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I hope there is peace in Ukraine and help for all those impacted and displaced by this needless conflict.

It is certainly an interesting time, with COVID and being on the cusp of World War III. Gold has shown a few signs of life and as of writing this is up to $1,970 per troy ounce, while silver is up to $25.70. These precious metals haven’t been a great hedge against inflation thus far. Even the government admits pricing are increasing year of year by 7.5%, so who knows what it actually is, probably over 10%. However, it is appreciated by anyone holding these asserted that they are up, although it would be better if they weren’t.

Cryptocurrencies have far outstripped precious metals. If you show gold and bitcoin on the same chart gold would look flat. On of my stock picks, Kirkland Lake gold, has merged with Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM) and is up over 400% since I shared that I purchased it back in February of 2017. For ease of tracking, I’m counting AEM as “opened” on February, however, KL shares were converted to AEM shared on 2/9 at a rate of .7935 shares of AEM for each share of KL, and rather than do all of the math to convert the cost, I’m just marking KL as closed as of Feb 2022 and AEM opened as of Feb 2022 even though I never sold this position.

The west has been sanctioning Russia, except for where it actually matters, energy exports. So in a very real sense the west is financing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I think XOM and SHEL, two of my stock picks, should continue to do well in this environment.

Another area I’ve been speculating in is cryptocurrencies, particularly on called Chia (XCH). I’ll write more about this in the future. It has better technology than both Bitcoin and Ethereum. It certainly doesn’t have the network effect or name recognition, so it is a long shot, but I think it could do well.