop but is much faster, part of that price increase can be attributed to improved quality rather than pure inflation. If spending patterns change, the weights change. If housing costs explode, the statistical treatment of housing determines how and when that shows up in the index. None of this means statisticians are secretly making numbers up. It means headline CPI measures a very specific statistical concept, and that is not automatically identical to the loss of purchasing power people experience in everyday life. And then comes the marketing... DPG Media currently advertises “60% discount” on Donald Duck. Great headline. But that 60% applies only to the introductory period. First six months: €7.95 per month. Next six months: €12.78 per month. First-year cost: €124.38. After 12 months: the regular tariff kicks in, currently around €239 per year. So no, the subscription itself has not suddenly become “60% cheaper”. You are being offered a heavily discounted entry period before moving onto a regular price that has risen dramatically over time. Clever marketing @DPGMediaNL Very clever... And this matters because inflation figures do not live inside economics textbooks. CPI and related inflation measures feed into indexation, contracts, wage negotiations, pensions, taxes, benefits and countless other financial decisions. So whenever someone tells me “inflation was only X%”, my first question is always the same: Compared with what? Donald Duck: €96.20 → €239.40 = +149%. Official CPI over roughly the same period: about +52%. Welcome to Donald Duckomics 🦆

$VLTA.CN Fundamentals aside for a second… who looks at this chart and says “nah”? 😏

#Oil over #gold? I’ll let the charts answer that...

$GOLD FYI: the real breakout for me only starts above ~4,550. That’s the 0.618 Fib of the Nov ’25 low → Jan high and roughly where the larger corrective structure gets properly challenged. Below that, we’re still trading inside the broader correction...

Some of you who’ve followed me for a while know I’m a sucker for the really strategic stuff: #GALLIUM #TUNGSTEN #ANTIMONY If I had to pick one, gallium is probably my favorite. Think semiconductors, RF chips, defense electronics, data centers, all sitting on top of a supply chain that is still heavily China-dependent... My favorite listed play here remains $VLTA.CN Did a quick back-of-the-envelope exercise on Springer’s gallium potential: 176Mt current REE resource envelope If that eventually averages just 40–80 g/t Ga₂O₃ across a meaningful portion of it, you’re roughly talking 5,000–10,000 tonnes of contained gallium metal... At around US$300/kg, that points to roughly US$1.5B–3B of gross in-situ gallium value (!) Important: not a gallium resource, not recoverable value, not economics yet. We still need the block model, metallurgy and recoveries.. But for a company around C$40–50M, the upside is pretty obvious. That’s why I keep coming back to $VLTA.CN

$USOIL $CL Almost every week I have to remind some of you: stop trading the narrative and trade the chart. Trump, manipulation, headlines, whatever, sure, the micro can get noisy, but zoom out and this structure has been developing beautifully for years... A clean weekly breakout above roughly $110–112 would be a major structural trigger and, on this long-term setup, opens the door to a completely different oil regime. $400 is the extreme measured-move / long-term possibility, not the next target, but the chart is absolutely telling you not to dismiss it... Trade the chart. Invest in the structure. Ignore the narrative...

$GOLD / $SILVER I still see a large potential weekly bear flag developing here. What makes it interesting is the weekly MACD momentum is fading significantly and rolling toward a bearish crossover... but GSR has also produced plenty of micro fakeouts lately, so I wouldn’t front-run the move. A clean loss of ~64-65 would be the confirmation I’m looking for and would strongly favor silver outperforming gold...

$BSIN | Big Sky Industrial | #Helium Substack has been long from considerably lower levels, and $BSIN is now breaking out of a MONSTER multi-year downtrend... Yes, there’s plenty of dilution here. But with this breakout, the chart is finally telling a different story.. • 1.3 Bcf helium resource • Phase 1 plant under construction • First helium sales targeted Q1 2027 • 5-year 100% take-or-pay contract at $285/Mcf • ~14.4 MMcf annual helium capacity • 444 Bcf CO₂ resource adds another angle • Existing oil production provides current revenue This is no longer just a helium exploration story. Production and first revenues are getting close. Risk: execution remains key, any construction/commissioning delays could push the 2027 inflection out.

$ICG.C $SILVER $GOLD looking to break out here on BIG volume for what’s normally a thinly traded stock. 👀 Can’t find anything materially new, other than the 3,000m Phase 1 program now completed, ~40,000m drilled historically, assays pending + maiden resource targeted for Q1 2027... Something brewing?

#NATGAS $NG If this monster long-term structure eventually breaks out, $18 NG is technically on the table. Now ask yourself what that environment could do to a C$22M producer like $SOU.V with 91% gas production...

$SOU.V From roughly C$150M market cap at the 2022 peak → just C$22M today. That’s an ~85% collapse in market cap. And yet, they’re producing. 91% natural gas. Talking DeepValue... 👀 #NatGas