2025 Review and Predictions

I made fuckloads of money this year.  A 31% return.  In dollar terms, more than triple what I got from my day job.

What worked?

• Gold: In late 2H24 and 1H25, I decided to buy gold.  Wanted miners and royalty companies for more torque, so I signed up for Mining Stock Monkey and bought 4 mid-cap companies.  Gold shot up, my mid-caps got taken over or merged, and my 10% position (at cost price) went up three times, giving me 70% of my returns this year, equivalent to 25% of my portfolio at the start of the year.

• Latam: I subscribed to Ian Bezek's Substack this year.  He forsaw a several South American countries moving to the right, with simple stock picks to benefit.  Most of these stock picks are up 30%, the thesis is probably halfway played out now.  Its responsible for 10% my portfolio returns, equivalent to 3% of my starting portfolio.

• Just Be Long: Hedgeye modelled Quads 3-2-1 around April, which basically means "buy the dip".  Buy anything thats going up - commodities, gold, silver, tech, small-caps, healthcare, banks, crypto - sell therm if they go down, keep them if they're still going up.  Rinse and repeat.  Its more complex but I'm keeping it short.  Gave me 20% of my returns this year, equivalent to 6% of my portfolio.  The tough thing is - to really make money, I sometimes ignore the Hedgeye trends and signals - for gold or Latam above.  Hedgeye is more about earning decent return through trading while limiting drawdowns.  Those last 2 words become more important as we head closer to the end of the bull market.

What didn't work?

• US Gas Pipelines: 1/3rd of my portfolio.  Flat, after doubling last year.  They keep paying dividends.
• South East Asia: My Singapore stocks(mostly Delfi) flatlined.  Sold off my Indonesian and the Philippines holdings after no movement.  Hartalega bombed.  Malaysia smelting Corp (tin) is doing OK now.
• Oil: 8% of my portfolio.  Low and Flat.  Luckily my stock picks are low cost producers: Var Energi and CNQ.

Predictions

What do I see in the future?  These are not so much predictions to trade off, but the way I see the world now.  And a reminder to keep our minds open to any possibilities.

• Trade war continues - the US and China are too far apart to reach a deal.  The US needs to re-industrialise to satisfy its long-suffering workers and keep military supremacy.  China needs to shove its exports down the throats of the rest of the rest-of-the-world, to prop up GDP growth and employment after a generational property crash.  Can't meet halfway.

• I believe there is a method to Trump's madness, his team has a plan.  If this is true we should see: 
• "Warp-speed" production for areas of US weakness.  Rare Earths.  Simple Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients.  Mid-stream minerals processing.  Uranium conversion and enrichment.  Haven't found ways to trade these yet.  (Had a small position in LEU, sold it after it tripled...priced in).
• Trump should become a little less crazy next year.  The craziness was to throw China off balance, but they realised what the game was by November.  I expect clarity on Tariffs, enough so that goods can cross borders multiple times while being manufactured, at least in USMCA (NAFTA).
• Triggering trans-shipment clauses to prevent countries that export to the US from importing from China.  Mexico already started.  NAFTA should be next.  Maybe Vietnam.  And maybe these countries will implement China tariffs anyway, if they don't want to de-industrialise.
• Maybe he triggers a US dollar devaluation.  Its long been argued that its required to balance the trade deficit and shrink the debt.   Probably good the for the stock market.  Small chance it crashes the market.
• Trump needs to deal with Canada.  Either till they cry uncle, or Alberta becomes the 51st state.  Either one helps my CNQ position.

• Trump needs to win the November mid-terms.  Expect helicopter money - he can mail a cheque to every working household.  So expect the economy to boom.  The only catch is that he does not need the stock market to boom - there's more workers than investors.  I'm sure he'd like it to boom, but its not a necessity.

• China Invades Taiwan - the odds of this are higher than appreciated, maybe 40%.  This is the Sword of Damocles that hangs over everything.  But its a 2027-2032 problem, not next year.  Haven't found a way to make money off this.  If war breaks out, physical gold will go up, but anything traded online (including GLD and my gold companies) will get hammered.

• AI is probably a bubble.  Data center growth may be responsible for half-to-all of US GDP growth.  I'll follow Hedgeye to see when it bursts I don't think its next year, but we'll see.

• Although I think LLMs are a bubble and not that useful yet, there are real benefits applying AI to specific problems.  Previously, software would automate anything that could be specified - now it will automate anything that can measured and be verified.  For example:
• Sorting fruit.  We can't specify exactly what a good fruit is, but theres enough examples to get teach an AI to do it.
• Missile targeting.  Feed it hundreds of images of enemy rocket launchers, so it can learn to recognise them,
• Speeding up drug research, development and testing.  Possibly halving time to approval.

Playing it may be as simple as just buying shares in any company that benefits from AI productivity.  Or looking downstream to the choke points (eg: If we get more new drugs released, the oligopoly of drug distributors should eventually benefit).

• Natty boom: AI datacenter buildout needs baseload energy, and natty is the only one fast enough to build.  I'll keep my Natural Gas pipeline stocks (1/3rd of my portfolio) and a Natural Gas producer (5%).

• Oil remains low till the mid-terms.  This depends on the Saudis, who are hurting, but I think Trump can make a deal.  This reduces inflation and strangles Putin.  After the mid-terms, maybe we get $80-100 per barrel.

Plan for Next Year

I'm 125% invested now.  Next year may be the last year of the bull market.

• Reduce exposure, sell my Hedge trading positions if they spike or roll over.
• Keep my gold positions, still in a bull market.  Its a hedge against exploding US govt debt, a neutral reserve currency, and a way for people in China to save amidst financial repression. 
• Sell my LATAM positions as they play out.
• Keep natty, oil positions.  Sell my natty pipelines and producer if we get a boom and their EV/EBITDAs go to unreasonable levels.
• Need to think about when I'd sell my tin miner.  Whats an unsustainably high price for tin?

Every year its one or two themes that give the majority of my returns, and I don't know what they'll be till they play out.

Its been a tough year, working full time while trading has tired me out.

This is year 3 of the bull market (2022 bear).  Or year 5 if we measure from the 2020 covid crash.  The cycle will turn, maybe 2026, probably 2027.  The next bear will not be like 2008:

• It may be a real recession with nominal growth (1990 or 2001), or
• It may be a stock market correction with no recession (a slow motion 1987), or 
• It may be World War III (-10% GDP while printing fuckloads of money).  

We'll see as we move forward.  Cross the river by feeling the stones.  Just keep swimming.

Portfolio Update. Broken Record.

 Markets up again, stocks up.

Position changes:

• Sold some South-East Asian stocks.  Moved them into trading the US market.  Buy stuff thats going up.
• Increased exposure to LATAM.
• Reduced crypto, and sold Bitcoin.  Shorted Microstrategy.

Might change these soon:

• Reduce exposure to China and healthcare.  Chin has done well but the next quarter's outlook is negative.  Healthcare keeps getting whipped around by Trump.
• Increase my Microstrategy short, as it rebounds tonight.

I am just buying stuff thats going up and not overbought.  Its boring, and it doesn't give me much to write about, but I'd rather make money.  The stock market is not a place to look for excitement in life.

My aim is to ride the bull market up, then sit out or short the next bear or correction.  Possibly in 2Q26.  If I can do that, I can quit my day job.

Portfolio Update

Market is up, portfolio is following it, so I'm happy:

  - Gold making new highs: My 2 gold royalty stocks (sandstorm and EMX) have received buyout offers, unfortunately shares not cash.  Will probably hold the acquirers' shares - still wanna be long gold and there's not much left in the mid-cap royalty space to buy.  My other gold stock (Equinox) merged with another company, then hit new highs after relasing better than expected results. I got all these from Mining Stock Monkey's substack (he also has a free youtube channel)

  - LATAM all up.  Holding Chile/Columbian banks, waiting for the next election for the governments to turn to the right.  Nubank (Brazil) released excellent results - but next year's election is a coin toss - hold for now.

  - Small China position (Didi) up.  Fundamentally it can still double from here, especially if it can re-list in HK.  I'll hold it till Hedgeye signals to sell (KBA).  China is always a trade for me.

  - My fat-fingered Ethereum trade up bigly.  Will start selling around 5K, or when Hedgeye's signal weakens.

  - Nam Cheong up.

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Whats NOT working:

  - SEA.  Indonesia and Malaysia:

     * Indonesia riots.  Will probably sell my longer term Indonesian holding, country is a poor, corrupt powder keg.  Against this, medium term, it'll go up if the USD falls.

     * Hartalega (gloves).  Hit ten year lows!  Probably Trump.  Malaysia has signed a trade deal with Trump (19% tariffs), but they are courting China.  There is political risk here.  Malaysia is the perfect small, inconsequential country for Trump to smack around a bit to show what happens if you sit on the fence....after he's finished with India and Canada.   Not sure if I should keep this one, its hard to value a cyclical.

    * Delfi results sucked as expected, from high cocoa prices.

  - Oil stocks.  Especially CNQ (Canada).  Probably Trump Tariffs again, combined with the newly-elected gay Canadian government - most Canadian oil is exported/refined in the US.  My Norwegian oil stock is flat.  Hedgeye's trend for oil recently went bullish, dunno if it will stay that way.  I can hold these 2 stocks long term.

  - US Gas Pipelines: Flat, paying dividends,fairly valued not over-valued yet.  Just hold.

  - Turkey (TUR), I fucked up, bought a 2% position too high, fomo.  To cut loss.

  - Probably sell my Seatrium, a 1% position too small to monitor.

Quick Update

Sold my Uranium stocks (from June), as Hedgeye's trend turned bearish.  I don't know if its a false signal, but since I bought using Hedgeye's trend signals, I'll sell by them.  Could be from the possibility of peace with Russia.  Made 12% over 2 months, which is OK.

Also sold my small position in LEU, a US uranium enricher which I bought last year.  It was a tiny 0.5% position which went up 3x.  Can't complain.

I bought 8% Ethereum in the brief (couple-of-days) correction at the start of August.  Also bought more IWM and Q's in the current correction.  I want to me more than fully invested for this bull market.  I'm now 119% invested.

Quick Update

Correction

I was caught by surprise, but still think this is a short term correction.  The market went up too far and some FOMO has to be shaken out.  It might be over on Monday, or may last 2 weeks.  Everything still points to the bull continuing: VIX at 20, the economic outlook for the next 6 months, and Trump needing to pump after that.

I am 112% invested.  Bought a little ETH and Q's on Friday.  Would like to load up on more ETH.

Other Risks

Trump's reversal on Russia and the passing of the 'Russia Bill' - giving him authority to levy a 500% tariff on countries that import Russian oil after 8th Aug - are good for oil stocks, but bad for India, China and (maybe) Brazil.  It makes it less likely for a trade deal to be reached, more likely for the world to spilt into different trading blocks.

• Russia produces ~9m bpd, out of approximately 105m bpd used worldwide.
• Trump still wants to keep the oil price down, and the Saudi's will help.  We may see oil up to $100, but I don't see it getting any higher.
• A 50% tariff decreases the chance of a US-China trade deal.  
• Non-Aligned countries, like India/Brazil have more incentive to go over to China's side.
• India hit.  How much of their recent hot GDP growth has been from cheap Russian energy?
• Increases the change of an Iran deal.  Iran is currently not a threat, even to Israel.  Israelis gotta finish their war quickly.  Short term peace in the ME.  Not lasting peace, while the Iranian regime is still around.
• If countries don't buy Russian oil/gas, what happens to it?  Either the pipe/ship it all to countries that don't care (like China), or stop production.
• And if so, Russia runs our of money.  What can they sell?  Gold down?
• Buyers buy from the US instead.  And the whole world wants US LNG ro reduce their bilateral trade deficits.  Longer tanker or LNG Carrier routes.
• What if the US navy starts enforcement against 'dark fleet' ships carrying Russian oil/gas.

My oil stocks should do well.  I have no India exposure, but some China and Brazil.

No Sign of the US Bull Market Ending

 From Hedgeye:

• We're in Quad 2
• Implied Volatility falling.  eg; SPY, IWM, Bitcoin
• 1-month realised SPY vol still below 3-month vol. 
• USD is now rising (short term).  However gold, copper, oil correlations to USD have dropped.  Gold and copper bullish trend.  Oil's trend whipsawing.  Industrial commodities, China, Korea and semis bullish.  The rising USD affects some EMs - they are now short Philippines (which I am still long through the Philippines Stock Exchange), and India (I no longer hold through FIH.U).

Made some short term trades, small positions.  Bought some:

• Crypto stonks
• 1-month calls on IWM.

Most of my Asian stocks are going up.  They're all different, company-by-company.  I'm a few percent over 100% long:

Yes, there are signs of exuberance, especially for tech/AI.  But we haven't seen Hawk Tuah, Cum Rocket or ETH Rock or levels of stupidity yet. No signs the bubble pops yet.  Enjoy it while it lasts.

Buying more

The correction I expected did not happen:

• The Market corrected Monday night, after being overbought
• That night Trump released "Tariff Letters" promising new tariffs by 1st Aug to 14 countries, including Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.  But the next day, Asian markets didn't care.  
• The US market recovered the next day, even as Trump promised more Tariff Letters.

When the market doesn't fall on bad news its time to buy.  Last night I bought more Latam stocks and Didi (paid report) - I am finally buying China as there are rumours that Xi has lost power, and they have projected growth this quarter...so if I can find any China stocks I would like to hold, I may as well.  There is a chance they announce that Xi is being given a ceremonial post far away somewhere in August.

Also topping up on silver, and considering some energy related companies.   I am now over 100% invested and would like to reach 110%.  Themes are inflation, commodities and EMs.  And just a little bit of China.

Sandstorm

Sandstorm, one of the gold royalty companies I own, has had a takeover offer.  That is the reason why their price has been continually rising the past month.  The offer, if accepted by 2/3rds of shareholders, will give me shares of Royal Gold in exchange.  I'll probably accept the RGLD shares, either partially or fully.