Month: September 2025

“Why is going to the mall so expensive now?”

That’s what a coworker asked me over lunch last week.

He wasn’t talking about a luxury shopping spree. Just a casual weekend outing — lunch, coffee, maybe a bit of browsing. But somehow, it still felt like his wallet had been mugged by a smiling barista and a parking meter.

“It’s not like prices exploded,” he said. “But I always leave feeling poorer than I expected.”

That stuck with me. Because he’s right — something has changed. Not always in ways you can quantify on a receipt, but in how everyday life feels more expensive.

And it’s not just him.

From toothpaste to concert tickets to a bowl of ramen that used to be a daily lunch feature is now a weekend treat instead — the vibes are off. We all feel it. But what’s causing it?

Welcome to the Post-Goldilocks Economy

For 40 years, investors had it good.

• Interest rates kept falling.
• Globalization kept costs low.
• Central banks looked like geniuses.
• Profit margins expanded.
• And your passive 60/40 portfolio? Worked like magic.

This “Great Disinflation” wasn’t divine intervention — it was engineered on five key pillars:

1. Cheap labor (thank you, China WTO 2001)
2. Frictionless trade (hello, supply chains)
3. Central bank credibility (remember when we trusted policy?)
4. Demographic tailwinds (young, productive populations)
5. Tech productivity (more output, same costs)

Goodbye to the Old Normal of low rates, we are now entering the New Reality of sticky inflation

Together, these forces created a world where companies didn’t need pricing power. Margins went up even as prices stayed flat. It was the investor’s version of having your cake and eating it too — delivered via drone, of course.

But then the cake caught fire.

Scarcity Strikes Back

COVID didn’t just break supply chains. It broke the illusion.

• Just-in-time became just-too-fragile.
• Energy nationalism replaced energy abundance.
• Geopolitics re-entered the chat.

Now, inflation isn’t “transitory.” It’s structural.

The U.S. Federal Reserve finds itself in a chokehold: raising rates risks detonating the debt bomb, but cutting rates lets inflation rage on. In fact, by 2025, the U.S. is spending 93% of its tax income on just two things: entitlements and interest payments. That leaves… almost nothing for anything else.

Currently, the U.S. fed fund rate is at 4.5%. If borrowing costs hit even 6% which isn’t that far off, interest alone eats up 40% of tax revenue. And at 9%? The math turns apocalyptic: interest payments could consume more than 100% of revenue under a recession scenario. That’s not fiscal policy — that’s an unsustainable feedback loop.

Paying off just the interest on U.S. debt will quickly deplete U.S. tax revenue. Over 100% of tax revenue will go towards paying back only interest if the U.S. enters a recession!

CPI Is a Mirage — And We’ve Been Here Before

Sound familiar?

We explored this in our earlier blog, The Invisible Inflation We Live With — where inflation wasn’t roaring through your Bloomberg terminal, but sneaking in through smaller chocolate bars, earlier  hotel check out times, and subscription plans with less of everything.

That was the consumer-facing version of inflation.

This is the investor-facing one.

Because the same silent shrinkage is happening inside portfolios.

Your bond allocation? Still there on paper — but its real value is slipping, while its role as a diversifier is being squeezed by rising inflation and yields.

Your passive equity exposure? Margin pressure is coming.

That 60/40 mattress? It may need a serious re-stuffing. To be clear: the 60/40 portfolio isn’t dead. But it was built for a world of falling rates, stable currencies, and declining inflation.

That world is now in the rear-view mirror. In its place, we face higher volatility, persistent price pressures, and the return of macro risks we forgot to hedge for.

In this new world, passive portfolios that track the past may not protect the future.

Are longer term bonds really “risk free”? These 30-year ones seem to be struggling to regain investor confidence

So Where Do You Hide?

Well, you don’t hide.

You own the companies that can name their price.

While the average company is getting squeezed between rising input costs and price-sensitive consumers, Pricing Power Equities (PPEs) are doing the opposite:

✅ Raising prices
✅ Keeping volumes steady
✅ Defending (or even expanding) margins

These businesses are not just inflation survivors. They are inflation beneficiaries.

In short, they don’t take prices — they make them.

Pricing Power: The Anti-Inflation Trend?

Here’s what makes this strategy weirdly contrarian: it goes against almost everything we’ve been taught.

“Buy what’s cheap.”
✅ No. Buy what’s irreplaceable.

“Avoid monopolies.”
✅ Not anymore. Embrace natural monopolies, especially ones powered by scale, brand, or ecosystem lock-in.

“Inflation hurts everyone.”
✅ Not the companies who pass it on without losing loyalty, volume, or market share.

Of course, pricing power isn’t the only hero in the inflation story. Hard assets like gold, supply-constrained commodities, and substitution plays all shine in this regime. But pricing power is a rising co-star — elegant, scalable, and increasingly central to how we think about structural resilience. In the 2010s, winners were defined by how lean they could get — the kings of efficiency.

In the 2020s, winners are defined by how much they can charge — and still be loved.

In this new playbook, you’re not looking for cost cutters. You’re looking for:

• Companies that own their supply chains.
• Brands that make people feel something.
• Platforms with user ecosystems so sticky you need social rehab to leave.
• Businesses riding the tailwind of government-made scarcity — like quotas, export bans, or downstream mandates

Final Thought: Scarcity Is the New Alpha

The world of cheap capital, cheap labor, and cheap oil is gone.

We’re now in the age of expensive everything — except, perhaps, your Netflix subscription (for now). In this world, only one thing protects your capital:

Owning the companies that make the rules — not follow them.

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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The Silver Awakening

The quiet metal that might just outshine gold

For centuries, silver has been gold’s quieter sibling — less glamorous, less hoarded, and often left out of the spotlight. But sometimes, little brothers grow up. And if recent market signals are any clue, silver might be entering its glow-up era.

We’re not talking about speculative hype. We’re talking about a confluence of technical breakouts, fundamental tailwinds, and structural regime shifts — all pointing to one underpriced conclusion: Silver is waking up.

And it might not go back to sleep anytime soon.

Gold has fans. Silver has torque.

It’s no secret that investors have been piling into gold. It’s become a familiar safe-haven story: fiscal dominance, geopolitical risk, and an increasingly unstable USD have made the yellow metal a preferred portfolio hedge. Gold even hit a new all-time high of $3,578 just this week!

Silver is exposed to the same macro risks as gold whether that be fiscal erosion, currency distrust, inflation, but with less acknowledgment and far less institutional love. It’s the vulnerability we ignore. Until we can’t.

If recent trends are anything to go by, we may be seeing the early signs of silver following gold’s monetary comeback.

• According to its Q2 2025 13F filing, the Saudi Central Bank opened new positions in iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and Global X Silver Miners ETF (SIL).
  • While small (1.25% and 0.4% of their U.S. portfolio, respectively), this marks the first-ever silver allocation from a central bank whose gold repatriation has accelerated since 2022.
• Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Finance announced it would allocate $520 million through 2027 to precious metals — including silver.

Think about that for a second.

If central banks — traditionally allergic to silver — are beginning to experiment with it again, perhaps the market is underestimating the next leg of the monetary metals story.

A Metal Out of Time: Supply Can’t Keep Up with the Silver Rush

The market often treats silver as a humble sidekick to gold — the Robin to its Batman, the Luigi to its Mario, the… you get it. But while gold basks in the limelight of central bank vaults and global headlines, silver has been quietly building a case as the most underappreciated protagonist in the precious metals saga. In a crisis, sidekicks often can save the day.

Let’s start with the basics: Silver supply is structurally broken.

According to Metals Focus, mine production peaked in 2016 and has flatlined since. Meanwhile, demand has been ramping up across industrial, investment, and even monetary fronts — leading to five consecutive years of deficits, as the Silver Institute tracks. In 2025 alone, the silver market is expected to see another deficit of 117.6 million ounces, continuing a now-familiar shortfall pattern.

Source: The Silver Institute

There is more demand than supply is able to keep up with for 5 years now

To put that into perspective, 2025’s expected demand is 1,148.3 million ounces, while total supply clocks in at just 1,030.6 million ounces. That’s not a gap — that’s a canyon. And it’s one we’ve been dancing around for most of the past decade.

Adding salt to the shortage wound: silver production is not only stagnant, but concentrated and vulnerable. Just five countries — Mexico, Peru, China, Chile, and Bolivia — are responsible for 62% of global mine supply. And guess what? Production from these top five is expected to fall by 19 million ounces by 2029, led by a 13% drop in Mexico alone, as key mines like San Julián, Fresnillo, and La Encantada approach closure due to reserve depletion.

In other words, the supply picture is looking more like an aging rock band on its farewell tour — tired, stretched, and nowhere near replacing its biggest hits.

Source: Metals Focus

Mine supply outlook is looking bleak and exploration expenditure remains stagnant

 

Meanwhile, demand is living its best life.

On the industrial side, solar photovoltaic demand has grown from 5.6% of total demand in 2015 to 17% in 2024, with projections that 332 million ounces of silver will be needed annually by 2050 just to support new solar buildouts. And remember, that’s just one sliver (pun intended) of silver’s industrial use cases.

On the investment side, silver is no longer just the speculative playground of Reddit-fueled squeezes. According to the Silver Institute, silver-backed exchange-traded products (ETPs) attracted 95 million ounces in net inflows in the first half of 2025 alone, already surpassing the total for all of 2024. Holdings now sit at 1.13 billion ounces, nearing their pandemic-era highs.

Institutional futures traders are piling in too — net long positions on CME silver futures are up 163% YTD, reaching their highest levels since the first half of 2021.

But perhaps the biggest “hello, something’s changed” moment is in the gold-to-silver ratio.

After peaking above 100 earlier this year — meaning one ounce of gold bought you more than 100 ounces of silver — the ratio has compressed into the 80s–90s range. The 10-year average is around 81. Historically, this ratio tends to overshoot before silver plays catch-up — and when it does, it doesn’t just keep pace; it flies. In previous cycles, silver rallies have been twice as large as gold’s.

In 2025, gold is already up around 38%.

If silver’s rally is only just beginning — well, you can do the math.

And yet… most portfolios still treat silver as an afterthought.

In an environment where everyone’s chasing the AI trade, this sets up a perfect contrarian setup — because silver is fundamentally leveraged gold. When gold rises 10%, silver has historically moved 20–30%. If gold is fear, silver is panic.

And panic, dear reader, can be a great trade.

In the shadows of empires

There’s a philosophical angle here, too.

Throughout history, silver has played the role of monetary glue in collapsing empires and uncertain regimes. In ancient China, it was the foundation of dynastic trade. In the Americas, silver funded colonization. And in 19th century Asia, the Mexican silver dollar became the region’s de facto currency — circulating freely across Indonesia, the Philippines, and China.

Why? Because silver isn’t just valuable — it’s usable. Divisible. Ubiquitous. It’s the money of the people, not just the money of kings.

“Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight!” squaked by Long John Silver’s parrot, Captain Flint in the beloved novel ‘Treasure Island’ refers to the Spanish silver dollar!

The silver coin was the actual form of currency during the Spanish Empire and worth eight reales (former unit of currency in Spain). It can notably be cut into eight smaller pieces or “bits to to make smaller change

And in a world where monetary trust is fraying — where sanctions freeze reserves, fiat erodes in silence, and crypto volatility terrifies grandmothers — silver might offer a familiar fallback. A metallic middle ground between central bank distrust and digital confusion.

Silver’s story, in many ways, is about resilience. It doesn’t chase headlines. It doesn’t get invited to Davos. But when trust breaks down, silver shows up.

So what? Why Silver? Why, Now?

At Heyokha, we’ve written extensively about the end of disinflation, the rise of gold, and the need for real assets in a world of monetary erosion. But silver’s time may have come — not instead of gold, but alongside it.

In our view, silver fits squarely into the de-dollarization and deglobalization thesis — a hard asset in an increasingly soft world. It’s small enough to move fast, but big enough to matter.

We live in an era of geopolitical currency distrust, capital flow bifurcation, and monetary weaponization.

• The U.S. is running a fiscal deficit close to 6.5% of GDP.
• The dollar’s role as neutral reserve is eroding — slowly, but clearly.
• Nations like Saudi Arabia are pivoting to hard assets for strategic security.

If gold is the anchor, silver is the accelerant.

Final thought: The Underdog Metal

Silver is rarely the first to run. But when it does, it sprints.

Right now, gold has the narrative — but silver may have the upside.

In a world seeking store-of-value assets beyond central bank reach and dollar dominance, silver’s next chapter could be much louder than its last.

Most investors are still watching gold. But in our view, the real sleeper trade for the next inflation cycle may not just be gold.

It might just be the gray metal that still has some shine.

Maybe we need a staircase for silver too

 

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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