A global recession is on the horizon - please read OP for mod warning

Elon spelled ketamine wrong.

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A Samsung phone uses 2g of silver and the price today is $3.3 /g and this time last year it was $1.0 / g. It makes little difference overall on a 1K phone. Problem arises if you cannot buy it, you cannot make the phone.

I am the same as you. But in 2025 1.25 billion smartphones were produced, it sounds crazy doesn't it ?

our modern tech is an environmental nightmare, ive personally never bought a smart phone, yet ive managed to acquire many of them, you d be surprised what some people call rubbish, and it looks like ive another, very modern, very workable one on the way! its a bloody mess, think ive only bought one, a dumb phone, in the last 20 years, or so, and ive already broken that

No harm moving into gold and out of stocks or US bonds, there is definite volatility there and plenty of institutionals are doing the same thing to reduce exposure.

Stockpiling food, and moving his pension to cash is stupid though.

Vanguard has a Index product for US investors for non US markets and it's seen increased interest, especially since Trump's tariff regime started.

https://markets.ft.com/data/etfs/tearsheet/summary?s=VXUS:NMQ:USD

Normally there's a flight to the USD and gold in times economic chaos, but all commodities are rising alongside the US stock market. Relatively it's the USD that's taking the hit.

Inflation will eat away at cash whereas a pension fund will generally match it. Of course taking cash out prior to a crash is optimal but hard to do in practice.

I don’t think it will be a melt down, I think it will be a melt up. The chickens are coming home to roost. Heavy metals have been baking in the debasement of all currencies since Covid times.
There is now a break in the global order and it’s becoming a dog eat dog global world. Expect more and more unrest, uncertainty and crises. Every government will print money to paper over the cracks, the genie is out of the bottle and expect bonds to lose value. The bond market will no longer expect low interest rates for bullshit bonds when governments are just taking the piss with printing and qe along with deficits spending growing exponentially. All the while western economies have declining population and a growing aging economy putting more strain on them. Then these economies want to increase military spending and defence at the same time - rates will have to go a lot higher, or else a lot of printing to buy your own debt which will drive inflation even more. A full **** up either way ahead.

Melt up, more inflation more unrest and high interest rates.

Fun fact, in 2008 you needed nearly 500 oz of gold to buy an average costs house in Ireland roughly 4 times the long term average. In 2012 in the height of the crash when house were for nothing, it was only 120 Oz roughly to buy the average house.

Today a house is roughly 110 Oz of gold to buy the average cost house, even though houses are at all time highs. So in “old money” houses are cheaper now than in the height of the crash, that’s some stat.

This would lead me to believe assets like house's are not actually in a bubble, our money is just quickly becoming worthless.

The problem at the moment if you're a US investor is that all stock market growth over the last year has been driven mostly by the magnificent 7 stocks, including Nvidia. The rest of the stock market has been flat.

Gold doesn't pay dividends so it's only ever a transitory play, a measure of the fear of Trump's expressed interest in devaluing the USD more.

If a year ago a US investor had put everything on the Spanish index they'd be up 50%, but over the same time period an Irish person investing the US will see little return because of the USD devaluation.

So what happens to all those European / Japanese financial institutions that are sat on trillions of US debt that we have been hearing about so much lately ?

Seems like those countries who lost trust in the USD a few years ago and piled into precious metals instead made quite an inspired move, albeit just a transitory one.

Chinese industry also relies on both for manufacturing of various items. Semiconductors and PCBs use lots of gold, and silver too.

Funds easing off may be a play to help industy

Chinese industries have built storage for what they can't solely supply themselves. Crude oil storage has been a national strategy since that time oil went to $150 a barrel in 2008 when it was bid up by money escaping the financials meltdown.

Strategic reserves means they can step back and sit out when market bubbles form, which I suspect is what is happening now as the global economy continues to deDollarize and all that money is returning home and driving up every US index.

The crude oil reserve policy goes back to 2008, but certainly the Huawei ban made Chinese exporters prioritize strategies to sidestep the USA.