FREE WHELAN: Food, Water, Hydrogen and Gold

In this Stockhead series, investment manager James Whelan, managing director Barclay Pearce Capital Asset Management, offers his insights on the key investment themes and trends in domestic and global markets. From macro musings to the metaverse and everything in between, Whelan offers his distilled thoughts on the hot topic of the day, week, month or year, from the point of view of a professional money manager.

Morning all,

Back from the disjointed few weeks that is Easter as I crammed three weeks worth of work into the first four-day week and then was on a company roadshow in Sydney/Melbourne for the second week.

Takeaways include:

1) Melbourne was slower than expected in foot traffic. My wife informed this is because Victoria was on school holidays post-Easter. So…duh.

2) Despite this we still managed to fill the room in Melbourne and if I might say the restaurant Society was amazing to us and our guests.

3) Invion (ASX:IVX) has a brilliant story to tell, updated with details of impending Phase 1 clinical trials. We put a few things together on it and if you get the chance have a listen and make your own mind up.

**I am obviously biased by this story because we’re working with them on this and just spent a week with them but it’s still fascinating.**

4) Finally the weather in Melbourne was delightful. More delightful than Sydney last week. World gone mad.

El Ninwho?

On that note I’d like to make an apology for my conviction call on how dry it was meant to be this year. I was misled by the BOM and my calls to hoard water were a little premature.

That rain in Sydney over the weekend was something else.

Regular readers would know that some of my all time best investment themes involved being long food companies with the drought in the northern hemisphere a few years ago, then with Covid and the war in Ukraine this really ramped up.

My famous “fleisch est zu billig” note is still spoken about today. Here is the latest on food inflation which is a relief for shoppers everywhere.

Looks like we’re well and truly on the other side of that mountain. The lag for this is a while so expect cheaper prices over the coming year.

Outstanding.

Hydrogen

A few weeks back our Head of London and general renewables guru sat down with me for a chat about hydrogen and the movements ahead in the space.

I really do believe it is the way forward for commercial transport and I’m really starting to embrace it for passenger transport. The only piece of the puzzle is infrastructure to support it.

Gold

A mammoth break upwards to fresh highs for gold. As everyone knows I’ve got a liking for gold but have never really got the hang of why it moves.

Somewhere between sentiment and the sentiment of sentiment.

Or, as I postured once a few years ago, the price of gold is decided by “good will and unicorn farts”.

We turn to the best around to give us a summary of what’s going on.

Chris Weston of Pepperstone fame has a wrap up of what’s driving it.

Again, there’s a lot of gold stocks out there and to name a few here would put me offside with all the others.

Finally we head into US earnings again (seriously!!) and expectations from the market for 4% earnings growth. A reminder that not only are earnings the most important thing in long term investing but they have actually underpinned much of the Covid-now “bubble” so many players call this.

Good luck and stay safe,

James

The views, information, or opinions expressed in the interview in this article are solely those of the writer and do not represent the views of Stockhead.

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