While YouTube macro wizards hyperventilated over precious-metal volatility, the real drama quietly unfolded in the Middle Kingdom: China’s official manufacturing PMI slipped into contraction at 49.3, well below expectations, with non-manufacturing following it south to 49.4. This wasn’t a harmless Lunar New Year hiccup—supply weakened, demand rolled over, and business confidence took a visible hit. Translation: China’s economy stumbled out of the 2026 starting blocks, and unless policy support shows up quickly, the only thing expanding may be calls for a PBoC rate cut by late February.

Behind the PMI headline wobble, the real culprit was demand having a lie-down. Manufacturing output cooled but stayed in expansion, while new orders slid back into contraction and export orders sank further, confirming that buyers—domestic and foreign—were nowhere near enthusiastic. Confidence didn’t help: business expectations suffered their sharpest one-month drop since late 2022, suggesting policy support arrived fashionably late. Prices ticked higher thanks to commodities like copper—nice for fighting deflation, less nice if margins get squeezed downstream. Small and mid-sized firms felt the pain fastest, slipping deeper into contraction, while large firms merely limped along. Outside manufacturing, construction collapsed (officially blamed on bad weather, unofficially on weak investment), while services hovered just below expansion—less a collapse, more a tired shrug.

In a nutshell, when the drums are loud but the fields grow quiet, the wise see the truth: China’s PMIs fell into contraction not by seasonal fate but by weakening demand and fading confidence, reminding us that when policy arrives late, imbalance spreads first to the smallest pillars.

Listen to a summary of The Macro Butler weekly newsletter via podcast on Substack; YouTube; Rumble & TikTok.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-don-roe-doctrine-and-the-end-79f

🤵 The Macro Butler’s Monthly Meditation 🤵

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

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

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🎓 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.

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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/