Exactly 55 years ago, on August 15th 1971, Richard Nixon went on television and told the country he was closing the gold window. There would be no more turning dollars into gold.
He called it temporary. It wasn’t.
Gold was $35 an ounce that night. It’s north of $4,300 now.
Your dollars have lost more than 99% of their value against the one asset the government can’t print.
In fact, real wages just haven’t held a candle to assets, and everyone has been left behind.
If you’re running as fast as the other guy, you’re on a treadmill and going nowhere.
The opportunity set is getting concentrated at the top. Working hard, being disciplined and hoping for the best just doesn’t cut it anymore.
So as promised when I started writing on Substack a couple months ago:
Today we are launching the Babylon Burns Portfolio and the premium content.
I built it around the world I think we live in right now:
Governments have promised their citizens far more than they can afford. They can’t seem to tax or grow their way out of their hole, so they’ll inflate the gap away. It’s what I call the fiscal endgame.
At the same time, the global order is splintering into blocs that no longer trust each other. Just look at what is happening in the Middle East. I call this multipolar fracture.
So we’re in a very difficult environment where the fiscal endgame meets multipolar fracture.
We are tasked to do better in a tough, tough environment.
The job is to find alpha wherever it hides in global equities and drag it into the light, Leave no rock unturned.
Find alpha or die trying…
Why you should care what I think
If you haven’t come across me, here’s my mini bio:
I have successfully called the collapse of currencies, Brexit, the V-shaped recovery post pandemic, The 2021-2022 oil bull, the market bottom in 2023 (within a week), the AI trade and more.
I was born in England, grew up in France, did my undergrad in Montreal. While I was getting my Masters in Economics at Sciences Po Paris, I launched my first investment newsletter on SeekingAlpha, helping individual investors beat the S&P 500 with less volatility while building reliable income they can retire on.
I’ve beaten the market for years at the retail level with the Dividend Freedom Tribe, and I was CIO of Havelet Bay Capital, a macro hedge fund.
I’ve traveled the world, lived in 10+ countries, visited dozens more, and advised sovereigns on economic policy, most recently in Sao Tome & Principe.
I’ve made a bunch of mistakes along the way too. We all do. I’ve made some investments that didn’t work out in public and in private markets.
But as George Soros once said:
“It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong. “
- George Soros
And that’s what I seek to deliver with Babylon Burns: a relentless system of generating alpha by leaving no rock unturned, and implementing strong discipline in managing the portfolio.
What you’re buying
Subscribe and you get the write-ups that I’ve been sending your way since June.
Deep single-name reports on companies nobody else is picking over.
Macro research on whatever matters that month.
Trade alerts with entries and targets, so you know not just what I own but when I’m moving on it.
And the charts, done my way.
Every paid member also gets the web app.
This is the part I’m most excited about.
It’s the live portfolio, every position, sized, updated as I trade, in one place you can open any time and see exactly what the book looks like and why.
I built the portfolio from scratch the Monday after this post went out, so members can follow every position from day one.
This subscription has already paid for itself.
There are some substacks you read for entertainment, some you read maybe for education or general knowledge.
And then there are the substacks that you read because they will MAKE YOU MONEY.
While I fully expect to have my share of bad stock picks (and I already explained in one of the previous articles how that is part of the design, and that the best way to have a great idea is to have many ideas), my aim is to find alpha (or die tryin’).
I wrote a report on July 26th with a bullish call on Aveanna Health ($AVAH). The stock is up more than 30% since.
So even someone making the smallest of investments of $1,000 in this stock, would already have paid for a full year of my work, before I even asked for a single dollar.
I’ve got a lot of interesting stock picks for you, and they’re all coming next week.
What’s coming next week?
To commemorate Nixon’s 55 years of unpegging gold, I’m giving Babylon Burns subscribers my favorite gold miner below.
Then next week will be a busy week. On Monday you’ll get the full portfolio in the web application at market open.
I will be writing one report per day to cover the whole portfolio, this is what you can look forward to next week:
Monday: The Big Long. The oil disruption the market is sure is temporary, and the bet that it isn’t.
Tuesday: The Boomers Strike Back. The demographic trade sitting in plain sight.
Wednesday: The Only Bull Market Politicians Guarantee.
Thursday: Left for Dead. Buying healthcare while everyone else runs for the exit.
Friday: The Island of Misfit Longs. The oddballs that fit no theme and make money anyway.
If you don’t sign up, unfortunately you won’t be getting the stock picks, their sizing in the portfolio. You’ll still get a little taster of the ideas. But it’s not the ideas, it never was the ideas, it’s what you do with them.
Subscribe today and all of it opens for you, starting with the gold miner in a minute.
The offer
“A bargain is something you have to find a use for once you have bought it.”
-Benjamin Franklin
To be clear this isn’t just a newsletter. I’m offering you the chance to build a portfolio alongside me, to see when and how I build positions, to see my thinking on the micro, and on the macro.
You can pay month by month for $100, and that gives you everything, including the web app. That’s fine if you want to hang around and decide if this is right for you.
Annual is $399 for the year, and every member gets the web app thrown in, with all my charts, the live portfolio, the trade notifications and so on.
I think the math should make the choice for you.
Twelve months at $100 is $1,200. If you’re serious about this, you take the annual.
I don’t even have to tell you this, but one good idea, out of everything landing this week and everything after, pays for the year many, many times over.
And you aren’t taking a leap of faith to find that out. Substack gives you seven days. Subscribe, read the whole first week, and if it isn’t for you, take your money back. One click. You don’t email me, you don’t explain yourself, and I never see a reason.
My favorite gold miner: Buy a mine get one free!
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece explaining why I wouldn’t touch gold miners with a ten foot pole (yet).
The main idea was that I was waiting for some confirmation of a breakout.
I don’t need to pick the bottom, I need to enter a trade when the risk reward is maximized.
On August 4th I posted this.
And then on August 5th, we got the breakout, so at market open, I started building my position.
It’s up 12% so far, and counting (the graphic above says 14.1% as I prepared this chart a couple days ago, it has given a couple points back over the past two days).
A miner is a geared bet on the gold price with a management team and a jurisdiction stapled on, and most of the time that cuts the wrong way.
Costs run. Grades disappoint. Governments rewrite the rules mid-game.
You take all the operational pain to get an exposure you could have had cleaner just owning the metal.
But if you’re willing to do the work, you can find a gem which is mispriced due to risks which are misunderstood by the general market, and I believe we have found this today.
Why gold, one more time
