⬇️ My Thoughts ⬇️
🚨GDP is a useless metric… …unless you combine it with additional context If $1 billion is credited into an economy, a significant portion of that will make it into GDP, thus increasing it. That debt may be low quality/default You need Debt to GDP, exports to GDP, etc
Rest of April was relatively uneventful 😴 ≈50% of all gold physical delivery notices were filed on March 28th I’ve learned that these are typical proportions for 1st notice day Last intent/notice day is on April 29th 📆 YTD April is the 2nd largest month in terms of volume
⚠️ Regarding CME COMEX 100 Gold Futures: 👉 Notice period begins 2 business days before the first day of the contract month 📅 So these are YTD values are starting from March 28th, not April 1st (DLV665-T) The core idea remains the same - this is just a technicality of TradFi
Regarding the 1492 “gold top” & 533 years breakeven - the information is misleading These price extrapolations made a lot of assumptions & simplifications Perhaps most importantly, pre-1700’s gold prices were fixed by the government - not a trade/free market derived price
Now that gold is down & below $3.3K, it’s a good time to say this: 🎉 New ATH coming very soon 🎉 In the time of political, civil & economic ambiguity - there is only one recourse - Au Lower interest rates & QE are coming soon - FIAT down, gold up 💾 Save this & check back
Correlation between Ruble & Gold 🇷🇺🥇: Gold up ➡️ Ruble up Gold down ➡️ Ruble down Gold sideways ➡️ Ruble sideways Russia could make RUB gold-backed, make RUB convertible to gold on demand & position RUB as a “trustless”/money-backed currency Already halfway through there
🇷🇺 Ruble is correlating with gold This also explains the recent fall in price. Gold went down against USD & so did RUB Such a retracement after multiple consecutive ATHs is expected Fundamentals are still on the side of gold 🧠 Remember: gold is 35% of Russia's int'l reserves
🇷🇺 Ruble outflows into USD 🇺🇸 A lot of liquidity moved from RUB back into USD. This is also telling by the rebounded USD index But gold will appreciate further. Russian Central Bank’s massive gold reserves will pay off
Upwards retracements for US Dollar Index are normal $DXY fell to ≈98.3 as I previously predicted That whole area is a monthly support level, thus a source & trigger for massive amounts of liquidity It’s not only FOREX, but also the world reserve currency
🇺🇸🇨🇳Here's why trade war with China will hurt the US The economic relationship between US & China is: 1️⃣US pays USD for Chinese goods 2️⃣China re-invests USD back into US bonds Thus, the same USD comes back to US! Tariffs = less imports = less US bond investment = higher yield
🇨🇳China has been increasing their gold reserves YTD Gold price keeps going up - major central banks continue to load up Gold is a hedge against USD. Tariffs are a medium of USD weaponization 👉 Expect US securities sell-off for gold by People's Bank of China
🇯🇵Article 13 of Accounting Rules of the BOJ defines special valuation rules for securities: 1️⃣ Yen bonds at amortized cost 2️⃣ Foreign currency bonds at market value 3️⃣ Stocks, ETFs, J-REITs at MA cost Since gold is not a security, it falls under Article 3 - book value
Generally accepted principles of corporate accounting are: - Historical cost - asset value is recorded at book/acquisition value - Prudence/Conservatism - decrease the asset value in the balance sheet if it has fallen in value. Unrealized gains are ignored 🇯🇵BOJ abides by them
🇯🇵Article 3 of Accounting Rules of the Bank of Japan states that "generally accepted principles of corporate accounting" shall be used for BOJ's accounting This defines the framework of how assets and liabilities are values in the central bank's balance sheet
🇯🇵 BOJ's gold holdings have been constant for 10 years But gold value has skyrocketed - does that mean Japan has been selling gold? No. Articles 3 & 13 of Accounting Rules of BOJ imply that gold holdings are recorded at book value/purchase value, rather than market/spot price
🇯🇵 Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Research says Bank of Japan will continue with QT I say they will switch (back) to QE soon By QE I mean expansion of balance sheet, combined with low/negative key interest rates Let's see who's right
🇯🇵Bank of Japan just released their 10 day account/balance sheet statements 💰2025 YTD: - Gold holdings stable - Foreign currencies down - Cash up - JGB down - Total assets down Signs of QT, but it won't last. Soon, the balance sheet will expand again. High exposure to USD.
A moment of appreciation for how the US Treasury reports the major sovereign holders of securities in this plain HTML table Clear, lightweight and works on every device There's also a plain text version, but it's not as neatly formatted
🚨 Short-term USD risk is up Premium/yield is a measure a risk Imagine you’re purchasing a stock of a company. The CEO of that company makes hostile comments towards its financial division Does the required return to cover the risk of that company increase or decrease?
🚀 Updated https://illya.sh/thoughts/ - Dark/Light mode automatic + toggleable (click on profile image) - More compact design - Large image preview (on click) fixed on mobile My latest X posts are now also live
🚀 Pushed an update to my homepage at https://illya.sh/ Added a link to https://illya.sh/thoughts/ to which I have been exporting a lot of my tweets Making “My Thoughts” button exactly like I wanted took a few iterations and custom contexting with Gemini 2.5 Pro
🇷🇺 Russian Central Bank key interest rate is at 21% 3Y Russian Federation bonds are at ≈16.5% yield The market is pricing in upcoming rate cuts @AskPerplexity and @grok will tell you that Ruble & Russian economy are in a bad state. The reality is different
🚨UPDATE: Gold has now reached $3400 All time highs, followed by more all time highs Remember: gold is not increasing in value, but rather the underlying currencies are falling in value Expect this trend to continue
🇺🇸UPDATE: USD Index in fact did NOT enjoy this #DXY down over 1% today, currently at 98.3 It's almost like aggressively weaponizing the currency erodes the trust in it. Who knew!