Stuff That Interests Me

NB My next Best In Class, in which I identify the go-to stocks in the natural resources sector, is out tomorrow. Keep an eye out for that. (Only for paid subscribers).Today, though, gold …I am going to the Edinburgh Fringe this August to do one of my lectures with funny bits. This one is about gold - its history, its fascination, its future. It really is the most amazing metal, not least because it is, as Spandau Ballet famously sung, indestructible. Life may be temporary, but gold is permanent. No other substance is as durable, not diamonds, not tungsten carbide, not boron nitride. You can shape this enormously ductile metal into pretty much anything. An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire fifty miles long. You can beat it into a leaf just one atom thick. Yet there is one thing you cannot do and that is destroy it. You can change its form by dissolving it in certain chemical solutions or alloying it with other metals. You can even vaporise it. But the gold will always be there. It is theoretically pos