Yurta Capital

The move last week in precious metals was fun. I don't know where we go from here near term honestly, though long term it's obvious. In my last interview I said we could head lower even though sentiment was historically bearish in gold. Specifically I said we could bounce and then roll lower...and I still see the potential for a great deleveraging at some point. But in the interim, bounce we did as Bessent announced further monetization of US debt. Hence, while I've deployed cash to get down to about 15%, I'm still at an elevated cash level because crazy things can happen, especially in resources as many eyes are looking at the space and I want asymmetry, not just leverage to rising metals prices. Therefore, my focus has been on juniors with market caps to NPV of less than 10% who are either fully funded or who will start small and increase their resources through non-dilutive exploration. (Not investment advice: I like LFLR.cn, ESG.v, BNKR.to, VZLA, MCI.v among others) Further afield, I keep digging into markets IB doesn't touch. You get non-USD exposure here, interesting compounders, and some companies where I think you can get dividend yields in the 60% to 70% range in a few years (after a specific industrial concludes its capacity expansion). More to come on this. I'm not aiming to be cryptic, but don't have positions yet and/or am not done researching.

When investing it's important to get a proper lay of the land. That means going beyond the largest cities. I've been to Istanbul a dozen times and along Türkiye's southern coast, but that's not representative of the entire country. The last few days I was in Sanliurfa (after Gaziantep) which is regarded as the birthplace of the prophet Abraham. It's also home to Göbekli Tepe, a 12,000 year old city in Mesopotamia. The contrast from Istanbul in culture, the pace of life and price of everything is immense. I capped off the trip in the coffee shops pictured here, inside the Sanliurfa bazar on a 41C day, sipping menengic (a "coffee" drink made from wild pistachio) gaining much more appreciation for the geographic crossroads Türkiye sits at. I also couldn't help but buy 5kg of Aleppo soap!

Taking a week off from markets to explore Eastern Turkiye, while Istanbul is on everyone's list, the "Turkiye of 30 years ago" with the silk road vibe is alive and well in Gaziantep. The food isn't too bad either (culinary capital of the country).

I recently had a call where we talked about my mate Kolja Spori, the most well traveled person I know (book of his below for anyone interested). And the conversation got to investing. While Interactive Brokers is great, one way to front run the crowd is to travel to markets where their stock exchange isn't covered by IB. There's a huge amount of alpha in the world and it's also a good way to be un-correlated with the market and to diversify brokerage exposure. Think Uzbekistan, Peru, Iran, etc. https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00N86M6LY?ccs_id=e18eb343-3fd8-4308-9c7b-a9c739bd125e

This week I caught up with Oliver Mitchell to talk high level about litigation finance plays, as well as some sovereign deals in Venezuela. For anyone interested in the space, his Substack is impressive. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3UkdhmU1lheMPSjpPSSOvV

Food for thought. America is reindustrializing and this will continue as we rebuild the manufacturing base lost the last 50 yrs and be an investsble trend. July PMI grew the fastest in 4yrs. Fun fact and a bit of history...America lost its steel dominance not because of Germany, Austria and Japan directly, but because US and Bethlehem Steel were too stubborn to invest in upgrades, even when given government money! American steel thought its dominance would stand even though it was uncompetutive on the global market as foreign producers used new tech. Pure cycle Technologies is a play I've been watching for a while and own call options on. They recycle plastic into food grade products. Have a plant in USA and are expanding into Europe and Thailand. There are recycling mandates in NJ, for example where a % of new plastic must have recycled material. PCT is now approved to produce food grade plastic, a, first, and therefore a monopoly. It has had production issues in the past and is burning cash as it needs to scale. They report earnings Thursday and it will be interesting to see how business is processing. This is one of those companies that I see being easy to catch once you have real inflection. It's not going to $30 overnight, but assuming they scale and can build additional plants, I think it can be a multi bagger without much competition in a world trying to figure out how to better incorporate waste plastic into the circular economy. https://investinglive.com/news/us-ism-manufacturing-pmi-for-july-55-6-versus-54-0-estimate/

The Yurta model portfolio had another slight correction in July to USD 203,696.96 (including USD 54,358.8 in cash), down from USD 204,383.97 in June. Still up 104.38% since inception. I've been tempted to add oil exposure, though it is very volatile, hanging on Trump's every word. Chemicals are equally interesting, but I think fertilizer is even more interesting, as previously stated. Potash for one (which is not impacted by Hormuz, but which has been under-applied the last few years) and ammonia in north or south America as the feedstock is natural gas. With Qatari production out of the game you have trapped gas in North America and in Argentina due to the Vaca Muerta shale with a lack of pipeline capacity. During July I held fast, preferring to keep cash, but CF Industries or Adecoagro may be worth an addition at some point.

If anyone finds themselves in Istanbul during August and is keen to meet up for a coffee, feel free to reach out.

Guidance and further promises made not kept means dump it. Terrible Q2

Food for thought: If refinery capacity in Russia and now Saudi is being hit, Chinese teapots aren't aggressive exporters and CRAKs remain high, do you want to explicitly buy oil companies (disclosure: I own some oil companies and crude calls)? If you can't refine oil you can't do much with it. I'm already invested in fertilizer and am considering adding more exposure and may dabble in chemicals. Oil is the obvious play but it may not be THE play. And I see more interesting setups in fertilizer, specifically some which would do just fine even if there was no war ongoing. More to come on this front.

In the commodities complex I rarely like buying a company based on the justification that if the commodity price stays high that their FCF will be superb, unless they are at the point already of paying dividends. Cyclical industrial management lies (share buybacks, shareholder returns...they ultimately just screw you with more acquisitions at the top of the cycle) Commodities are cyclical and share buybacks are great, but a dividend speaks volumes when it comes to shareholder returns (hat tip to PBR/a, EC). Therefore, I instead prefer opportunities where I see the potential to make multiples of my capital. And one thing I really like is being late to the party (cannabis in 2019/2020) only to be given the opportunity to actually be on time in-so-far as it relates to risk/reward. Case in point, Vizsla Silver. They own 100% of the Panuco silver project in Sinaloa Mexico, El-Chapo's former turf. The company is fully funded and has net cash of ~USD 120 mil in the bank. The project is only 30% explored and based on the 2025 feasibility study has an IRR of 111% an after tax NPV5 of USD 1.8 bil at US35/oz silver and US 3,100/oz gold. Update those metals price assumptions to $60 silver and $4,200 gold and you get an appx NPV of US 3.2 billion and an IRR of 170-odd%! The project is a monster with significant potential for extension of mine life. Did I mention it's only 30% explored? So why is it trading at a market cap of only USD 1.2 billion today? Because in January, 10 of its employees got abducted and murdered by the cartel. This halted the project briefly and caused the share price to waterfall. So security is gumming up development, even though permitting advances. Since the event, the US has gone hard on Mexico. While El-Chapo is in the US, they extradited El-Mayo, another cartel leader who is behind bars. The governor of Sinaloa stepped down in May for accusations he's linked to the cartel. Change is afoot. How long it takes to get stability back in the region is anyone's guess, but it's happening. Spoiler: the cartel isn't going away. At some point we are likely to just see peace come back to the region as turf is settled and people agree to leave certain parts of the economy alone. So the game is patience, but buying a world-class silver asset for peanuts might just be a gift. The company is working through final permits, specifically its MIA, and thereafter will go to FID planned for 2H 26. The stock is already washed out. The underlying asset is world class and they have roughly USD 400 million in the bank. The setup is an interesting one when considering the fully-funded nature of the company and asset quality. 🚨Full disclosure: I'm biased as I hold a position. So don't take this as a recommendation, but do your own work on the company and come to your own conclusion.

SunPower (SPWR) has had a rough ride with a bankruptcy in 2024 and now being rebuilt as a public company run like a PE vehicle. TJ Rogers, the former CEO of Cypress semiconductor, is doing a rollup of the US resi solar industry through share issues which has led the company's share count to explode. However, it looks like we may be closer to the end of that, as well as to a break even operation in Q3. Their Q1 call discussed breakeven in Q3 and generating FCF as the US solar sector has bottomed. There are big risks here, namely that debt is being services through equity issuance and therefore selling pressure and dilution. Their Q2 earnings call in August will be one to keep an eye on to see if we have inflected and order backlog continues to rise. Seeing the Iran war not being over and energy markets remaining tight, as well as the structural uptrend in US electricity prices, the incentives for rooftop solar have never been better. It's an area worth keeping an eye on that most no longer care about.

The Yurta model portfolio had a slight correction in June to USD 204,383.97, down from ATH set in May of $206,463.51. This includes a 26.5% ($54,358.8) cash position. During the month we added a $5k tranche to Petrobras preferred shares and continued DD on a few opportunities which may become 5%, plus, positions in the portfolio over the next few months. They are in in solar, copper exploration (with a previously defined resource), plastics recycling in the US, and fertilizer. More to come on these fronts over the coming weeks as they have very attractive risk/reward setups where I'd be looking at 5x plus returns. To those who celebrate, a Happy 4th of July.

Solar seems to have been left for dead by investors in the USA as tax credits and broad subsidies for feed-in tariffs for generation have been slashed. But there's a catch. Solar installations are viewed as a different category than "solar plus storage", where a battery is installed, and it's booming! "The U.S. residential solar energy storage market was valued at approximately $4.5–$5.5 billion in 2024 and is estimated to reach $6.5–$8.0 billion by 2026, representing a CAGR of 20–25% over that period." That's pretty impressive growth no one seems to be talking about. "Solar-plus-storage attachment rates rose from roughly 12% of new residential solar installations in 2020 to an estimated 35–40% in 2025–2026, and are projected to exceed 55–65% by 2030" according to IndexBox. Solar plus storage is usually an extra $15k to $25k per installation which means Solar installation companies have a higher ticket which amplifies GP. I'll dig into this in Q3 after some of these companies inflect as the market is messy and got a wrench thrown in it last year when tax credits and feed-in tariffs became less attractive. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesfinancecouncil/2026/06/29/why-residential-solar-is-becoming-a-hedge-against-utility-rate-volatility/

Glass House Brands, which I've been harping on about since August 2023, today announced it's uplisting to the NYSE scheduled for 30th June after it split its medical and recreational (retail) businesses. Medical is already Schedule III and starting next week will be a hearing which will determine whether recreational is rescheduled. The catch is recreational doesn't need to be rescheduled for the cannabis market to boom. It is on the cusp of seeing tier 1 custodians enter the market, cannabis companies being banked and of course interstate commerce and exports. This has been my thesis from 3 years ago as I saw that one wants to own the best producer at lowest cost of production. Multi state operators are going to have to either compete with GLASF producing at $100/lb compared to their $800 to $1k+. Realistically I think we see MSOS start doing deals with GLASF to contract grow. It's a Good fellas situation of Paulie's "Fu*k you. Pay me" with no easy way around GLASF's low cost high quality production. Look out to the autumn and I see big tobacco and alcohol companies entering the space. Things are set to change fast and I still think GLASF is a multi bagger as not a whole lot has happened yet, even though the last 6m has been very exciting. 🚨 not investment advice. Do your own due diligence. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/06/25/3317437/0/en/glass-house-brands-announces-uplist-to-nyse.html

Earlier this month President Trump announced new sanctions across the Cuban economy effectively barring foreign businesses from operating in the oil & gas, mining, financial services industry, etc. Then, yesterday Cuba announced an economic opening equivalent to Vietnam's Doi Moi reforms or China/Russia's opening up, as they are desperate for foreign capital, let alone oil and electricity. I've had an investment in Cuba for over a year and this news both on the US side and the Cuban side is a step toward the country opening up and likely normalizing relations with the US (at some point, but not tomorrow!) and Cuban assets are cheap. If Iran went the way Trump was hoping for, the Cuba story would already likely be a lot further along. There are a variety of ways to get exposure through real estate via a vehicle listed in London, and mining and oil & gas through Canada and Australia. I'll be keeping an eye on these developments as the country has significant untapped potential at attractive valuations. Patience however will be required! https://www.keysnews.com/ap/international/cuba-s-communist-party-approves-emergency-economic-plan/article_a9782edd-a6f3-556f-8e5a-b8367c4c5b39.html

A member of this channel pinged me earlier asking what I thought of the ceasefire, to which I responded 'What ceasefire'? We have no documents signed, no strait open, and until we see ships go INTO the strait, I'm not changing my stance on the situation. Ships may trickle out of the strait, but that is already accounted for as floating storage. It getting released into the markets only causes global oil inventories to fall further. Further, it feels like capitulation mode in oil equities today as investors look to be giving up. We are adding a tranche of PBR/A to the model portfolio as a result. A good dividend play as well. 🚨 This is not investment advice, do your own due diligence.

This past week I caught up with my mate Ben Kelleran of the Kontrarian Korner YouTube channel and Substack, talking market over valuation, investment mindset, commodities, etc. https://open.spotify.com/episode/39P7b7ICZxYuIYuSy2POoL

This morning we hear of a potential peace agreement between Iran and USA. Oil tanks, markets and gold rally. Then things cool down into the open. I'll believe we have peace when I see it, not that Hormuz oil will be flowing freely as Iran controls the strait. Global Liquidity is wobbly, the USD is strong and big tech is dumping paper on retail. There are better things to do than be fully invested near a potential top. On that note, one thing that has kept my mind off the craziness in the markets at least this last week was seeing two of my friends open the Istanbul music festival. Aziz Shokhakimov (conductor of the Strasbourg Philharmonic) conducted, and Behzod Abduraimov, a world renowed pianist, was the soloist. A superb performance it was. For anyone interested in classical music who hasn't had the chance to see either of them perform live, I highly recommend it. It was a great way to forget about oil price manipulation and a rocket company valued at $1.8 trillion. Have a good start to the weekend All.