Trading Points: Gold vs Dollars; Fintech Stocks vs AI
September 16, 2026 | This past weekend The Institutional Risk Analyst updated our watch list for precious metals, The WGA Precious Metals Top 25. All of the constituents of the Precious Metals Top 25 are available to subscribers to the IRA Premium Service.
Please note that our subscription rate for the Premium Service is increasing in October. Our latest conversation with Ivan Bayoukhi on Wall Street Bullion follows below.
We received a number of comments on our discussion with David Kotok last week (“David Kotok: China, the Dollar and Bretton Woods 2.0”), but one of the most interesting observations came from Bahamas-based gold fund manager Henry Smyth, who we interviewed last May (“Interview: Henry Smyth on the Return of Gold as Global Reserve Asset”):
“By looking at gold revaluation as a purely US exercise to reduce debt or support social security you ignore completely the unintended consequences of such a move. The same error occurs in positioning the gold dynamic as Bretton Woods 2.0. Bretton Woods 1.0 was victorious Washington shoving it's vision of a postwar order the throat of everyone in attendance. Full stop. In that order, gold was eliminated from the global monetary system, allowing the unfettered credit expansion the denouement of which we now see before us today. What we see now is an organic self organizing order in which gold returns as the gravitational center of global value. The new payments system is a result of this tectonic transformation, not its origin. In this emerging system there is no fiat and no jurisdictional nor organizational center. Just gold.”
One of the ironies of the collapse of the dollar-centric Bretton Woods schema is that gold now offers the independence from central bank control that many sought in Bitcoin and other crypto tokens. Remember that the Bank of England was the world’s first central bank. It was created to extend government control over money and to finance a war. Central banks lack any positive features save as vehicles for redistributing wealth via currency debasement.
Before Labor Day, Morgan Stanley (MS) said gold hit its fourth-quarter target sooner than anticipated and sees the metal climbing above $5,000 an ounce next year, though it cautioned the path is unlikely to be smooth.
“Gold has reached our Q4 forecast of $4,450/oz faster than expected,” analyst Amy Gower wrote, adding that “we see a path to >$5,000/oz in 2027 but with scope for volatility too.”
Meanwhile, we remain bullish on both silver and gold, in large part because available supplies of both metals are ebbing. Total demand for silver is projected at roughly 1,112.6 million ounces, while available supply sits near 1,066.4 million ounces, leaving a shortfall of about 46.3 million ounces.
“The silver market is in the sixth consecutive year of structural deficit,” notes Renegade Resources. “Since 2021, the world has consumed 762 million ounces more silver than it has produced. That number is roughly one full year of global mine supply, drawn down from above ground stocks across London vaults, COMEX warehouses, ETP trusts, and industrial user inventories.”
In a potentially important development for silver in the US, Bunker Hill Mining Corp. (BHLL), and Silver47 Exploration Corp. (AGA) announced a definitive arrangement pursuant to which Bunker Hill has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Silver47 by way of a plan of arrangement. The combined company will seek a name change to “Bunker Hill Silver Corp.” and remain listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
As we discussed with our friend Ivan, we remain bullish on precious metals and feel like the inflation outlook is only going to worsen as the year heads to a close. Diesel fuel is almost $10 per gallon on the west coast of the US. President Donald Trump has blamed the Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy assets for the shortage of diesel, but in fact the destruction caused by the Trump/Israeli war with Iran is the major cause of rising prices globally.
Most of the global central banks are preparing to fight the inflation from the Iran war with higher interest rates, truly an exercise in futility. “The Fed seems on course to hike rates by a quarter point on Wednesday with a vote that could be 10-2 with possible dissents from Governors Bowman and Waller (but these dissents are far from certain),” notes John Ryding at Brean. But is the FOMC even relevant to inflation with the US Treasury running a $2 trillion fiscal deficit?
“Interest rate futures have priced in an 88% probability of a rate hike after seeing the PPI and CPI data for August. It was not that the data were hot (contrary to claims in the media that the inflation data for August were hot) but there are no signs of progress towards 2% especially given the way Chair Warsh described the July inflation data,” Ryding continues.
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