Central banks bought a record 289 tonnes of gold in the quarter the price fell hardest in a decade. Diesel just set its highest reading in 32 years of data.͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
5 OCTOBER 2026
By Mike Lee
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In 1973, a radical White House policy triggered a historic gold rush. Trump’s rumored new Executive Order is about to do it again. When the government severed the dollar's tie to gold in the 1970s, everyday Americans watched their purchasing power collapse. But a small group of prepared investors made generational wealth as gold prices skyrocketed. Fast forward to today. With Jerome Powell out and Trump allegedly preparing a controversial "Financial Executive Order" to bypass the Fed and pump the market, the stage is set for an even bigger dollar shock. Top analysts warn inflation will explode. But here is the good news: you don't need to hoard expensive physical bullion to shield yourself. There is a little-known market loophole that essentially lets you capitalize on this crisis like you are "buying gold at 1973 prices" right before the massive surge. Click here to discover the "1973 Gold Loophole" and bulletproof your savings before Trump signs the order |
Three Numbers to Start
289t | of gold bought by central banks in the second quarter, a record for any second quarter, during the steepest quarterly price decline in a decade. |
$6.53 | the national average price of a gallon of diesel on 21 September, the highest reading in the 32 years the government has tracked it. |
+89% | the rise in diesel from its January low to that September peak. |
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Central Banks Bought a Record 289 Tonnes While the Price Was Falling
The most interesting gold data of this year is not the price. It is who kept buying when the price went the other way.
The World Gold Council’s second-quarter report, published on 30 July, recorded 289 tonnes of net central bank purchases, the largest second quarter in its records. Gold posted its steepest quarterly decline in a decade over the same three months. The official buyer did not wait for the dip to finish.
Poland added 51 tonnes, taking its reserves to 632. China added 33, its biggest quarterly purchase since the end of 2023. Neither of those buyers is trading a view on the next few months.
A revision in the same report is about the quarter before, not this one. First-quarter central bank demand had been reported at 244 tonnes in April. By July the figure was cut to 57, after the research house reclassified most of it as over-the-counter buying rather than official-sector purchases. The second-quarter record of 289 tonnes stands. The buyer who kept buying through the fall is the one that matters.
The longer picture is the policy. The council projects central banks will buy somewhere between 700 and 900 tonnes this year, against about 863 tonnes last year, and the five-year quarterly average now runs at roughly double the level of the five years before that.
Prices did what prices do while all of that happened. Gold set a record near $5,600 an ounce early in the year, fell back toward $4,000, and the quarterly average for the first quarter was still an all-time high of $4,873. Buying that continues through a 20% drawdown is a reserve policy. In the 1970s the people who kept the gain were not the ones who hoarded the bar. They were the ones who owned the businesses that dug it up, at the price that existed before the surge.
What You Actually Own in a Crowdfunded Stake
A different kind of offering has been arriving in inboxes all year, and it is the door the public listing does not open until later.
Regulation Crowdfunding lets a private company raise up to $5 million in any twelve-month period from the general public. The offering has to run through a registered funding portal or broker-dealer, and the company files a Form C with the SEC before it opens. That is how a name that is not on an exchange can still take a cheque from somebody who would never get a venture allocation.
The limit is the size of the early window, not a reason to miss it. Regulation A allows $75 million a year. Regulation Crowdfunding allows $5 million and an annual update on Form C-AR. The shares cannot be resold for twelve months, with narrow exceptions. That hold is the early price. Airbnb started with three airbeds in a San Francisco apartment and listed thirteen years later at $68. The people who had the allocation were the ones who were in before the open.
The exit is the event: an acquisition, a later listing, or a buyback the issuer chooses to offer. That is the same clock every early stake runs on. The difference is whether the cheque goes in before the format is obvious. Parks drew 323 million visits last year. Searches for stays near them are up. The format that sits next to the park, rather than in a hotel tower, is the one the travel tape is already paying for.
The question is not whether the business is interesting. It is whether you are in before the deadline on the allocation. That clock on this one runs to 29 October.
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Diesel at $6.53 Is a Tax on Everything in a Truck
The third number in this letter reaches every household in the country, and almost none of them buy the product directly. The move itself is the trade.
The government’s weekly survey put on-highway diesel at $5.967 a gallon on 7 September, which broke the nominal weekly record set in June 2022. The following two weeks it went to $6.285 and then $6.529, the highest reading in a series that starts in 1994. It eased to $6.382 on 28 September. The record is the print. The easing is not the reversal.
From the year’s low of $3.46 on 12 January, that is a rise of 89% in eight months. That swing is the tape. You do not have to own the oil stock, the ETF or the futures contract to be on the side of a move that size. The skim is the difference between the weeks, not a barrel in a tank.
Diesel is the fuel of the parts of the economy nobody photographs. Tractors, combines, freight trucks, construction equipment, rail and the generators behind data centres. It is an input to the price of almost everything that moves before it is sold.
The pass-through shows up in official data quickly. More than a third of the increase in producer prices in August was attributable to diesel alone, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One Colorado vegetable farmer told Bloomberg last week that fuel now costs him an extra $6,000 a week, and that his pumpkins are priced 25% higher this autumn with a per-mile delivery charge on top.
Which is the mechanism behind the next inflation print and the one after it. A fuel that moves from $3 to $6 in eight months reaches the shelf with a lag of weeks to months, and it reaches the Fed’s preferred measures later still. Most households pay the shelf. The move is what gets skimmed before it gets there.
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What is Scheduled
6 Oct | the next weekly fuel price release, which will show whether the late-September easing continued. |
7 Oct | the minutes of the September Fed meeting, which raised rates for the first time since 2023. |
29 Oct | the deadline on the AutoCamp allocation, the day after the next rate decision. |
Fuel feeds the inflation readings, the readings feed the committee, and the decision lands the week before a national vote on the cost of living. The allocation clock on the travel name runs out the day after that decision.
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Two Hundred and Eighty-Nine Tonnes
289t | bought by central banks in the quarter gold fell hardest in ten years. Poland took 51 tonnes and China 33. In the 1970s the gain went to whoever owned the dig, not the bar. The same quarter, diesel rose 89% off its January low. The allocation that is still open closes on 29 October. |
Forget the hot picks — protect what you’ve already built, and be on the side of the bid that kept buying while the price fell. Because the best trade you’ll ever make is the loss you never took. Mike LeeDeals CatchersThanks for reading. See you tomorrow. |
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