The Principal's Brief

The October sell-off in technology shares, the debate over AI spending, and the difference between a correction and a rerating.

Fifty years of gold on one log-scale chart, and how the long bear market of the 1980s and 1990s looks from that distance, ahead of the Fed's late-October meeting.

A softer August PCE print that did not move gold the way the conventional playbook expected, and why reading price against a written thesis differs from reading it against the day's news. Plus the governance question of who, or what, first reads your profile.

Treasury buybacks that drew thin demand, record long-bond yields and an escalating Middle East conflict, read as one compounding system. Plus a governance question to put to an SMSF accountant before the Fed decision.

An oil shock, rate-hike bets, rising real yields, pressure on gold and silver, and Japan selling US Treasuries, traced as one chain of cause and effect rather than five separate stories.

The US Treasury's expanded buybacks of its own long bonds, set beside China's central bank buying gold into weakness. Two balance sheets answering the same question, and what would soften that reading.

China's central bank buying gold most heavily into the correction and least at the top. Why accumulation that runs against the price is the signal worth watching.

The first video episode on the five governance questions (the nomination, the trust deed, the decision record, the access map, succession), and an open call for the questions families want answered in Episode 2.

Why silver in Shanghai traded well above the Western spot price while the paper price fell, and what the wedge between physical and paper markets signals. Published alongside the essay on the intelligence layer.

Hong Kong's new central gold clearing system and the end of retail leveraged gold trading at major Chinese banks, two routes to the same structural shift. Also Japan's bond-market stress and a governance question for multi-jurisdiction families.

The 4 July gold revaluation window passed without an announcement. What a non-event tells a holder, why two opposing monetary camps both lean on gold, and one governance question to answer in writing.

The first issue: what the Brief covers, one market development worth watching and one governance question worth asking.