A comparative analysis of gold, silver, and oil spreads across pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis phases in hypothetical Middle Eastern conflict scenarios Arzu Alvan | March 7, 2026 There is a strange poetry in how the world’s most critical energy chokepoint—a sliver of water barely 21 miles wide at its narrowest point—can send tremors through financial markets spanning every continent.…
Introduction Sometimes the global economy feels like a neighborhood where the same house keeps catching fire. We put out the flames, we rebuild, and then we move on—only to watch the embers ignite somewhere else entirely. Over the past sixty years, the world has witnessed oil shocks, financial meltdowns, pandemics, and now, a potential crisis brewing in a corner of…
CAPE ratio, Buffett Indicator, yield curve, and economic uncertainty — what do they say about where we are right now? There is a moment in every crisis, usually after the fact, when people say: “The signs were all there.” And they are right. The signs usually are there. The problem is not that we cannot see them. The problem is…
Executive Summary This report examines the relationship between global liquidity expansion and the performance of three key assets: gold, silver, and Bitcoin, using 67 years of empirical data (1959-2026). Key findings include: Global liquidity (proxied by US M2 Money Stock and Fed Total Assets) has expanded dramatically during crisis periods: 1971 Nixon Shock, 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and 2020 COVID-19…
Beyond the Surface The recent sharp decline in gold and silver prices has left many investors questioning the “safe haven” story. I understand this reaction. When something is called a safe haven, people expect it to go up when fear goes up. But markets do not move only with fear. They move with liquidity, with interest rates, and with the…
House prices, shipping stocks, and the S&P 500 in a world that never learns Sometimes the global economy feels like a neighborhood where the same house keeps catching fire. Different years, different neighbors, but somehow the same smoke. Here I look at three markets that react to stress with three different personalities: U.S. house prices, a basket of shipping…
The End of Money as We Know It? In the grand theater of economic history, money has always been a social construct—a collective agreement on value. From the Lydian coins to the gold standard, and from the Nixon shock of 1971 to the birth of Bitcoin in 2009, the medium of exchange has constantly evolved. Today, we stand at a…
The global dollar system is no longer limited to the visible balance sheets of the Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks, or the U.S. Treasury. Over the last four decades, a dense offshore dollar system has emerged: a network of tax havens, lightly regulated financial centers, special purpose vehicles, and dollarized balance sheets that sit outside traditional monetary statistics and democratic…