Enslave
Profiteer
Rule
Don’t go there!
Perhaps ironically, one of the most famous 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse paintings is by a Russian:
- Pestilence (on a White Horse -> COVID !?)
- War (on a Red Horse -> PUTIN !?)
- Famine (on a Black Horse -> HYPERINFLATION !?)
- Death (on a Pale Horse -> TOO LATE !?)
- Meduza
- DW
- Ahead
The United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands announced that a substance called epibatidine killed Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader who died in a Russian prison in February 2024. The discovery followed testing of biological samples that Navalny’s associates had smuggled out of Russia.
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was killed in prison using a rare dart frog toxin, five European countries said in a joint statement on February 14.
A blogger in Siberia faces criminal charges after posting a video documenting unsanitary conditions at a morgue, according to a lawyer familiar with the case. Artem Pavlechko, who lives in the city of Tulun in the Irkutsk region, has been charged with violating privacy laws, according to his lawyer, Anna Anufrieva. State investigators confirmed that a 34-year-old man is suspected of illegally sharing private details about a doctor, including his home address, in a video posted in January to VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network.
”The Temple of War: People and Ideas That Made the Russian Invasion Possible,” by historian Ilia Venyavkin, profiles the figures who helped Vladimir Putin prime Russians for the attack on Ukraine. Venyavkin cites a visit to the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces in Patriot Park as a primary catalyst for the book. The cathedral, as Venyavkin writes in the preface, was built on Putin’s orders but “had been developing in Russian political culture for many years.” The historian draws a parallel to the Russian–Ukrainian war: Putin personally gave the order for the invasion, but the heroes of Moscow’s “Temple of War” — from Army General Sergey Surovikin to RT propagandist Margarita Simonyan — manufactured the public consent that made it possible.
At the start of the year, Russians got a shock at the grocery store: cucumber prices had skyrocketed. Still, officials and economists aren’t sounding the alarm; prices are expected to begin falling by spring. Inflation more broadly accelerated early in the year, though it’s already showing some signs of slowing. But bringing prices under control could mean sacrificing economic growth — and that, in turn, could deepen Russia’s budget deficit.
2026.02.13
Gold and silver’s dramatic pullback on Jan. 30 was supposedly predicated on the notion that Trump’s pick to replace Jerome Powell as Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, is a fiscal hawk who has previously criticized quantitative easing, wants to unwind the Fed’s massive balance sheet, and may not lower interest rates as Trump has long criticized Powell for failing to do.
But a deeper reading into Warsh reveals that he is not the hawk many think he is, and in fact is likely to move the Fed in lock step with the President’s low-interest-rate, low-dollar desires.
2026.02.11
LME copper hit an all-time high of 13,300 per tonne ($6.03/lb) on Jan. 6, marking a 50% year-on-year increase.
Source: Trading Economics
Along with all the usual applications for copper — in construction, transportation and telecommunications — demand is being driven by ongoing electrification and decarbonization of the transportation system and the exponential growth in battery storage.
Furthermore, copper is vital to artificial intelligence and the infrastructure that supports AI.
Continue reading Why we’re running out of copper – Richard Mills at Ahead of the Herd.
2026.02.09
Rick Mills, Editor/ Publisher, Ahead of the Herd:
Jason, we have the silver price crashing, and a lot of people are asking what is going on?
Jason Weber, CEO, Silver North:
Well, it’s funny. Probably around $100 silver I said $75 would feel like where it should go back to. We went on to $118 and now we’re back to $75 twice in the last seven days.
Continue reading Under the Spotlight – Jason Weber CEO Silver North Resources at Ahead of the Herd.
By Felix Richter – Statista
As the global AI boom continues, the world’s largest tech companies have embarked on an unprecedented spending spree to stay ahead of the curve and build the infrastructure needed for the AI revolution. Last year alone, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft spent more than $400 billion in capital expenditure, most of it dedicated to building the data centers that are the foundation of all AI applications. That’s more than double the amount spent in 2023 and yet, there is no end in sight to what experts are calling the “AI arms race”.
Continue reading Tech’s AI-Fueled Spending Surge at Ahead of the Herd.
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Mandela’s Kiss Endures
The 2024 Global Elections Super-Cycle
Stay tuned for continuous updates on elections around the world. Click on a country for the latest elections data and analysis.
- Number of national elections to be held in 2024 18 of 68
- Overall turnout (based on registered voters) 63%
- Total number of ballots cast in 18 elections 467,094,737
Pulled conclusions from pooled data compilations
Using some of the world’s largest companies by market cap & some of the most quoted indices + two most sung alternatives: data for this millennia where available
- At 134x, Apple is the absolute stock price growth winner; with Amazon at 45x and Google at 32x
- Despite the lack of interest or dividends, gold at 6.6x looks good compared to any other stock or index!
- Barrick Gold on the other hand seems to be poorly correlated to anything including the gold metal itself!?
- But Barrick is the only stock producing negative correlations with most of the indices including a relatively high -0.77 with the Euronext100 index
- If one wast trying to get something totally uncorrelated on purpose- it would be hard to beat: gold and the Euronext100 index at -0.03; or Barrick and the Hang Seng index at 0.04; or gold and Merck at 0.16; or BTC and the FTSE index at 0.19
- Correlation against a basket of indices & alternatives is best in Disney and Google (0.81-0.82), albeit at different growth multiples
- If an average historical P/E is somewhere in the 20x range, then the current S&P quoted average which is in high 30s is as warned high, BUT: only Amazon and Visa seem to be widely out of range (justified by growth in online transactions?), with many below current & historical averages
- In the current world of no interest & no inflation, maybe the higher P/E averages are justified..? For how long, that is a different question…
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