Special Update 31/01/2026 Turning Away The World. A Silver Crash

 Baltic Dry Index. 2148 +146       Brent Crude 69.32

Spot Gold 4907                              Spot Silver 85.25

U S 2 Year Yield 3.52 -0.01 

US Federal Debt. 38.676 trillion US GDP 31.111 trillion

Imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality.

Lewis Carroll.

On the last trading day of the month, massive volatility.

An interesting, if largely unpredictable February lies ahead.

But dinosaur Graeme wonders, where are all the losses (7 trillion) hiding? Who’s damaged but still solvent? Who’s insolvent but hiding it?

Are any US banks and shadow banks impaired?

Was the NY Fed involved behind the scenes?

The answers to some of this will come out in February. Interestingly, the Shanghai price of physical silver hasn't crashed and remains at $122/oz.  Is the Comex paper silver price a gigantic error?

Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles as Warsh pick eases Fed independence fear

Published Fri, Jan 30 2026 5:31 AM EST Updated Fri, Jan 30 2026 3:45 PM EST

Gold and silver prices plunged Friday, as President Donald Trump’s nomination for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, appeared to relieve concerns about the central bank’s independence and sent the dollar soaring.

Spot silver was down 28% at $83.45 an ounce, trading near its lows of the day. Silver futures plummeted 31.4% to settle at $78.53, marking its worst day since March 1980.

Meanwhile, spot gold shed around 9% to trade at $4,895.22 an ounce. Gold futures dropped 11.4% to settle at $4,745.10.

The sharp moves down were initially triggered by reports of Warsh’s nomination. However, they gained steam in afternoon U.S. trading as investors who piled into the metals raced to book profits. Metals were also under pressure as the dollar spiked higher, making it more expensive for foreign investors to buy gold and silver and spoiling the theory that metals would replace the greenback as the globe’s reserve currency.

The dollar index last traded around 0.8% higher.

“This is getting crazy,” said Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak. “Most of this is probably ‘forced selling.’ This has been the hottest asset for day traders and other short-term traders recently. So, there has been some leverage built up in silver. With the huge decline today, the margin calls went out.”

Trump picks Warsh

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett had been the favorite to replace Powell for some time, but Warsh became the front-runner in prediction markets in recent days.

In a note on Friday morning, Evercore ISI’s Krishna Guha said the market was “trading Warsh hawkish.”

“The Warsh pick should help stabilize the dollar some and reduce (though not eliminate) the asymmetric risk of deep extended dollar weakness by challenging debasement trades – which is also why gold and silver are sharply lower,” the firm’s vice chairman said.

“But, we advise against overdoing the Warsh hawkish trade across asset markets – and even see some risk of a whipsaw. We see Warsh as a pragmatist not an ideological hawk in the tradition of the independent conservative central banker.”

Claudio Wewel, FX strategist at J. Safra Sarasin Sustainable Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that a “perfect storm” of geopolitical tensions had helped precious metals move higher this year, pointing to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Washington’s threats to use military force in Greenland and Iran.

More recently, he said, speculation over who would be nominated as the next Fed chair had been influencing metals markets.

“The market has clearly been pricing the risk of a much more dovish contender, that’s been largely helping the gold price along with other precious metal prices. Over the last 24 hours, the news flow has changed a little bit,” Wewel said, prior to Trump’s announcement.

‘Even good assets can sell-off’

Gold and silver both enjoyed record-smashing rallies in 2025, surging 66% and 135%, respectively, over the course of the year.

Coeur Mining lost 17%. Silver ETFs were dragged into the action, with the ProShares Ultra Silver fund last seen more than 62% lower. The iShares Silver Trust ETF lost 31%. Both funds were headed for their worst days on record.

Precious metals have been on a stellar rally over the past 12 months, amid broader market volatility, the decline of the U.S. dollar, bubbling geopolitical tensions and concerns about the independence of the Federal Reserve.

Katy Stoves, investment manager at British wealth management firm Mattioli Woods, told CNBC on Friday morning that the moves were likely “a market-wide reassessment of concentration risk.”

 “Just as tech stocks — particularly AI-related names — have dominated market attention and capital flows, gold has similarly seen intense positioning and crowding,” she said. “When everyone is leaning the same way, even good assets can sell off as positions get unwound. The parallel isn’t accidental: both represent areas where capital has flooded in based on powerful narratives, and concentrated positions eventually face their day of reckoning.”

Meanwhile, Toni Meadows, head of investment at BRI Wealth Management, contended that gold’s run to the $5,000 mark had happened “too easily.” He noted that the unwinding of the greenback had supported gold prices, but that the dollar had appeared to stabilize.

“Central bank buying has driven the longer-term rally but this has tailed off in recent months,” he said. “The case for further reserve diversification is still there though as Trump’s trade policies and intervention in foreign affairs will make a lot of countries nervous about holding U.S. assets, especially those countries in the emerging markets or aligned to China or Russia. Silver will mirror the direction of gold, so it is not surprising to see falls there.”

Silver, gold sell off as precious metals markets nosedive

Microsoft stock is flat the day after sinking 10%. Here’s why

Published Fri, Jan 30 2026 6:47 AM EST Updated Fri, Jan 30 2026 12:30 PM EST

Microsoft’s stock was largely flat on Friday, after the stock saw its biggest daily decline since 2020, sliding 10% Thursday after it reported earnings.

Shares fell despite the company’s second-quarter earnings beating analyst revenue expectations.

Like other hyperscalers, Microsoft has invested huge sums in its AI infrastructure buildout. But Meta reported huge AI spending on the same day and its stock jumped 8%.

Why did Microsoft’s stock drop?

Investors latched onto the growth of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure and other cloud services, which came in at 39% below StreetAccount’s 39.4% consensus. Those areas saw 40% growth in the fiscal first quarter.

The company’s CFO Amy Hood said that the cloud business’ results could have been higher if the company had allocated more data center infrastructure to customers rather than prioritising in-house needs.

Implied operating margin for third-quarter also came up short, with Microsoft calling for about $12.6 billion in revenue from the More Personal Computing segment that includes Windows, which was lower than StreetAccount’s $13.7 billion consensus.

What analysts are saying

In a post-earnings note on Thursday, Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow said most investors focused solely on Azure growth to judge the health of Microsoft’s business, especially in its performance around AI.

“It now looks like the company will not really accelerate Azure further from here, due to the law of large numbers and extra capacity being used for its own, higher-margin, first party offerings like Co-Pilot and its own AI R&D efforts,” he said.

More

Microsoft stock is flat the day after sinking 10%. Here's why

World leaders flock to Beijing, hedging against U.S. disruptions

Published Fri, Jan 30 2026 2:15 AM EST

BEIJING — Countries that shunned China during its trade dispute with the U.S. are now sending their leaders to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping — and are keen to strike business deals.

At least five national leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, have visited Xi in January alone. Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi is due to make the trip next week — the first by a South American leader since U.S. President Donald Trump captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife in early January.

The Canadian and British leaders’ trips are the first in at least eight years, while a visit by Ireland’s prime minister on Jan. 5 was the first in 14 years. China had closed its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic and only reopened them in earnest in early 2023.

“These visits reflect managed, selective resets under rising U.S. policy uncertainty, rather than a strategic pivot to China,” said Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“Keeping communication channels open with Beijing is increasingly seen as preferable to disengagement,” she said, “particularly as the gains from selective resets with China become more visible, and U.S. policy has grown less predictable.”

Since taking office 12 months ago, Trump has wielded tariffs not just on China but a slew of U.S. trading partners. In recent months, he’s increased efforts to ramp up U.S. influence over Venezuela, Iran and Greenland.

It’s an opportunity for Beijing, which has sought to portray itself as not only a partner for developing countries but also as a stabilizing force for the world.

“Maintaining distance from the United States indicates that these countries value ties with China’s large economy,” Cui Shoujun, an international studies professor at Renmin University of China, said in a phone interview Thursday. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

European and other countries may still need to align with the U.S. on security issues, but they are now increasing economic engagement, Cui said.

Facilitating business deals

Large business delegations often accompany national leaders when making state visits. Nearly 60 British companies and cultural organizations sent representatives to accompany the U.K. prime minister on his China trip. British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca used the state visit to announce plans to invest $15 billion in China through 2030.

Similarly, during Carney’s visit, Canada agreed to cut tariffs on a limited number of China-made electric cars to 6.1% from 100%, in exchange for lower Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola seeds.

Global businesses have also long been keen to sell to China’s large consumer market, the second-largest in the world.

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Starmer, Carney, Orsi visit Beijing, China to strike deals

Tourists turning away from USA following planned social media checks

29 January 2026

Holidaymakers are now seemingly turning away from going to the USA following the announcement of planned social media checks. 

A new survey, by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) analysed the answers of 4,500 respondents from many different countries involved with the ESTA programme.

It found a third of tourists admit they are less likely to go to America if the social media proposals are introduced, Sky News reports. 

Proposals announced by US Customs and Border Protection in December, via a 'mandatory' notice published in the Federal Register, could mean overseas visitors would be required to make their social media activity over the last five years open to scrutiny.

The plans mean any hint of anti-American sentiment posted online could land tourists hoping to visit the country in hot water with border officials. 

If overseas visitors do fall in such a way, the WTTC estimates tourism spending could be cut by $15bn (£10.8bn). 

It could also hit a whopping 157,000 jobs. 

Some 66 per cent of respondents shared they were aware of the possible new regulations.

It's not the first time concerns have been raised about tourism to the US being impacted.

When the proposals were first announced, Peter Greenberg, aka The Travel Detective, told BBC 5 Live Breakfast that the US faces losing huge tourist revenue if the plans go ahead.

The News Travel Editor at CBS said: 'They're proposing up to a $15,000 bond to guarantee that when a visit is over, they don't extend their visa and they come home. How many people can afford that?

'Adding to that [the bond] is the new proposal that tourists may have to provide five years of social media history that needs to be inspected.

'Add those things together and you'll understand already why there's been a huge drop in inbound travel to the United States this summer, resulting in lost revenue that can never be recouped.' 

American President Donald Trump previously commented on whether he was worried about the plans impacting tourism.

According to Sky News, he said: 'We want safety, we want security, we want to make sure we're not letting the wrong people come into our country.'

WTTC CEO and president Gloria Guevara, noted that security is 'vital' but went on to outline the damage the new plans could cause. 

She explained: 'Security at the US border is vital, but the planned policy changes will damage job creation, which the US administration values so much.

'Even modest shifts in visitor behaviour, discouraged by the planned changes, will have real economic consequences for US travel and tourism, particularly in a highly competitive global market.'

It comes after we revealed how to get your phone ready if US border force ask you to go through it. 

Tourists turning away from USA following planned social media checks

In other news, trouble ahead for copper and silver? Well, less so for silver if this new material eventually lowers copper production. Silver is a big byproduct of copper production. But any tantalum nitride effect is probably still years away.

But see Monday’s LIR technical section.

Newly discovered material conducts heat nearly 3x faster than any metal

January 27, 2026

Data center servers, powerful smartphones, and your computer's motherboard have one thing in common. When these devices get too hot, their performance takes a hit, and we can't have that. That's why copper is used to manufacture them: this metal has high thermal conductivity, which means it can efficiently carry heat and dissipate it across its surface.

Now, copper is already pretty good at what it does. With a thermal conductivity of approximately 401 W/mK at room temperature, it's second only to silver by a wee bit, while being a lot less expensive to procure. But aerospace engineers at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have discovered a material that blows those two out of the water with nearly thrice the thermal conductivity.

Metallic theta-phase tantalum nitride exhibits an ultrahigh thermal conductivity of 1,100 W/mK, which means it's way more efficient at transporting heat than copper and silver. Their conductivity is limited by the strong interactions between free-moving electrons and atomic vibrations called phonons.

That name just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? It refers to a specific crystal structure of this metallic compound which has certain properties – similar to how carbon can be found in the form of soft graphite, and also as hard diamond.

Using molecular structure analysis techniques like synchrotron-based X-ray scattering and ultrafast optical spectroscopy, the researchers found unusually weak electron-phonon interactions in this specific configuration of tantalum nitride. This allows for super-efficient heat flow through the material with a lot less resistance, vastly exceeding what we see with copper and silver. The findings were published in the journal Science this month.

"As AI technologies advance rapidly, heat-dissipation demands are pushing conventional metals like copper to their performance limits, and the heavy global reliance on copper in chips and AI accelerators is becoming a critical concern," explained Yongjie Hu, a professor at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering who led the study.

This metallic material could prove to be a desirable alternative to copper in heat sinks – not just for computers and AI hardware, but also for aerospace systems and quantum computers that need to constantly run cool.

Source: UCLA

New material beats copper for heat dissipation

Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.

Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.

From market 'speed bumps' to recession odds, here are 3 major 2026 predictions from Goldman CEO David Solomon

January 28, 2026

David Solomon has laid out his big predictions for the path of markets and the economy in 2026.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs said he has a generally healthy outlook for markets and the US economy this year, though he also voiced some caution on emerging macro developments. Speaking to Bloomberg at Goldman's annual Asia-Pacific conference, he weighed in on what he expects to see through the rest of the year.

Uncertainty has defined the investing climate in recent months, with investors rattled by geopolitical events while concerns continue to mount over the health of the AI trade.

Here's what the banking exec thinks is coming next for markets:

1. The risk of a recession is just below 20%

The risk that the US economy will tip into a recession remains relatively low this year at just under 20%, Solomon estimated, calling the economic setup in the US especially "constructive."

"The base case for a recession is one out of seven," he said. "I think the chance of a recession this year is low in the US, and I don't think you'd see one unless there was some exogenous event that materially changed the current sentiment," he said.

Wall Street generally expects the US to avoid a downturn in 2026, given the investment flowing into AI, the Fed's rate-cutting cycle, and the growth-friendly policies from the Trump administration. The US economy is expected to have grown 5.4% in the fourth quarter, according to the latest estimate from Atlanta Fed economists.

2. Markets will have another strong year

Solomon said he expects 2026 to be a "strong capital markets year" around the world. He pointed to additional fiscal stimulus across various economies and to the move toward looser regulation in the US and Europe, a trend that's also thought to help stimulate the economy and support dealmaking.

More companies are also beginning to adopt AI, a trend that's likely to boost productivity and pave the way to higher economic growth and investment.

While there's a risk of a "potential bubble" brewing in AI stocks, the market rally appears to be broadening beyond the Magnificent Seven stocks, Solomon said, referring to how laggards like small-caps are now starting to outperform the market's top tech names.

"I think there's a broader level of participation and things are set up quite constructively for the next few years," he said.

3. Investors could hit geopolitical and regulatory "speed bumps"

While he's bullish on the outlook for markets, Solomon flagged the potential for hiccups along the way this year.

"There's a lot going on in the world. And as that stuff plays out, it can lead to speed bumps, or you know, distractions," Solomon said, pointing to last April, when President Trump's tariffs sparked a historic sell-off in stocks.

"The noise sometimes can sap confidence," Solomon added.

Investors have already gotten a few glimpses of how volatile the market could be this year. So far, stocks have been rattled by the US's raid on Venezuela, escalating tensions with Iran, and Trump's various threats to pressure Greenland into a sale, though equities have bounced back as tensions have subsided and Trump has eased his rhetoric on some of his policies.

From market 'speed bumps' to recession odds, here are 3 major 2026 predictions from Goldman CEO David Solomon

Technology Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.

Falling Battery Storage Costs Are Quietly Reshaping Electricity Markets

Featuring Christian Kaps. By Rachel Layne on January 23, 2026.

Sustainability and self-reliance motivated early adopters of solar energy and battery storage in Germany. Now, falling costs—and rising electricity prices—could compel more people to pull back from the grid.

As solar panel and battery prices drop, research by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Christian Kaps predicts some 54% of German households would benefit from using a solar-battery combination. The rise of self-generated electricity would have major implications for German utilities and the country’s power grid, which gets a substantial, yet decreasing share of energy from fossil fuels.

Incentives and subsidies helped drive $807 billion in renewal energy investment globally in 2024 alone, as part of efforts to confront climate change. With electricity costs surging in many parts of the world, Germans stand to become producers and consumers of power in one of the most advanced clean-energy economies—even without such enticements.

“In many European countries, at least in many markets with higher electricity prices, solar and storage is going to be a profitable investment,” says Kaps, coauthor of “Residential Battery Storage—Reshaping the Way We Do Electricity” with Serguei Netessine, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The article is forthcoming in the journal Operations Research.

The shift wouldn’t be without consequences. Researchers predict that increased solar and storage adoption in Germany would reduce residential electricity demand by 38%, cutting utilities’ revenue. Rising generation and delivery costs could also challenge the industry’s pay-per-use model.

Rapid adoption, dizzying change

Since the early 2000s, solar panel prices have dropped 85%, the authors note. And the cost of lithium-ion batteries has dropped by nearly 90% during the decade until 2020. The trend helped spur a 20-fold increase in German household battery systems between 2015 and 2020.

As more households use battery storage, it becomes harder for utilities to predict how much electricity to generate and send to the grid—and when to do it. Demand from homes with battery-solar setups can drop to near zero when it’s sunny outside, but spike during cold, dark days that deplete home storage. It’s unlikely that most households will be totally self-sufficient and leave the larger electricity grid completely, the researchers write.

Why Germans turned to storage

Kaps and Netessine analyzed solar-storage adoption from 2018 through 2020, using data from 3,200 households served by the German firm Solarwatt. Back then, batteries cost almost twice as much as today, but consumers who installed them prioritized self-sufficiency and the potential to slash climate-damaging emissions, motives the authors call “nonmarket valuation.” The change cost households a median 29 euro cents (34 cents in the US) more per kilowatt hour than relying on the power grid.

“It was really this idea of, ‘I'm producing solar power myself. I want to use more of that myself,’” Kaps says. “It's a sustainability argument. Germany has a long history of debating how to generate electricity.”

More

Falling Battery Storage Costs Are Quietly Reshaping Electricity Markets | Working Knowledge

Next, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.

World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)

Exponent Calculator

Enter values into any two of the input fields to solve for the third.

Exponent Calculator

This weekend’s music diversion.   Approx. 12 minutes.

Franz Horneck (c.1690-c.1724) - Fagottkonzert Es-Dur

Franz Horneck (c.1690-c.1724) - Fagottkonzert Es-Dur

Next, more fun with really big numbers. Where the US federal deficit is heading? Approx.20 minutes.

TREE vs Graham's Number - Numberphile

TREE vs Graham's Number - Numberphile

Finally, some of Scotland’s many castles. Pay attention to castle number 17. Sorry about some of the glaring mispronunciations. Approx. 29 minutes.  Next week, the castles of England. After that Ireland and the Wales.

25 Beautiful Castles in Scotland To Visit in 2025 | Scotland Travel Video

25 Beautiful Castles in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 To Visit in 2025 | Scotland Travel Video

“I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.”

President Trump, with apologies to Lewis Carroll.