The Flying Frisby - money, markets and more

In this next episode of Money, Markets and More, I sit down with Liv Boeree to discuss AI, risk, poker, game theory, incentives, state power and better decision-making.
I thought this was a terrific interview and I hope you enjoy it.
You can either watch the video above, or listen to the interview as a podcast in the normal way.
Liv argues that, while AI could bring huge breakthroughs in health, drug discovery, efficiency and human flourishing, thi same technology can also be used to cause serious harm. We discuss regulation, bad incentives inside AI companies, state surveillance, privacy, human atrophy, automation versus augmentation, and why Liv believes poker is a better model for life than chess: imperfect information, luck, risk, emotion and long-term decision-making.
This interview was filmed at ARC 2026 and made possible by The Pure Gold Company.
If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.

📖 Read The Secret History of Gold
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Follow Liv Boeree on X or here on Substack:
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Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. We do not know your financial circumstances. Do your own research.
And, in case you missed it, here is episode 1 with Luke Gromen



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

The inaugural CPAC UK runs from July 16-18 in London. Speakers include the former PM, Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees Mogg and Yours Truly . No Count Binface as far as I’m aware. Flying Frisby readers can get 25% off with this link.

A few weeks ago Josh from the Pure Gold Company asked if I'd be interested in recording some long-form interviews. It sounded like a good idea, so at ARC a fortnight ago we sat down and recorded six conversations. Season One, if you like.
The focus is not just gold or markets, although they feature prominently. They are about the forces shaping the world: money, debt, geopolitics, technology, energy, incentives. You name it.
I’ll be running the interviews here on The Flying Frisby, on YouTube via Money Markets & More, and as podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the other major platforms.
My hope is to make this a regular Sunday feature and, over time, build a library of conversations that remains valuable long after the headlines have faded.
I hope you enjoy them.
(And if you do enjoy them, please share them and let me know who you'd like me to interview next).
To kick things off my first guest is Luke Gromen. Luke has been ahead of the curve on debt, fiscal dominance, the bond market and gold for a long time, and in this conversation he explains the bind facing the Federal Reserve, why markets may no longer be as free as we like to think, and why foreign central banks are buying gold instead of US Treasuries.
We also discuss the reindustrialisation of America, why reversing decades of offshoring is likely to be inflationary and why China does not want the yuan to become a straight replacement for the dollar.
You can read Luke’s letter, the Forest for the Trees, here.
My thanks go to Josh, Rachel Eyres, the Pure Gold Company for making these interviews possible.
If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.

Coming up soon we have
* Liv Boeree
* Steve Baker
* Toby Young
* Francis Foster
* Toby Baxendale
This interview was filmed at ARC 2026 in association with The Pure Gold Company. Nothing in this programme is intended as investment advice. It is an expression of opinion only. We do not know your financial circumstances. Do your own research.
And …
The Secret History of Gold is getting rave reviews and is available around the world at all good bookshops. The audiobook is especially popular.



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The S&P 500 is close to all-time highs, but it’s looking wobbly.
After magnificent runs, gold and silver are both washed out and trending lower.
Bitcoin is all but dead and buried.
Rates are rising the world over so you can forget about government bonds - that particular bull market is over.
Oil and gas have turned down now Trump and Iran have their deal.
Remind me what uranium is again?
What to do? Sell? Buy? Take profits? Run? Hide? Risk on? Rotate? Hedge?
Everyone everywhere is telling you to do something. There is an entire financial industry dedicated to persuading you that inactivity is irresponsible.
Three years ago I proposed the opposite and launched the Dolce Far Niente portfolio - “the sweetness of doing nothing” portfolio.
It was based around a simple notion. Do nothing. The sweet FA portfolio. Most of us have busy lives to live with jobs, businesses and families. Some of us even have hobbies. We do not have the time, inclination or temperament to be constantly monitoring markets and worrying. I don’t know about you but I find the more decisions I make, the more bad decisions I make. The aim of the portfolio was to build a sensible allocation to the major themes of the coming decade, and then largely leave it alone.
No fiddling. No panicking because of some thing you read on X that morning. Nothing.
Different readers used different vehicles. When uranium went nuts, we reduced to 2.5%. I simplified the equity allocation, so the exact implementation evolved over time. What follows therefore is not an audited fund report, but an approximate check-in.
The broad conclusion, however, is clear.
If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.

Doing very little works surprisingly well.
Depending on exactly how you measure it, the portfolio is up around 65-70%.
Not bad for something specifically designed to reduce activity and thus stress.If by the way, you are investor starting out, this is the portfolio I recommend, and I recommend it way ahead of racy, smallcap stock tips, such as you sometimes read on here.
So let’s take a look at the portfolio, and let’s see if any activity is required.
The first lesson is that asset allocation remains far more important than stock selection. This is one of the basic truths that, it seems, one keeps having to re-learn.
Doesn’t matter which gold miner you own if gold miners are trending lower. Being on the right track matters more than backing the right horse.

I was on a panel with veteran geologist Brent Cook earlier in the week and something he said rather struck me.
“It’s shaping up to be a brutal summer for mining companies.”Brent Cook

Looking at the chart below, it’s hard to disagree.
The Gold Miners Bullish Percent Index has fallen to zero.
Not 5 or 10, but zero. That’s lower in the in the crash of 2008 and during the Covid panic. It has only ever reached this level during the darkest days of the great gold bear market of 2011-16, and even then only twice.
This chart measures the percentage of gold mining stocks that are on Point & Figure buy signals. If every stock is on a buy signal, the reading is 100. If none are, the reading is zero.
A reading of zero does not mean prices cannot fall further, only that not a single stock in the index is in a technical uptrend.
Readings like this only occur at moments of extreme pessimism. But what makes today’s reading so unusual is the backdrop.
In 2008, everything was crashing. In 2013 and 2015, gold itself was in a vicious bear market. During the Covid panic everything was crashing. Today, gold’s above $4,000; silver’s above $60.
The fundamentals for higher prices - central bank buying, irretrievable government spending and, in the case of silver, industrial demand - remain. Yet the mining shares are in the swanny.
And these are monthly charts. Such extremes take time to develop. Daily and weekly indicators can hit zero fairly easily. Monthly indicators rarely do.
This is an extraordinary breadth washout. Why is it happening?
Inflation (in the true meaning of the word)
When gold and silver went bananas late last year and early this, mining companies took advantage of the frenzy, as they always do, to raise capital. Bucket loads were raised.
Typically in Canada there is a four-month hold after a capital raise. It means that capital raised in January, for example, only came free trading last month and capital raised in February is only coming free trading now.
Somebody has to buy all that paper, and, if they don’t, prices fall until somebody does buy it.
Add that to the broader decline in the underlying metals prices, especially gold and silver, and you can see why junior mining is having such a rough time of it, and why Brent thinks things are going to get brutal.
Too much paper.
Not enough people to buy it.
The sector simply needs time to digest all that paper. Another leg higher in gold and silver would increase buying, but for now money is flowing in the opposite direction.
Such extremes can prove excellent buying opportunities - though if you bought the 2013 dip you had a wait on your hands - but we have all this paper to get through.
Many miners are terrible businesses, years from any cashflow. Costs, especially energy, have risen. Dilution is relentless.
The bear case is that mining stocks are warning us that gold and silver are headed lower.
On the other hand, the economics of mining have changed with gold and silver this high. Producers should make a lot of money. They will need to replenish lost ounces. The value of deposits has changed. Previously uneconomic mines start to look viable. The value of genuine new discoveries is immense.
The bull case is that miners are pricing a disaster that doesn’t come. Gold and silver stabilise, the financing overhang eventually clears and the sector re-rates sharply higher. We are near capitulation.
With a BPI reading of zero, one thing is certain: the sector is not over-owned.
Given that June typically sees the low for the year in gold and silver, I favour the bull case. But the summer is always weak. We might have a while to wait if my ongoing thesis that gold and silver range trade for a year proves true.
This is not 2011-16.
It’s a mid-cycle correction.
The question is not so much whether the sector is hated or not. The chart tells us it is. The question is how much longer investors can stay this pessimistic if gold remains above $4,000 and silver above $60.
Lifetime subscription prices go up tomorrow and other matters
Turning to other matters, here is this week’s commentary in case you missed it:
And a reminder that you have one more day to buy a Lifetime Subscription before prices go up.
The current price is £550 until tomorrow. It then rises to £650 before being permanently withdrawn on 30 June.
If you’ve been considering Lifetime Membership, this is your last chance.
Two NBs
* If you are looking to upgrade and have trouble with payments, please drop me a line (either reply to this email or message me). I need to cancel your membership, issue a refund and then you need to resubscribe.
* Despite what the sign-up process says, this is a genuine one-off payment for lifetime access. I manually convert memberships myself.
Any problems, please message me on Substack or reply to this email.
Thank you.
Finally I appeared on the Before. During. After podcast with Sam Carrington this week. Good chat about comedy and real life.
Until next time,
Dominic
If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Imagine you are in the circus, watching a tightrope walker who’s been on the sauce.
He sways, the crowd gasps, he sways again, more gasps, and yet somehow he doesn’t fall. This goes on and on and eventually you get bored watching.
That, it seems to me, is Britain.
Public debt is now knocking on £3 trillion. (Remember you could have spent a million pounds every day since Jesus was born and still not have spent a trillion - that’s how incomprehensible a sum a trillion is). Interest payments now run at over £110 billion a year - more than we spend on education. Debt-to-GDP hovers around 100%. Growth is wilted. Productivity is like blancmange. Taxes are everywhere and record-breaking. Waste and bloat and bureaucracy are rampant.
But the political response to every problem is the same: spend more.
Despite all of this, like our inebriated tight rope walker, sterling refuses to drop. The pound trades around $1.35. The gilt market continues to function. The bond vigilantes, whoever these mystical people are, appear to be away at lunch with Lord Lucan..
Why?
The answer begins with a simple but often overlooked fact that currencies are not valued absolutely, but relatively.
You look at Britain’s fiscal position and conclude the pound must fall, but against what?
It’s not like the US isn’t running unthinkable deficits. Interest payments are exploding there too. The eurozone is if anything more trapped in low growth than we are. Japan’s debt burden is legendary. Never mind the oil, Canada is a basket case. Australian regulation is doing its best to revive the traditions of the penal colony and China has its own economic and demographic headaches.
All currencies are crap
Then there are interest rates. Britain still offers relatively attractive yields. Ten-year gilts yield around 5%. That may be painful for the Chancellor, whatever her name is, but it is attractive to those looking for income. Japan, the US and most of Europe offer less. Higher interest rates support the pound. They attract computerised capital from around the world, which buys sterling to get the yield.
London remains a financial centre, albeit it one in over-regulated decline. There is still some rule of law and some respect for property rights. The UK is not yet Zimbabwe, Turkey or Venezuela, even if it may feel that way. A country can be badly governed for a surprisingly long time before capital completely loses confidence.
However, none of the underlying problems have actually been fixed, nor are they going to be fixed. We are still spending £48,000 per household through the state. You’ll get greater productivity out of a plate of blancmange. Taxes are not coming down. We are locked in promise, spend, borrow, tax, repeat.
Here’s another possibility. The tightrope walker may never fall off.
But with each step, the tightrope itself gets closer to the ground.
The pound has lost over 40% of its purchasing power just since 2020.
In 2007 a pound cost $2.10, so we are down a third against another unit which in itself is hopeless.
Measured against the constant that is gold, the pound has fallen over 95% since the Gordon Brown sales of 1999.
Here are those declines visualised.
The framing is all wrong. The collapse is not sudden but ongoing.
Maybe we don’t get a dramatic crisis. No Black Wednesday, no run on the pound, no emergency press conference outside the Bank of England or wheelbarrows full of digital bank notes. Just more of this relentless decline.
Every year a bit more debt, a bit more printing, a bit more inflation, another 7% loss of purchasing power, a bit more government spending, a bit more taxation, year after year, decade after decade. The tightrope gets lower and lower but nobody notices because we are all looking at the walker.
Alf Ramsay was on £4,500 a year. Thomas Tuchel gets £5 million. That didn’t happen over night. It was cumulative, incremental and compounded.
The endgame remains debasement
Not just in the UK but everywhere. In a democracy where politicians need votes they will ALWAYS choose inflation over austerity, spending over restraint and dilution over default. This is built in. The incentives are too powerful. They will sacrifice the currency to preserve the system.
Nothing changes until the system itself changes.
Perhaps the tightrope walker never falls. But the rope keeps inching lower and lower until one day it is running along the ground.
The crowd applauds because there was no crash. Meanwhile the currency has lost another 98% of its value.
That is where this is going, gradually but relentlessly. Not with a bang, but with a long, slow debasement.
Sterling has been “collapsing” for decades, and it will “collapse’ for many decades more, likewise dollars and euros and yen.
The debasement of currency is not a new thing, though we have never seen it globally in the way it exists today.
Gold has seen it happen many times before and it has survived every time. It will survive tsunamis, earthquakes and explosions. National currencies will not.
Tell someone about this great post

Thanks for reading the Flying Frisby.
Until next time,
Dominic
If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued, as will the euro and dollar. The bullion dealer I use and recommend is The Pure Gold Company. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe. More here.

A quick housekeeping note
I’ve decided to withdraw Lifetime Membership to The Flying Frisby at the end of June.
The current price is £550 until 15 June. It then rises to £650 before being withdrawn permanently on 30 June.
If you’ve been considering Lifetime Membership, this is your last chance
NB despite what the sign-up process says, this is a genuine ONE-OFF payment for lifetime access. I manually convert memberships myself.
Any problems, please message me on Substack or reply to this email.
The book
The Secret History of Gold is getting rave reviews and is available around the world at all good bookshops, with the audiobook read by me is especially popular.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe