BFI Group Blog

If you read the (BFI Bullion Quarterly) Digger regularly, you know that we try to focus on and address what we are hearing about from you: our clients, partners, and other friends. While the first half of the year has been nothing short of wild, we continue to hear the same recurring questions in our conversations: one is no surprise, while the other is a classic.

In a very recent podcast by the World Gold Council, as part of their “Unearthed” series, they sat down with the Royal Canadian Mint to discuss what role the Mint is playing in shoring up the integrity and transparency of the global gold industry. The RCM is committed to implementing the Gold Bar Integrity Programme, and in doing so, proudly names aXedras’s technology and ecosystem for that purpose.

At the start of last June, Berkshire Hathaway’s stock price suffered a spectacular 99% drop. The nosedive wasn’t caused by legendary investor Warren Buffet allocating his entire portfolio to NFTs, but by a technical glitch that also affected 40 other stocks, including miner Barrick Gold, which briefly traded for 25 cents per share, compared to the $17 before the glitch.

Bank stability is something too many people have taken for granted for too long. After the last global financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recovery, many naively believed that all serious systemic vulnerabilities have been addressed and bank collapses - or even worse, contagion scenarios - would be wildly unrealistic in the future.

Switzerland is (in)famous for many things. However, many of them do not even scratch the surface of what this country is all about. So, in honour of August 1st, our Swiss National Day, let’s take an in-depth look at our nation’s – and our people’s - DNA!

Consumed largely by recent US political news – the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and Joe Biden stepping down from the presidential race – it has been easy to overlook other important developments that can impact an investors’ big picture. One of those is the threat of de-dollarization, as US sanctions on Russia continue to make the BRICS countries, as well as others, wary of being hand-cuffed to the US dollar.

In the beginning of July, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland’s largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences, and Copenhagen Atomics, a Danish molten salt reactor developer, announced their large-scale experimental collaboration. The four-year agreement stands to put Europe in the pole position of the advanced nuclear technology field.

In mid-June, President Biden posted the following on his X account: “Zero. That was monthly inflation in May. There is more to do still, but this is welcome progress.” Do you believe it?‍

In our last update, we wrote about monetary policy and why 2024 might look very different from 2023. Until the 4th quarter of 2023, central banks maintained their hawkish tone and only in the final weeks of 2023 did the markets begin to consider the possibility of rate cuts in 2024. We are already in the middle of the second quarter of the year. While equities had a pretty positive start to the new year, the real action is currently in the precious metals market. In early March, gold was pushing through the critical resistance level of USD 2’080 and has since then moved to a new trading range, between USD 2’300 and USD 2’400.

In the current financial landscape, marked by es-calating and widespread systemic risks, efficient and effective risk management has become paramount. As global markets grapple with uncertainties ranging from geopolitical tensions to economic instability, in-vestors face mounting challenges in safeguarding their assets and achieving sustainable returns.

The US elections are still a few months away. However, the economic shifts and trends that have developed over the last three and a half years will not significantly change. So, let's take a closer look at what the Biden administration has achieved economically. According to the president himself, Bidenomics is practically a synomym for 'The American Dream'. How accurate is that estimation?

The middle class forms an essential pillar for sustainable economic growth and political, as well as social, stability. However, it’s being destroyed, and at an accelerated pace!Adding to the familiar headwinds of growing taxation and regulations, monetary and fiscal policy excesses of the past decade are also heaping additional pressure on the middle class.

In principle, investing your retirement funds in physical precious metals through a Gold IRA brings great benefits – most importantly this extra layer of protection. Unfortunately, numerous incidents of deceitful providers exploiting unsuspecting investors, are tarnishing the reputation of the whole sector. Investors are losing trust, and understandably so.

Last month marked the one-year anniversary of the latest global banking crisis. To refresh the readers’ memory, it started in March 2023 in the US, with the fatal bank run on Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), followed by the failure of Signature Bank and First Republic, and it culminated in the spectacular collapse of Credit Suisse in Switzerland. From where we stand today, most investors seem no longer concerned over more bank failures, and even less so over a looming global banking crisis. Are you convinced?

The latest Fireside Conversation is out! This time, BFI’s Frank R. Suess sits down with Mr. Thomas Pederson, the co-founder of Copenhagen Atomics, to discuss the exciting, but oddly quiet, revolution going on in the energy sector.

After a 2-year pilot project in which the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and the World Gold Council (WGC) collaborated on a gold bar integrity program called the Gold Bar Integrity Database (GBI), aXedras, one of two distributed ledger companies that was involved with the pilot, has been chosen as the official service provider. The GBI will further perpetuate transparency and integrity within the world’s global gold value and supply chains.

Bad actors, greedy opportunists and even outright fraudsters have long been endemic to the retail gold market - they are probably as old as the market itself. This is precisely why we have warned our clients and readers so many times against these dangers, why we routinely alert them to countless different threats and traps, and why our most oft-cited piece of advice tends to be “if it sounds too good to be true, it most probably is”.

When starting a new year, on top of the common resolutions normally made, like wanting to lose weight, travel more, or save more money, there’s also a common phrase that it is “out with the old, and in with the new”. This couldn’t be more true with the news we have today.

Our latest Fireside Conversation is here! BFI’s Chief Investment Officer, Dirk Steinhoff, and Frank R. Suess share BFI’s investment outlook for 2024. Dirk discusses his list of game changing events of 2023, and how those events will impact investors moving forward. Is inflation really on the way out? Are we really on the precipice of the next recession, and why (or why not)? Will the dollar finally lose its world’s reserve currency? These questions and more are considered before explaining how BFI plans on tacking 2024. The situation isn’t rosy, and there will be more uncertainty than last year, but the opportunities, while different than in the past, are certainly there.

This Fireside Conversation is with Swiss author, journalist and communications specialist, Giuseppe Gracia. He explains how both faith and reason are required fo building a healthy society, what the core issues of woke ideology are, and why freedom has nothing to do with having options.