So did the U.S. just enter a recession? It depends on who you ask.

During Tesla’s quarterly results webcast this week, Musk admitted to dumping some $936 million of Bitcoin to raise cash out of concern of an economic pullback due to pandemic lockdowns in China.

This incredible milestone underscores the need to solve a number of ongoing challenges related to population growth, but it also presents what I believe are some very attractive investment opportunities.

If you were considering taking the family on a European vacation, now may be a good time, as the U.S. dollar and euro achieved parity this week for the first time in 20 years.

Gasoline consumers around the world, from families to businesses, have had to deal with record prices at the pump for months...

No doubt about it, this has been a very challenging market environment to navigate, and we look to be in for more of the same. The Fed will continue to tighten monetary policy, and the longer the conflict in Ukraine persists, the longer we’ll likely feel the pressure from elevated gas prices.

Container shipping companies have not been immune to the disruptive factors roiling markets at the moment, namely rising interest rates, soaring inflation and a potential recession, not to mention war in Eastern Europe.

Latin America tilted further left this week as Colombian voters elected Gustavo Petro as president. Come August, the former Bogotá mayor and member of the M-19 guerrilla organization will join the region’s growing list of leftist leaders in a political shift some are likening to the “pink tide” of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The yellow metal has managed to stay positive since the start of the year, skirting pressure from surging yields and a strong U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, nearly every other asset class has fallen into either correction or bear market territory.

Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina opens with one of the most famous lines in world literature: “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

There’s no way of knowing for certain whether a recession is imminent, but for many Americans, it’s sure starting to feel that way. According to Google, more people in the U.S. searched for the term “recession” than at any other time in the past two years.

Shanghai, the Chinese commercial hub with 26 million residents, ended its two-month citywide pandemic lockdown last week, a sign that the world’s second largest economy may be ready to return to business-as-usual.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Due to stratospheric oil and gas prices, energy stocks have been the one bright spot in an otherwise dour market this year. Through the end of May, the S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production Index gained an incredible 60%, compared to the S&P 500, which fell about 13%.

Summer is right around the corner, and traditionally that’s when families pack their bags and get away for a well-deserved vacation. Since this is the first summer travel season in three years that feels like the before times, airlines and airports are bracing for what is expected to be a particularly busy three months.

Texas now leads the nation in the number of Fortune 500 companies that are headquartered in the state.

The U.S. was experiencing some of the highest inflation in its history.

Some big-name investors forecast that Bitcoin will eventually hit $100,000, $1 million or more. It could very well do that, but for now, its price is closer to $0. That’s both a risk and an opportunity.

The major market indices finished mixed this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.63%. The S&P 500 Stock Index rose 0.40%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.02%. The Russell 2000 small capitalization index lost 0.28% this week.

The U.S. economy contracted 1.4% in the first quarter, leading some investors and analysts to raise the specter of the dreaded “R” word: recession.

The push-and-pull between centralization and decentralization is the great contest of our times. And decentralization is winning out.

On May 29, Colombia could elect its very first leftist president should Gustavo Petro receive a majority of the vote. The former congressman and mayor of the capital city of Bogotá, Petro is an unabashed admirer of and Hugo Chávez.

The war in Ukraine has contributed to inflation in the short term, but there’s much more to the story, which began way before Russia invaded its neighbor.

An estimated 30,000 people attended this week’s Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, which is rapidly becoming a major global crypto-finance hub.

Globalization in all its forms, from social to economic to political, has been on the rise since about the 1970s, and I genuinely believe it’s had more benefits than drawbacks on average.

Many of the highest earners in the U.S., including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and others, have created millions of new jobs, minted hundreds of thousands of new millionaires and literally improved life on earth.

Some countries have climates and athletes that are better suited for the Winter Olympic Games, and others for the Summer Olympic Games. Every country on earth had to deal with Covid, though, whether they’re hot or cold, rich or poor.

Elon Musk recommends that investors own “physical things” instead of cash in the face of historically high inflation. So why is he holding on to his Bitcoin and Ethereum?

A provocative report by Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar that was making the rounds in certain corners of Twitter this week suggests that the Russia-Ukraine conflict could be a strong tailwind for shipping freight rates.

I don’t believe the world has ever witnessed such a highly synchronized effort to ostracize a nation and isolate it from global markets. The steps have so far been deep and profound.

Brent crude oil came close to $114 per barrel on Wednesday, its highest level since June 2014, as the conflict in Ukraine intensified and sweeping economic sanctions were imposed on Russia, the world’s third largest oil producer.

Our withdrawal was well timed, as Russian stocks had their worst one-day selloff on record. The dollar-denominated RTS Index fell around 40% on Thursday.

Unlike fiat currency, Bitcoin is decentralized and cannot be controlled by any central bank or politician, making it a powerful peer-to-peer payment network. Why else are some lawmakers and bureaucrats so eager to regulate or outright ban it?

Will he, or won’t he? That’s the question many people have been asking of Russian president Vladimir Putin with regard to a possible invasion of Ukraine.

If everything goes according to plan, travel and tourism could contribute $2 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2022, compared to $1.87 trillion in the year before the start of the pandemic.

Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve seen consumers around the globe shift much of their spending from services and experiences to goods, and consumers in China were no exception, according to a recent report by consultancy firm Bain & Company.

IMO 2020 has contributed to higher shipping rates.

Investors have already started positioning for a new Fed tightening cycle as well as sticky inflation. Many are rotating into real assets, including gold and real estate, which have inherent value outside of the traditional financial system.

A “boatload” of news this week suggests that the shipping industry continues to look very attractive from an investing point of view. Global cargo carriers are estimated to have recorded $150 billion in profits in 2021, the first time they’ve collectively reached that figure in a single year.

Few inventions have touched so many lives as the container.

Every year around this time, we update our always-popular Periodic Table of Commodities Returns.

India reported spending a record $55.7 billion on gold imports last year.

In 2021, readers of the Investor Alert and Frank Talk were most interested in stories on gold mining, precious metals, natural resources and emerging markets (no surprise). But there was also interest in macroeconomic topics (inflation, mostly) as well as Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

We can phase out fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, but we can’t phase out the metals and minerals necessary to build additional renewable energy projects.

The metaverse is part of the next iteration of the internet some are calling Web 3.0—and it promises to upend everything as we know it.

There are a number of key investment themes for 2022 I feel most people would agree on. Below are just a handful.

Like many others, I believe Bitcoin could fix Turkey’s lira problem. And to understand why, it might be helpful to dust off a book written 45 years ago by Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek.

Online sales during 2021’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping holidays ended up being slightly less than those of the previous year, representing the first time such a decrease has been recorded.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of family, love and laughter! Even if that wasn’t your experience, there’s still much to be grateful for.

The average cost of a typical holiday feast has increased 14% compared to Thanksgiving last. The price of the turkey alone is up 24%, which is nearly four times the official inflation rate.

Luxury goods sales just went from dip to rip.