Want to know why markets boom, bust, and break your patience?

It all starts with the cost of capital.

🎓 Part 15 of The Macro Butler Financial Academy breaks down how the cost of capital drives the business cycle and reshapes investment returns—before the headlines catch up.

https://www.tiktok.com/@the.macro.butler/video/7601834505107721479

Stop guessing. Start understanding.
👉 Register now: https://themacrobutler.com/financial-academy/

In the 1970s, gold stumbled four times—each drop over 15%—in 1975, 1976, and twice in 1978. Each time, the village criers (today we call them “X experts”) declared the bull market dead. Had you listened in August 1976, you would have sold gold at $100, congratulating yourself on your wisdom. By the end of that most painful age of stagflation, gold had risen fivefold, and wisdom was found not in selling, but in sitting quietly while others panicked.

“When the gold river flows backward, the impatient fisherman sells his net.”

Ignore the Wall Street banksters shouting from the riverbank.

Learn to read the currents, not the noise.

With wars knocking at the door, gold may soon offer one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime buying moments—for those patient enough to wait while others panic.

While the globalist Educated-Yet-Idiots hyperventilate over Donald Copperfield “threatening” Greenland’s sovereignty, geology quietly rolls its eyes: Greenland literally sits on the North American tectonic plate. Politically Danish, culturally European, but tectonically North American—sometimes the Earth itself refuses to follow Brussels’ narrative.
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/earth-greenlands-geologic-past/

To the European press—47 is guilty by definition unless he’s wiring money to migrants and apologizing for existing. So don’t expect them to mention that Greenland is geologically North American, not European, or to revisit Denmark’s quiet sterilization of Inuit girls from the 1960s through 1991.

https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/103874-denmark-greenland-traumatic-birth-control-campaign.html

Greenland isn’t vital to Europe’s security and it isn’t Denmark’s “asset” either—this tantrum is really about clinging to the last emotional souvenir of European imperialism.

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler Long/Short Portfolio as of end of January 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-longshort-portfolio-b83

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler Strategic Portfolio as of end of January 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-strategic-portfolio-212

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler IG Portfolio as of end of January 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-ig-portfolio-january-4b0

While Western “experts” shout doom for gold, Zijin Mining, China’s—and the world’s—gold master, quietly collects treasures abroad like a wise elder spreading seeds: patiently, strategically, and profitably.
Its C$5.5B ($4B) purchase of Canada’s Allied Gold brings tier-one African mines into the fold, from Mali to Côte d’Ivoire to Ethiopia, turning Zijin into a global player without breaking a sweat.

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/business-deals/china-s-zijin-to-buy-canadian-owner-of-gold-mines-in-3-african-countries

With Beijing eyeing assets beyond the USD, Zijin proves that true power grows quietly—while others just talk.

As Washington closed its doors yet again, the factories keep the good to work to try to Make America Great Again: U.S. manufacturing surprised in January with its fastest expansion since 2022, as the ISM index leapt to 52.6, powered by a sharp revival in new orders and production. Like a Confucian student thriving when the master is absent, demand returned after a long winter of contraction—backlogs grew, exports improved, and lean customer inventories hinted at further momentum ahead. Yet wisdom tempers enthusiasm: part of the strength reflects post-holiday restocking and buying ahead of tariff-driven price increases, while input costs and delivery delays are still rising. In short, the workshop hums again—but the bill for materials remains stubbornly high.

In a nutshell, U.S. manufacturing jumped back into expansion in January, led by surging orders and production, but with rising costs quietly reminding investors that nothing comes free.

In his finest display of the “Don Roe” doctrine, Tariff Man set out to wedge the dragon and the elephant apart by dangling tariff sweeteners before India—on the condition that New Delhi abandons discounted Russian oil for barrels blessed by “Great America” and newer-elastic 51st state, Venezuela. The pledge may last about as long as a Truth Social post stays pinned, because if enforced it would shove India right back under the age-old curse of higher oil prices—the very force that has haunted the rupee and stirred social unrest for a century. Having finally cracked the code by buying cheap Russian crude and paying in local currency, India is now invited to relearn an ancient lesson: geopolitics makes for terrible energy policy.

Under the grand illusion of “Project Vault,” Washington pulled a Donald Copperfield move—making America’s critical-minerals vulnerability disappear on paper with a $12 billion strategic stockpile. Backed by a $10 billion Ex-Im Bank loan and private capital, the plan mimics a Strategic Petroleum Reserve for shiny essentials like lithium, cobalt, gallium, and graphite, all meant to keep EVs humming, jets flying, and smartphones glowing—without calling Beijing first. With GM, Boeing, Google, and a few commodity traders cheering from the front row, the message is clear: when China controls the mine and the refiner, the only Western magic trick left is to buy everything in advance and call it national security.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-rare-earth-minerals-stockpile-12-billion/

Against a $400–450 billion global critical-minerals market—heading toward $1 trillion by decade’s end—the U.S. $12 billion allocation looks less like a strategic masterstroke and more like loose change under the sofa. Demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, graphite, and copper is exploding with EVs, energy storage, and electrification, neatly underscoring the irony: critical minerals now run geopolitics, but the West’s response is still sized for a pocket calculator

What once looked like boring rocks now decide who builds, who fights, and who wins—critical minerals are redrawing the global order.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butlers-monthly-meditation-a85

Thanks to January’s fashionable “micro shutdown,” the ADP report briefly became America’s favorite labor oracle—and it delivered less magic than Washington’s talking points. Private payrolls rose a mighty 22,000, missing every estimate in sight and quietly confirming that the job market is cooling, not cruising. With the official BLS numbers delayed, reality leaked out anyway: hiring isn’t collapsing, but it’s clearly lost its pulse, as layoffs at big names make headlines and job growth limps along, carried mostly by education and healthcare.

In short, the labour market isn’t falling apart—it’s just stuck in neutral, no matter how loudly the propaganda engine revs.

The new year’s optimism is doing its best impression of a double espresso for U.S. services. The ISM Services Index held at a perky 53.8 in January—the strongest back-to-back showing since 2024—officially keeping the expansion party alive. Business activity surged, orders politely tapped the brakes, and employment barely crawled forward, which nicely matches the ADP report showing hiring enthusiasm has gone on a diet. Prices, meanwhile, woke up grumpy and climbed to a three-month high, supplier deliveries slowed, and export demand quietly exited the room. In short: services are growing, but under the hood it looks less like a boom and more like a treadmill—lots of movement, not much forward progress.

In a nutshell, U.S. services are expanding on paper, but beneath the headline it’s a treadmill economy: activity up, hiring barely breathing, prices rising, and demand quietly losing steam.