Pricing for new subscribers will increase on January 1st

I have decided that I will increase the price on the blog from $250/yr or $30/mo to $500/yr or $60/mo on January 1st. The price of the blog will never decrease. The blog started at $5/mo.

The price for existing subscribers will not be affected. You keep the price that you sign up at.

My motivation for increasing the price is to encourage people to subscribe to Marhelm, which is my main business, that employs 5 people full time and 3 people part time, and to limit the number of people who receive the paid blog posts. All Marhelm subscribers receive the blog posts free of charge in our chat room.

A secondary motivation is a desire to maximize value for and show my gratitude to those who put faith in my work early. This is also why I offer grandfathered pricing to all subscribers and will never increase what I charge you - even if we see raging hyper inflation.

I will continue to write one paid post per week. The offering is not changing with the price increase.

To all of you who have been with my thus far - thank you for your support.

I hope you enjoyed the boost this week in Sibanye Stillwater shares. The bigger story is that Palladium may be in a short squeeze after being heavily shorted by institutions. The Palladium price was up ~26% this week in a truly incredible move.

It’s early, but if the strength in gold and platinum group metals continues, I see enormous upside ahead for Sibanye Stillwater, which is now my biggest long position.

Someone sent me this breakdown as of a few days ago on Palladium positioning:

If it’s true that three days ago there were 3.4x as many managed money short positions as long positions, bears are very, very offsides.

I hope you also managed to get long shipping as I recommended a few weeks ago. The attacks on shipping have intensified. Today Maersk ordered all of its container ships to halt. Companies are already sending ships around the Cape (weeks of additional time). The Houthis did say today that they would only target ships en route to Israel, but they have definitely put a scare into the market already. Shipping had quite the day today, with Maersk up 7%, MPCC.OL up 6.5%, NAT up 8%, and ZIM up a whopping 18%.

We got some more good news this week when a mandatory offer was submitted for BW Energy at 27 NOK, which just happens to be around my cost basis. This offer was  legally required under Norwegian law due to BW Group (the primary shareholder) acquiring more than 40% of the shares. You’ll have the opportunity to vote over the weekend. I’ll be voting no. I think BW Group increasing its interest and submitting a mandatory offer shows the confidence they have in the company.

The board of BW Energy wrote this today:

The Board is of the view that the longer term value potential of the Company is greater than what is reflected in the Offer Price. Accordingly, the shareholders focusing on the longer term value potential of the Company should not accept the Offer.

Pareto had the following to stay:

We believe the offer is unlikely to attract much interest. Still, it’s clearly positive in our view as it effectively provides a free 1-2 months long put option on the stock that is valuable in a volatile oil price environment. In addition, it shows that the main owner views the valuation as attractive enough to trigger an offer that will require a cash payment of USD 350m if accepted. We agree on the current share price not being reflective of underlying values in BW Energy. BUY/TP NOK 37

I know not every idea I mention plays out immediately, but I sincerely hope my writing and ideas have helped you identify opportunities and profit from them. I don’t put ideas out there that I haven’t already put to work myself. While this year has been challenging for me, especially with my large short position in the Nasdaq, I have still managed to exceed the return of the Nasdaq so far due to the performance of my longs. The news that rate cuts are coming next year obviously helped my levered cyclical bets this week.

Looking towards the remainder of the year, I remain short the Nasdaq, and long Sibanye Stillwater, Ecopetrol, Braskem, Vertex Energy, Petrobras Preferred Shares, and BW Energy, and a variety of shipping and resource shares.

Here’s to a profitable 2024!

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