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Gold And War
Didier Darcet
11 Dec 2025
Some of the world’s first gold coins were minted 2,500-odd years ago in modern-day Turkey to pay the sovereign’s foreign mercenaries as he sought to counter the rising Persian Empire. Didier argues that gold’s origin story is inseparable from military spending—and that this linkage may still hold true today.
Gavekal-IS
The Catastrophe
Didier Darcet
4 Dec 2025
Last week, Louis Gave argued that pressure on Europe to accept a peace in Ukraine forced by Washington and Moscow threatened it with an existential crisis. In this piece. Didier looks more closely at the notion of catastrophe as it shapes nature, economics and even religion. He uses a multi-disciplinary approach to get insights relevant to those who must manage money.
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AI Bashing
Artificial intelligence is everywhere, whether whispering through Main Street or roaring across Wall Street, as evidenced by Wednesday’s Nvidia earnings release. And with its rise comes a wave of critics saying the whole thing is a bubble on the verge of bursting, threatening to take trillions in investments down with it. But is this really insight, or just another round of AI bashing, asks Didier.
Gold Miners
Gold prices have pulled back over the last two weeks and yet the macro conditions that pushed them higher remain largely in place. In this piece, Didier assesses the fundamental case for gold through the lens of gold-miner plays.
Price Is What You Pay, Value Is What You Get
The intrinsic value of any asset is related to the notion of either scarcity or efficiency, and sometimes both together. Didier uses this analytical framing to consider the current value proposition of the world’s most liquid asset classes— those constantly subject to price adjustment—namely government debt, publicly-listed equities and gold.
The S&P 500 Gini Index
The well-known Gini coefficient measures income inequality on a scale from 0% to 100%. In this note, Didier calculates an S&P 500 Gini index for market capitalization, and finds that the concentration of market cap among a few giant names is reaching what may well be its upper limit. However, a rebalancing need not be bad news for investors.
The Currencies Of Bridge-Builders
In an age of increased great power competition, Didier investigates the reasons for the recent outperformance of the currencies of non-aligned countries that have taken care to steer a mid-course between the world’s big players.
Is The Gold Rally Normal?
Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system in the early 1970s, gold has experienced four major bull markets. Didier and Michael say when you align each rally from its starting point, today’s surge looks tame next to the explosions of the 1970s, but almost identical to the steady climb between 2001 and 2012.