The week’s selloff was dramatic. By Wednesday, Bitcoin was down more than 40% from its all-time high of $64,000, set in mid-April. The token’s market dominance fell to a three-year low of 40%.

I don’t question Elon Musk’s good intentions, but I respectfully disagree with the underlying insinuation that crypto miners in particular are a threat to the climate. It’s just not true, for reasons I explain below.

One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Winston Churchill, who was just as witty as he was a great leader: “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

If you were hoping to visit the Eiffel Tower or Colosseum this summer, you may be in luck.

With everything up, where are the value buying opportunities?

Central banks have been net buyers of gold for 11 consecutive years.

Some major changes could be coming soon to a central bank near you, with an estimated 90% of them at some stage of developing a central bank digital currency, or CBDC.

More than 60 central banks right now are believed to be exploring the idea of digital currencies, including retail tokens that would be used by citizens as well as wholesale applications for financial institutions.

For this Frank Talk, I decided to take a deep dive in the airline industry to see how it fared in the first quarter of 2021, one year after the start of the pandemic.

Digital currencies stormed Wall Street in a big way this week. Crypto exchange Coinbase went public in a direct listing, opening the floodgates for a number of other crypto-related companies.

There are a few different ways to measure the size of a shipping fleet.

Millions of Americans, it seems, felt that the time was right to trade in their clunkers for a new set of wheels.

We’re more than ready to put the pandemic in the rearview mirror. For the first time since this all started a year ago, more than one million people per day have been flying commercial in the U.S. for 30 straight days.

Last month I forecasted we’d see a travel boom this summer as newly vaccinated Americans book their first big trips and vacations since the pandemic began.

The acceptance of digital currencies as a form of payment expanded greatly this week, foreshadowing the increasingly important role cryptos such as Bitcoin and Ether will play in our lives going forward.

Gold producers had their most profitable year ever in 2020, based on one metric.

My question, as always, is whether we’re measuring inflation accurately. What if we’re doing it all wrong? As investors, we want to make decisions based on the best available data, so what should we do if the data is incomplete or flawed?

For the past 20 years, the Port of Los Angeles has been the busiest seaport in the Western Hemisphere, responsible for exporting commodities such as soybeans and raw cotton and importing everything from furniture to electronics.

Wall Street thought 2020 was the Year of the SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Wall Street thought 2020 was the Year of the SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Turns out, this title was premature.

One year ago this month, our world changed in some pretty dramatic ways.

A little over a hundred years ago, the United States emerged from the double whammy of a world war and deadly pandemic. Eager to get back to “normal” life, Americans went on a decade-long spending splurge, buying cars and radios and stocks.

In November 2020, an Hermès handbag sold at Christie’s for a cool HK$3.4 million, or US$437,330. It set a new sales record for a handbag of any kind according to the auction house, which described the item as being made from the hide of a rare white Nile crocodile.

There may be some incredible opportunities for investors in companies that produce the metals, minerals and other raw materials that will be needed with an increase in spending.

Gold hasn’t been getting much love from investors lately due to rising bond yields, and bullion-backed gold mutual funds and ETFs have seen significant outflows so far this year through the end of February.

Yields have jumped so much, in fact, that they’re giving stocks a serious run for their money. The 10-year yield is now higher than the S&P 500 dividend yield, which may have added to the selling pressure that cost stocks close to 2.5% yesterday.

Inflation is back on investors' minds lately, and some may be wondering how to position their portfolios to confront this potential new scourge.

Millions of Texans were without power this week when the state was hit with a record setting winter storm. An overhaul of its aging infrastructure would require massive amounts of metals and other materials, which would be positive for miners and producers.

Happy Year of the Ox! Today China and a number of other Asian countries celebrate the Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival.

Tesla announced in a public filing Monday that it bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin as part of a corporate policy that allows the electric vehicle (EV) maker to invest in “alternative reserve assets,” including not just cryptocurrencies but also gold bullion and gold ETFs.

It’s hoped that an extra $1,400 in the pockets of everyday Americans may help support lagging U.S. consumption. We believe the stimulus, along with improved vaccine roll out, may also help support commercial air travel.

Commercial aviation still has some challenging times ahead of it, but I believe the worst is behind us, meaning now may be an opportune time to get exposure.

Those of you with kids and grandkids may at some point have stepped inside a GameStop. If so, you might be familiar with the video game retailer’s tagline: “Power to the players.”

Precious metals in general did very well in 2020, and I expect them to keep pace in 2021, supported by heightened efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

In the years since the end of the gold standard, there’s been a significant lack of discipline in government spending. Today, the federal debt is closing in on an astronomical $28 trillion, which is more than 130% of the size of the U.S. economy.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin said it best: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In this light, what are we to make of Trump’s social media suspension?

This should be positive for gold, given the potential for greater government spending and, therefore, inflation.

Gold and Bitcoin had a very good 2020. Investors, worried about currency debasement from all the money-printing, sought stores of value. Gold surged over 25%, its best year in a decade, while Bitcoin was up more than 300%.

And then there’s Bitcoin. The world’s biggest cryptocurrency has surged nearly 220% this year, touching an all-time high of $23,717 in intraday trading on Thursday.

Airline stocks are on track to record their third straight month of gains on hopes that the coronavirus vaccine will help normalize commercial air travel sooner rather than later. Investors are also betting that U.S. carriers may be in line to receive additional relief in the stimulus package currently being negotiated in Congress.

“This garage is the birthplace of the world’s first high-technology region, Silicon Valley,” the marker reads. It names two Stanford students, William Hewlett and David Packard, who “in 1938 began developing their first product, an audio oscillator, in this garage.”

Industrial metals are well on their way to being among the top performers of 2020, supported by red hot demand from China and global supply concerns.

“Dr. Copper,” so named for the metal’s ubiquitous use in many different applications, has been ripping higher since its 52-week low in March, thanks to a number of factors including promising economic data.

Chinese factories signaled their strongest improvement in over a decade.

So far this year, shares of HIVE Blockchain Technologies have soared an incredible 715%, well past Ethereum’s gain of 273%. 2020 has been marked by healthy expansion in mining capacity, the most recent example being HIVE’s acquisition of additional access to low-cost green energy.

Gold “is a hedge on policymakers screwing up, and there has been a lot of screwing up in the last 20 years.”

By now you may have heard that President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning Americans from investing in a select number of Chinese firms that have ties to China’s military.

America, and the world, received a huge shot of hope this week. The $210 billion drugmaker Pfizer announced on Monday that its coronavirus vaccine is 90% effective at preventing COVID-19.

On Saturday, Joe Biden was named president-elect. In hindsight, the market clearly predicted this outcome.

Businesses love Congressional gridlock. Tech stocks had been trending down for days before the election as they faced antitrust scrutiny, but now that it appears certain Congress will remain divided, they’ve recovered most of their losses. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 jumped close to 10% for the week.