Blain's Morning Porridge Podcast

As long as there is instability and uncertainty there will be the Yellow Metal “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty..” Gold Prices stumbled earlier this week. It is a bursting bubble? Nope. Markets will remain uncertain – while the world’s geopolitical polarity is shifting Gold remains the safe-haven play. That shift is being accelerated by events as the stability that fuelled the last 80 years of growth is undermined by bad politics and division. Much of the Financial Commentariat was determined to bury Gold yesterday – hailing the 6% price tumble as the start of an inevitable rout, a sign of a massively over-bought bubble bursting, and (inevitably) there was a shout from the crypto-crypt in the dank basement about its time as a safe-haven being over.. Whateva… It was a correction, and suggests the Gold market might have got ahead of itself. Watch what the 200 day moving average does, or read the headlines, but ask yourself: did anything really change? Nope.

Time for a rethink on Tech Resiliency? “Did someone forget to feed the hamster?” Western economies are dependent on functional tech. Yesterday’s Amazon outage suggests the resiliency of tech infrastructure is creaking, raising multiple issues about dependency and costs. Could a shift in how companies secure against Tech vulnerabilities see the MAG3 firms at the core of global tech infrastructure hit? When I opened Linked-in this morning, I was deluged in adverts from Amazon Web Services, telling me all about how they automate, create and reduce costs, while boosting my productivity. No surprise really, the spyware that watches our every keystroke would have picked up I was searching for info on yesterday’s outage. I posted a very rude message in reply. What I was looking for was some data or narrative to back up for my thesis we might just have suffered the No-See-Um moment that breaks the myth of the West’s all powerful Tech?

Blain’s Morning Porridge Oct 20th 2025 – Mutant Credit Cockroaches? Whatever next? “Smart men go broke three ways: ladies, liquor and leverage.” Markets feel increasingly nervous. Although someone has cranked up the party music to 11, and the euphoria is still pouring, concerns about banking and loan exposures are rising. If there is a wobble, then it’s likely to be leverage on leverage that sees a bunch of private credit lenders in trouble. What will this week hold for markets? Trade wars? Peace deals? Inflation (maybe not as the US Govt is still in Shutdown)? A bank run? An invasion of mutant credit cockroaches? Who knows, who can tell..? This is heaven, this is hell… Reading through the financial press, it now feels there are more negative outlooks than positive.. Every financial market scribbler is predicting some kind of shocking sell-off in overpriced markets. Whateva… If I am going to remain a contrarian… I may have to go out and find something positive to write about?  

Every day we are reminded of injustice in the UK – the fight of postmasters against the Post Office, or haemophiliacs against the medical indifference, are just the tip of an iceberg of a justice system loaded against the people. It’s only when it impacts directly do you realise just how lopsided UK planning has become. There is no social justice – just the jackboot of corporate greed being crushed into the face of humanity… forever. Yesterday was a very bad day. My village is going to be sacrificed to make foreign investors rich. So much for a restful retirement… I have written many times about the insanity of the Hamble Quarry – digging a dirty great hole right in the middle of a prosperous village to quarry gravel which nobody needs right next to homes, shops, schools and businesses. It was approved by the planning inspectorate yesterday. It’s a slap in the face for over 20,000 citizens in the area, who will see their home values impacted, and futures blighted. Already young people are leaving because they don’t want their kids trying to learn just meters away from a working quarry. The local economy will be decimated and the environment compromised. Cemex, a Mexican firm specialising in Cement and Waste Management, has been given permission to quarry 1.7 million tonnes of gravel and sand from the very heart of the pretty seaside village of Hamble-le-Rice. Every single home in the village is within 500 meters of the site. The three schools are all in touching distance. Many homes will be blighted by massive berms put up to shield the quarry work. A schoolkid asked the planning inspector at the appeal: “You would not build a school next to a quarry, so why dig a quarry next to a school?” He never answered her. Why?

 Damn the Torpedoes, full steam…. Boom. gurgle gurgle..”  There is no stopping a market believing what it wants to believe. Tariffs, Trade Wars, Credit Cockroaches, BTC delusions, this market has it all, yet everyone is still dancing. Best thing to do might be to “Catflap” – walking away without saying anything to anyone. Euphoric markets have a habit of watching all the wrong things. As I’ve written many times, markets are not clever – they demonstrate a remarkable ability to fool themselves and believe multiple improbable and conflicting things all at the same time. Blain’s Market Mantra No 3 states that: “Markets are not clever – they simply reflect the weighted stupidity of participants.” You can find full Morning Porridge Commentary on the website, and this morning's article on this link.