In March, the European Commission introduced a major new initiative, claiming it as game-changing for the bloc’s growth and global competitiveness. President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the “Savings and Investment Union” (SIU), a plan that’s aimed at harnessing fresh capital—primarily from private sources—to fund strategic investments across Europe. The EU has been struggling for long time with inadequate public funding that fails to cover its chronically excess spending, as was highlighted in a report by Mario Draghi in September 2024. The bloc is estimated to need an annual investment of 750-800 billion euros by 2030 to modernize its economy, to pay for all its ambitious plans and initiatives, and to maintain its foundational socioeconomic model. The former chief of the European Central Bank warned that the current path the EU is on is one of “managed and gradual decline” that is “condemning itself to a slow agony”, and unless something changes, the Union is very likely to suffer long term economic stagnation, as well as serious challenges in terms of geopolitical relevance, security and independence.

On April 28, the entire Iberian Peninsula experienced the most extensive and severe blackouts in Europe’s living memory. Much of Spain, Portugal and the south of France were plunged into darkness for over ten hours. Thousands of train and metro passengers were left trapped for hours, and millions were left without phone or internet coverage.

Through his new bill, Florida Governor DeSantis wants Floridians to be able to use physical gold and silver as an official means of payment by making them legal tender. The bill, as DeSantis labelled it, is a move to protect residents from the growing fiscal uncertainty in the US and a weakening US dollar, stating “this is our ability to give you financial freedom to be able to protect yourself again the declining value of the dollar”.

Finding one’s way through the current financial landscape feels a lot like trying to climb the Matterhorn without a knowledgeable Swiss guide. For wealthy families, the stakes are even higher as complex portfolios not only span different investments (stocks, real estate, crypto, gold), but also different jurisdictions. As reported in our last post, today’s markets demand agility, clarity, and control, which is where BFI Consulting is stepping in with their modern asset reporting system.

A lot has changed in our economic, geopolitical and financial environment over the last decade. Extreme political shifts and conflicts, de-globalization, central bank interventionism, escalating public and private debt, and almost incessant global crises of one kind or another have radically changed the rules of investing, especially in the last few years. Purely macroeconomic-focused or long-term oriented investment approaches simply do not work as well as they used to and much more dynamic, hands-on and responsive strategies are called for.

For centuries, gold has served as a reliable store of value and it has functioned as a universally recognized medium of exchange, especially when all other alternatives falter. More relevantly to modern investors, however, it has consistently proven itself to be the most dependable hedge against inflation and currency devaluation, against market crashes and economic crises, and against geopolitical turmoil and uncertainty. We’ve seen this repeatedly confirmed since time immemorial, but over the last few years it has become blatantly obvious and objectively undeniable

Donald Trump’s return to the global political forefront as the 47th US President came after a tumultuous and very eventful campaign and signified a decisive gear shift for American politics. As he made abundantly clear in his inaugural speech and as he demonstrated in the first months of his presidency, he is committed to reversing most of the signature policies of his predecessor. He proved as much by signing dozens of Executive Orders and rescinding 78 of former President Joe Biden’s within hours of the transition. By now, it is clear that the country is set to return to many of its pre-2020 goals and priorities, especially when it comes to immigration, economic and social policies, foreign relations and economic cooperation strategies.

In mid March, gold shattered yet another psychological barrier, this time by surging past $3,000 per ounce and even rising over $3,100 just a few days later. Justifiably, this sparked widespread jubilation among most precious metal investors. However, at the same time, there were some voices calling for profit taking, or even confidently declaring that the yellow metal had “topped” and it was time to sell. After all, it has indeed climbed steadily from its 2020 low of around $1,700/oz, delivering a roughly 76% gain in just five years. However, gold’s story is far from over, and all of the economic, geopolitical, and monetary forces driving its trajectory suggest it has room to run—especially over the long haul.

BFI Bullion has made the decision to discontinue our Collective storage option. We made this decision not only to ensure our offering optimally serves the current needs of our precious metal’s investors, but also to lay the foundation for a sequence of service upgrades that will follow.

It may have been easy to miss if you were justwatching the daily news, but those that keep their thumb on the pulse of thegold market, surely know of the mass “migration” of physical gold that movedfrom London to New York at the start of the year. The mainstream media blamedit all on the threat of Trump’s tariffs pushing the futures price of goldhigher in New York, but frankly there are more questions here than thissimplistic answer can address. What is clear is that “now” is still the righttime to buy gold.

Since Donald Trump was elected and has now been inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States of America, he hasn’t wasted time in sharing his plans to cut federal spending and reduce the size of government. To do this, Trump, using an executive order on day one in office, created a presidential advisory commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or the DOGE, which will now be led by Elon Musk alone (after Vivek Ramaswamy stepped down to run for governor of the state of Ohio). In any case, the DOGE better get hoppin’ as I have a story of government waste for you today…

Nothing like some good news to usher in the new year. Our friends at Copenhagen Atomics are taking great strides as we roll into 2025. Their joint project with PSI (the Paul Scherrer Institute) in Switzerland marks yet just another key milestone they reached as they prepare to run their first live test reactor.

In the spirit of Christmas, we’d like to share the story of the Asian Pacific Children’s Fund, a non-profit organization supporting children that don’t have a family to celebrate the holidays with – to put it lightly.

The BFI Capital Group celebrated its annual 2-day Christmas Team Event last week in Lenzerheide, a mountain resort and well-known ski area in the canton of Graubünden, in the southeast corner of Switzerland. As we do for our blog readers every year, we want to try and put you right there in the mountains with us and share the “Alpen Stimmung”.

Since the start of 2024, we’ve been following a fascinating trend amongst prospects and clients alike wanting to purchase gold through us at BFI Bullion. You may have been living under a rock if you haven’t followed the climb of gold’s spot price this year. But with this price surge, we’ve also seen the rise of the desire, the hesitation, and then the ultimate regret experienced by investors who wanted to purchase gold but held off doing so because of the higher prices.

Gold has been a symbol of wealth, privilege, opulence and power for millennia. It has always been “the metal of kings” and it has been used to show off affluence and project dominance since time immemorial. However, gold owners have also been perceived as greedy, secretive, or suspicious for not investing their savings like “normal” investors. They instead choose to “hoard gold bars and coins” like Scrooge McDuck instead of opening a savings account or buying some bonds like everyone else.

The buzz is building as the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) prepares to officially launch its Gold Bar Integrity (GBI) database, the first steps in leading the world’s gold supply chain towards greater standardization, product integrity, and transparency. The physical precious metals market is taking the opportunities of this digital age in a new direction, and aXedras has harnessed that technology as creator, developer, and what will be the ongoing technical support behind it.

BFI Bullion’s managing director, Scott Schamber, recently appeared on a podcast out of the U.S. where he spoke in detail about the services BFI Bullion provides, how they set themselves apart from other international precious metals dealers, and how the political polarization in the US is causing investors to look for investment options – as well as alternative citizenship - outside of the US.

In a matter of days, barring similar circumstances to 2020, the most powerful nation on the planet will have a new leader. The implications for the rest of the world, both economically and geopolitically, are extremely important, as are those for both American and international investors. As is customary by now, this vote has been described by the media as “the most important election in history”, like the one four years ago and the one before that too. Levity aside though, it is not an exaggeration to say that this particular election cycle has been different than the ones that preceded it on quite a few different levels.

In our last edition of our BFI InSights, we looked at the new role gold is playing as an anchor in today’s global financial system. We made the case why precious metals in general have a promising outlook for the months and years to come. Over the course of the summer, gold has moved decisively higher, pushing through some very important resistance points and currently prices are trading around USD 2’615, so in recent weeks there has been a more than 10% gain for the yellow metal. However, as explained in our last update, the action in the gold market can’t be seen as isolated from all the other ongoing developments around the world.