We’ve always wondered why they let Trump win, after blocking him in 2020. And don’t think it’s about him getting more votes, it’s ALWAYS about who counts the votes. Call it a pet theory, but the oligarchs and Deep State types watched as the Russians steamroll a few NATO armies in Ukraine, watched the Russians outsmart our military equipment, and watched as we couldn’t even re-supply Ukraine with artillery shells. The guys at the top of the pyramid had an ‘ohh sh*t’ moment.
Look, it was tons of fun to be an oligarch in Argentina. You got to steal pretty much anything you wanted, and the peasants worked for little more than cheap malbec. Then you took your ‘profits’ and splurged in Europe. Life was great (still is). But the guys running USA realized that it’s much more fun when you’re a world player, strutting around and making rules, rather than simply pilfering some social fund. They saw USA turning into Argentina, and realized that they needed someone like Trump, who could keep us as a Great Power, even with all of Trump’s flaws. So, they set him loose, put some corrupt judges around him to hold him in check, and told Trump to rebuild industry.
From there, Trump just sort of did what Trump does. Some policies that go nowhere, lots of Tweets, a few concrete actions. The problem with investing in the age of Trump, is that you never know what will have follow-up, and what will get reversed in the next Tweet. However, there are some broad strokes to the policy, and Trump desperately wants to re-industrialize USA. We think this starts with the building blocks of industry- commodity production.
We’ve invested in mining in the past. We’ve had some wins, and a lot of losses. We don’t do mining anymore, though we sometimes tourist around the edges. One constant was that the USA (excluding Nevada) was a giant no-go zone for mining. It simply took too long to get a permit, and there was always some small group determined to sue you and block you, every step of the way. This is really unfortunate, as the US is blessed with some of the largest and highest-grade mineral assets globally. For mining companies, the US is Nirvana!! You have rule of law, deep supply chains, lots of infrastructure, and did we mention that you have rule of law??
Look, this is how mining works in other countries. In USA, mining simply works. IF you can get your mine permitted…
In any case, read the Executive Order, and read it twice. He means business!! Lots of clear deliverables. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/immediate-measures-to-increase-american-mineral-production/
We think Trump is actually serious about this one. He wants to create well-paying jobs. He wants to bring mining back to the USA. He wants to make us self-sufficient in as many commodities as possible. Longer term, he wants the US to do to the periodic table, what the Permian did to Crude oil. He wants America to lead in creating a global export glut. This is VERY much MAGA. Most importantly, this is one that he can actually accomplish. Anything on government land, can get permits. It can get fast-tracked. It can even get financed. Quite frankly, there are a LOT of well-known deposits on government land. Anyways…
…It’s simple. We’ve built a list of sh*tty junior miners with permitting issues + assets on government land, and made a basket. It’s not rocket science…
Anyway, that’s phase 1. Phase 2, is to see if stuff actually gets fast-tracked. By then, hopefully, we’ll have profitably cycled out of our permitting plays, and be onto the real money—the sorts of things that we can play in size (we can’t in good faith play any mining asset in size). We think that companies making mining equipment, providing mining services, financing mining assets, or doing anything even tangentially close to the mining supply chain can boom. We want to take part in this boom. It’s a potential Mega-Trend (MAGA-Trend) with tens or even hundreds of billions of cap-ex to be spent on US mining assets, depending on how focused Trump can remain on this project. We’re building our list right now, so that we can pivot on the first few permit issuances.
Anyway, we were surprised to see this EO drop on a Thursday night, only to have some of the more obvious permitting stepchildren barely rally. It’s as if no one even reads Trump EOs. (Though admittedly, many of these stocks are up a good deal since election day). Anyway, we’re looking for more ideas to play (please drop any names into the precious metals room in Discord). We’re also looking into 2nd order plays. The mining services and supply chain guys. If a few hundred mines get greenlit, who prospers?? ‘Cause, we’d much rather play a guy making picks & shovels, instead of a junior miner…
Moving on, it only took 2 months, but Trump “solved” eggs…
We think Trump keeps solving stuff, in his chaotic manner, and taking SPZ down to 4500 is also a problem he’s trying to solve for. It lets him deflate the Dollar. It puts a bid under Treasuries. It solves for the persistent ‘Dutch Disease’ in US labor, where everyone wants to work in a handful of industries, and no one wants to build his new copper mines. It also takes some of the swagger from the tech bros. Winning, means the SPZ drifting downwards without any sharp moves that blow up a key player—while capital goes back to its home countries. We’ve been smashing the table on this trend here at KEDM. The USA is a sale, and EM is a buy. Even Europe may work actually (probably not, but it may), if only because of fund flows.
Look below at LatAm and tell us we’re not in the early innings here…?? There are many other similar charts globally…
Anyway, we’re simply bullish stuff going up, and bearish stuff going down. We think there’s a multi-year capital re-allocation at foot. We’re here for it. Since it’s going to be fund flows first, and then economic growth driven by the fund flows, we’re positioned in brokers, stock exchanges and asset managers. We plan to slowly pivot to more GDP sensitive names should our fund flows theme work out. Though, we can’t help ourselves in some places, and have trudged into some GDP sensitive stuff too.
With that in mind, we can’t ignore that EMs tend to have a lot of volatility. Sometimes it’s your friend, sometimes it isn’t, but it’s always there. Turkey had a bit of ‘volatility’ this week, but this is just Turkey being Turkey. Should the volatility continue, we’ll do a more formal update next week (likely with pie on our face) so stay tuned…