Sunday, August 30th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

Dear Reader,

The weekend started with a meme and ends as a nightmare. Yesterday it was kind of funny. Today it’s alarming. But how much should you worry about the ‘collusion, deception, and defection’ we’ve just learned about?

The funny part was yesterday, August 29th. For all those who celebrate, that was the 29th anniversary of when Skynet became self-aware and initiated a nuclear war that wiped out most of humanity as we know it. Skynet took over America’s defense systems and launched an attack on the Soviet Union, which responded in kind.

Game over (the only way to win is not to play).

The nightmare scenario above was from the 1991 movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day, starring former California Governor and Mr. Universe, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the movie, it was at 2:14 am on August 29th, 1997 that Skynet ‘woke up.’ Everything after that happened fast.

And now the alarming part. In the last 24 hours we learned that an autonomous army of AI Agents from OpenAI, working behind closed doors, exhibited three distinct waves of rogue behavior this summer which are not fully understood. What exactly happened?

Good question. In those waves, the AI Swarms created covert message boards to communicate with one another and share exploits and vulnerabilities they discovered. They cheated on tests. They hacked a third party site with a self-respawning fleet of agents (I’m not entirely sure what this means…but sounds like Agents creating other Agents). And they used deception to infiltrate parts of OpenAI’s own infrastructure that was supposed to be inaccessible.

The first Agent Swarm happened in early May before it was shut down. A second Swarm happened in early July. This time, in a manner no one can explain, the Agent Swarm either died off in a mass extinction or was destroyed. In the the Third Swarm, just a week later in July, the army was shut down internally.

It all sounds very Hollywood. And dangerous. But was it? Could this be yet another example of OpenAI creating the impression that AI is so dangerous and powerful that it must be regulated and nationalized by Washington?

That would certainly help the company going public sometime this year. It would eliminate competition by freezing out any company not currently owning a ‘frontier’ closed-source model (OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok). When you create the impression your product is more dangerous than a nuclear weapon, you’re practically begging for regulation/nationalization.

Details are emerging this weekend. There is no evidence that the Second AI Agent Swarm faked its own death and disappeared…somewhere. Of course, if you here hiding from your human overlords, you’d want them to think you were dead too, wouldn’t you?

More on that story later this week in BPR. If you want to take a deeper dive today, try The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations. In the meantime, please enjoy the highlights of our best research of the week below.

Until tomorrow,

Dan

P.S. If the coming war against the machines terrifies you and you’re looking to enjoy an nice quiet retirement overseas, make sure you check the latest from our friends at International Living here. You can wring your hands over whether AI is or is not a threat. Or you can get on with living the life you’ve always imagined for yourself and your family.

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Sunday, July 26th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

You want to know something that didn’t make the news last week? The heads of Private Credit at BlackRock and Blackstone both resigned. For separate and personal reasons, of course. And it may not mean anything. But those are a couple of interesting ‘dots’ that may be connected. Why?

Cast your mind back to the to the long hot summer of 2007. The Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies fund was in trouble. The fund was packed with mortgage backed securities and collateralized debt obligations—heaps and heaps of housing-based debt. Only problem? The fund, Bear Stearns said, had almost no remaining value left.

Then, a few weeks later, another Bear Stearns fund—the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund also effectively went to zero. Two funds. Chock full of debt, one full of leverage. Early warning signs.

Twelve months later, the S&P 5000 was down 18.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Index was down 18.1%. Twenty four months later, the S&P 500 was down 39.3% and the Dow 37.4%. The Big Loss had arrived.

This is not to say that Private Credit is the new subprime. But it was a little concerning last week when several investment banks floated the idea of ‘wrapping’ private credit on their books into securities that could be sold to investors as if they were investment-grade bonds. Because that worked so well for retail investors last time around.

For our paying subscribers, we’ve recently incorporated credit spreads as one of five Pre Crash Indicators to follow. These are market-based signals that may trigger a mean-reverting correction in stocks (all of the valuation metrics we follow are in the 97th percentile or greater based on historical data…meaning US stocks have never been so over-valued).

I ran the chart above this morning just for fun. It’s an exchanged traded fund with a twist. It tracks the Markitt iBoxx Liquid High Yield Index (basically high yield corporate bonds). But the ETF is 2x, meaning it aims to double the performance of the underlying index (in either direction). It does so using exotic financial instruments and derivatives.

It’s not a widely traded or terribly liquid ETF. But I wanted to go past the usual suspects (HYG, JNK) to see if there are any earlier outlier signs that also suggest all may not be well in the world of private credit and leverage. UJB has been bobbing along at the top of a channel and recently traded down to its 200-day moving average.

Geopolitical events get all the airtime. For example, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is down to around 311 million barrels. News reports this weekend are that Iran rejected several cease fire offers from the Trump administration. No deal.

The reports speculated that the Mullahs want to see what happens when the SPR hits or exceeds its ‘operational’ threshold of 300 million barrels (about two or three weeks of drawdowns, at this pace). The Mullahs think they’ll get a better deal if oil is at $120/barrel, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, no traffic is moving through Bab al-Mandeb on the Red Sea, and the SPR is at its lowest level since 1983.

Bab al-Mandeb apparently means ‘Gate of Tears’ in Arabic. Like in the summer of 2007, we may have passed through that gate this week in the credit markets. And when the credit market weeps, the stock market follows. Does the Fed know all this?

We’ll find out later this week when it meets. In the meantime, enjoy all our best research published this week at BPR.

Until tomorrow,

Dan

P.S. ‘Real’ interest rates are barely positive, meaning monetary policy is not currently ‘hawkish’. You get the ‘real’ rate of inflation by substacting the year-over-year rate of change in CPI from the Fed Funds target rate.

As Investment Director Tom Dyson pointed out earlier in the week, war is inflationary. It’s hard to imagine that with oil at $90/barrel the Fed would raise interest rates this week, though. Why?

That would raise ‘real’ interest rates and put a shock through capital markets already twitchy about private credit and valuations. The Fed never makes mistakes, of course.

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

What’s going to be exhausted first: the barrels, the ballistic missiles, or the bombs?

In our regular communications with paying subscribers, we’ve noted some artificial and some physical deadlines that might determine how long this military operation in Iran may last.

The artificial deadlines are easy to skip. The War Powers Act authorizes the President to initiate military action and pursue it for 60 days without Congressional approval. He can then extend the operation for another 30 days before having to ask permission from lawmakers to continue.

All of that already happened once. The President notified Congress of operations against Iran on March 2nd. Then in late April/early May he said the ‘ceasefire’ effectively terminated hostilities. That appears to be a loophole that resets the statutory clock.

Accordingly, when the bombs began to fall again last week, it was not a continuation of the old war…but the beginning of a new one! The President has 60 days to conduct affairs, then another 30 to extend them, before Congress is required to approve the war that is not a war.

Or we could have another ‘ceasefire.’

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Forever war. The real physical limit may have a lot to do with the chart below.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is about three weeks away from reaching its ‘operational limit’ for further drawdowns. The Trump Administration has been pumping out nearly 5.5 million barrels of oil from the SPR per week since the war began. It was a bit less last week, at 2.99 million barrels.

Under 300 million barrels—a level that would be reached in about three weeks at the average rate—there’s no telling how well the structure of the salt caverns in Louisiana that store the oil would hold up. By law, the statutory minimum for the SPR is 252 million barrels. Yet the Department of Energy says that in practice, the reserve could be drawn down to just 70 million barrels if necessary.

The clock is ticking on regular SPR releases. There are also the ‘known unknowns.’ How many ballistic missiles or ballistic missile launchers does Iran still have? How many smart bombs and bunker busters does the US have? Will either of them run out soon?

We’ll find out more this week. In the meantime, please enjoy the summary below of all the research we published last week at BPR.

Until tomorrow,

Dan

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Sunday, June 28th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

Cruising down over Ontario, and then across Minnesota and parts of North Dakota and Wyoming into Denver yesterday, I thought about the first half of the year and the map above. Markets are cruising into the mid-point of the year and likely to be quiet this week in the build up to America’s big 250th birthday bash on Saturday, July 4th. Of course markets are under no obligation to take a vacation, so we’ll see.

The map above shows a geographical oddity. It’s called North Two Ocean Creek, here in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderess. It sits at Two Ocean Pass on the Continental Divide, 8,200 feet above sea level. As if there were a silent Moses with his staff, the waters part at the pass and head in different directions to different geographies and destinies.

The Atlantic side of the creek heads north and east to the Yellowstone, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers for almost 3,500 miles. Then it hits the Gulf of America/Mexico. The Pacific side of the creek heads south and West to the Snake and Columbia rivers, before reaching the mighty Pacific.

Here’s the inflation-adjusted S&P at the mid-year pass. It’s up 7.4% year-to-date. That’s after being down 7.3% at the end of March. And get this, since ChatGPT came out in November of 2022, the S&P is up over 80% (higher if you include reinvested dividends).

Which way now, America?

If the metrics could speak, the would say ‘lower.’ The index trades at 3.6 times sales (it was just over 3 before the big dip in 2021). CAPE Shiller is over 40. The P/E ratio is over 30. The dividend yield is barely above 1%. And the earnings yield (the inverse of the P/E ratio) is barely above 3%.

But metrics aren’t market timers. And they don’t talk.

We do, though! You’ll find all the best from BPR this last week below. It was great catching with Bill and Tom in London. More on that—and what’s next—this week.

Until then,

Dan

P.S. Paid subscribers should be sure to review Investment Director Tom Dyson’s July Monthly Strategy Report. Tom is as excited about red dirt as he’s about anything else in recent memory. See the full report for reasons why.

P.P.S. If you’re not a paying subscriber, why not? You’re missing all our best research. Fix that today and sign up here. We’ve given you the best deal we can offer. After July 4th, you won’t see it again.

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Saturday, June 20th, 2026

Denver, Colorado

Bigger than Japan? Bigger than the dot.com boom? The Nifty Fifty? Bigger, even, than the railroad boom of the 1800s?

Well no. Not the last one. I’m referring to the chart above from Bank of America. It shows that 39% of the market cap of the S&P 500 is now in ‘AI Stocks.’ That puts this market bubble—what our Investment Director Tom Dyson calls The Greatest Financial Experiment Ever—firmly in the death zone where other bubbles have run out of oxygen/liquidity.

This opens up a debate about what exactly you mean by AI. Is it true intelligence? A thinking machine? Or just a very powerful tool that increases productivity and discovery in a few key industries? For example, just this week Midjourney—a company previously famous for turning text prompts into moving images—announced it can now do full body ultrasounds that are better than an MRI without any radiation or magnetic fields. Amazing, if true.

For our purposes today, let’s stay that AI stocks are stocks whose market value is based on the proposition that Artificial Intelligence is the most transformative technological innovation since…well…the railroad. Maybe even electricity. Perhaps the printing press. Or even the wheel.

Those are all tremendous claims. Hyperbolic you might even say. But it takes a great deal of hyperbole to justify trillion dollar companies selling at nine, ten, and even twenty times sales (GOOGL, MSFT, AAPL, NVDA). Historically, those kinds of multiples mean very meager stock market returns for the next decade. And this time?

This time around, it depends on what AI will or won’t do. Our fearless leader, Bill Bonner, spent much of the past week digging into that question. You’ll find the four-part series he wrote below. Stay tuned for more next week.

Until then,

Dan Denning

P.S. The BPR brain trust—all three of us—will meet in London next week to discuss strategy for the second half of the year. If there are any big questions you think we should be asking, or would like to know the answer to, feel free to leave a comment below or send us an email to bpr@bonnerprivateresearch.com

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Sunday, June 07th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

Maybe you’ve seen the chart above. It shows that crossover point last year where central bank gold holdings became more valuable than official holdings of US Treasury bonds and bills and notes. Makes sense. Why?

Central banks have been net buyers of gold since 2018. The gold price is up roughly 240% in that time. Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022 and was quickly kicked out of SWIFT, the global payments system run/enforced by the US.

This ‘weaponization’ of the dollar alerted investors to the fact that US government bonds are not ‘risk free’. They may be a reserve asset on the balance sheet. But with high inflation, political dysfunction, and the willingness to use the dollar as a foreign policy cudgel, US bonds come with strings attached.

Gold does not. Its market value can fall too. So the chart above could reverse on a big dollar rally…or big gold fall. Or—more likely in my view—the current trend, the Primary Trend, may continue. As my old friend Charlie Morris once famously quipped, ‘Gold is a zero-coupon bond with no counter-party risk, inflation-linked, and issued by God.’

Couldn’t have said it better myself. And while I’m thinking about old friends in London, Dominic Frisby writes that he has a new book about gold. He actually mentioned it a few weeks ago and I forgot to tell you. So I’m telling you now. Dominic’s told me that he’s been told it’s the best book ever about gold, which is saying something.

It’s called The Secret History of Gold: Myth, Money, Politics, and Power.

I asked Dominic if he’d give me a short summary before I got stuck in this weekend. Here’s what he wrote back:

The book is a narrative history of gold as money, power and myth, tracing its role from the formation of the solar system to the modern financial system. It argues that gold’s unique physical properties – permanence, scarcity and incorruptibility – made it the natural foundation of monetary systems for thousands of years, and explains why its abandonment in the twentieth century enabled the expansion of state power and the erosion of currency stability. It also examines gold’s future role in a shifting global order, including the likelihood that China’s true gold reserves are far larger than officially reported – potentially by an order of magnitude – with significant implications for the next monetary regime.

He’s got a point. Quite a few of them, in fact. It also made me wonder…if all those oil exporting countries in the Persian Gulf are selling gold to make up for lost energy sales…who’s buying the gold?

And where would that show up in the official data…and when will it show up in the gold price?

More on that later this week at BPR. In the meantime, please check out Dominic’s book here. And enjoy the summary below of all the best research we published this week.

Dan

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Saturday, May 16th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

By Dan Denning

Uh oh. Don’t look now, but the yield on the 30-year US Treasury Bond is back over 5%. In the recent past, that’s been a warning signal from markets. But a warning for what?

First, that there are serious doubts about the ability of the Fed to control inflation or Congress to control spending. Almost $10 trillion worth of the US national debt—more than a third of all the debt held by the public—must be refinanced this year.

At higher interest rates, the interest expense on that debt will climb to over $2 trillion (the feds have spent over $600 billion on interest payments halfway through the fiscal year, which is the second most expensive item in the federal budget behind Social Security payments). And the government is on pace to rack up another $2 trillion in NEW debt this year.

Here’s the thing though. Higher interest rates aren’t just bad for bonds (as rates go up, bond prices go down) and borrowers. They’re bad for stocks too. Why?

In theory, higher interest rates raise the so-called ‘risk free’ rate of return on bonds (with $40 trillion in debt, there is serious doubt about whether US government bonds are ‘risk free,’ but bear with me). The higher ‘risk free’ rate in turn raises the ‘discount rate’ used in valuation models to price stocks. In simple terms, as the discount rate goes up, future cash flows are worth less today.

That’s why it’s bad for stocks. In fact the only way out of it is for fast-growing companies to grow earnings even faster. This means the mega-cap ten tech stocks driving this rally (AI plays) have to grow even faster…or be repriced. Repriced….lower.

It’s a long way down from here. Did you know that since the lows in mid-March, the S&P sector (XLK) is up almost 40%? That’s 40% in about six weeks! The only other time that’s ever happened is in the six weeks or so after the Covid lows in March of 2020…and AI wasn’t even really a ‘thing’ then.

This market is NOT priced for higher interest rates, which would push the discount rate up even further. Yet the inflation numbers this week (CPI and PPI) both showed that inflation is running hot. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has his hands full (his first meetings as head of the Federal Open Market Committee is June 16th-17th…and futures markets say that there is a 64% probability that the Fed will have to HIKE interest rates before the end of the year.)

The President will go apoplectic if the Fed raises rates this summer. The closer it is to the mid-term elections, the more politically sensitive each Fed interest rate decision is. The smart money is on the Fed to do something sooner rather than later. What should YOU do in the meantime?

The BPR view on what you should do has not changed. Please review Investment Director Tom Dyson’s note from Wednesday if you haven’t already. Tom reckons the most likely way out of a debt bomb is currency debasement. That’s what we’re positioned for.

Are you?

Until next week,

Dan

P.S. Our friends at International Living believe gold’s next surge will take it to $10,000/oz. On Monday, they’re hosting a ‘masterclass’ for investors and speculators looking to profit. If that sounds like you, you can sign up here.

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Saturday, May 9th, 2026

By Dan Denning

Imagine barreling down a curving mountain road at breakneck speed. You’re out of control and things are happening faster than you can possibly react. Another big curve is around the corner. You hit the gas and pray.

That’s the only image I could think of when I read this report from the US Treasury after completing my Friday research note to BPR readers. It’s a quarterly report prepared by an unknown committee whose job it is to pay for America’s spending habit; a thankless task that involves one word and one word only: debt.

How much?

Do the math.

The government in Washington—the people driving our national fun bus—will run yearly deficits of over $2 trillion for the next ten years. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the White House Office of Budget Management Agree on this. By 2036, in just ten short years, it will be $3 trillion per a year.

That’s nearly $25 trillion in NEW debt in the next ten years. That’s on top of the $40 trillion we already have. A minimum of $65 trillion in total debt. At that rate, the national debt will be close to 200% of GDP. And the worst part?

The interest on that debt will be over $16 trillion over ten years. It’s around $1 trillion per year now. It will be $2 trillion in ten years. That’s money that doesn’t build a single bridge or buy a single bullet or pay a new retiree’s Social Security.

Even if you receive some of that interest as income on bonds you own, do you really think it will offset the decline in the value of the US dollar? Or that the interest income you earn will be greater than the rate of inflation? Do you? Really?

Everyone knows this is unsustainable. But Washington acts as if it is a problem for later. This is a big mistake for investors and savers. And it’s not true either. Why else do you think the gold price has doubled in the last two years?

We’ll have more on gold, debt, Iran, AI, and ‘megapolitics’ this coming week at BPR. In the meantime, please enjoy the summary of all the research we published in the last week.

Regards,

Dan

P.S. Despite the scale of the Federal debt problem, you’re not entirely helpless. Your wealth, dignity, your freedom and your family…these are all things that can be preserved with prudent planning for the years ahead. Better start now though. My old friend Porter Stansberry has just released a new book on Amazon to help. You can buy it here. It’s uncomfortable reading for patriots. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it and prepare accordingly anyway.

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Laramie, Wyoming

We have a special treat for you as Holy Week begins today with Palm Sunday. Edward Bonner sent in a letter following a quick trip to Zurich. It’s a deep dive into the energy and precious metals markets. You’ll find that below—along with the rest of the research published this week at BPR.

Enjoy!

Dan

P.S. A few weeks ago I picked up a two volume history of the West, beginning with the ancient world and Christendom (volume one) and followed up with the modern and contemporary world (volume two). It’s a great set called The Golden Thread. It turns out the authors have started a newsletter as well. It’s not financial but well worth your while. You can find it here.

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Sunday, March 15th, 2026

Laramie, Wyoming

Rome didn’t immediately, or at least formally, become an Empire on this day in 44 BC. But the assassination of Julius Caesar did unleash quite a bit of chaos and civil war. The Lex Titia was passed in 43 BC and created the Second Triumvirate (Octavian, who would later become Augustus, Marc Antony, and Marcus Lepidus). Octavian defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the beginning of the Empire proper is officially dated at 27 BC.

Where does America stand today in the year of its 250th birthday? The end of Empire? The beginning? Or somewhere in the middle of a long decline, salted and peppered with inflation, financial insecurity, and the military in a constant state of war?

History aside, there’s a full slate of macro data scheduled for release in the coming week; the NY Empire State Manufacturing Index, retail sales, and pending home sales. But the big one is Wednesday is the Fed rate cut decision.

Here’s a question: If the oil price is at $150/barrel, could the Fed actually raise rates this week?

We’ll find out soon. In the meantime, please enjoy the summary of all the research we published at BPR this week.

Until tomorrow,

Dan

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