Monetary Matters with Jack Farley

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Jérémie Boyer, co-founder of Aurelion Research, joins OPM to give his outlook for 5 key commodities. He explains why after avoiding earlier downside volatility in gold he just got the buy signal he’s been waiting for, and why the longer-term AI driven bull thesis on copper is very real and happening now. He also gives his outlook for uranium, fertilizer, and oil and discusses how he and his partner turn commodity views into a portfolio of equities that is up over 100% since inception a little over 1-year ago.

Aurelion Research: https://aurelionresearch.com/

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JFMW Partners LLC (“Promoter”) is providing this endorsement of, and information related to, the advisory services offered by Namsoft Advisors LLC ("Namsoft"). Promoter is not a current client or investor in any Namsoft advisory account or private fund. Promoter receives cash compensation from Namsoft in the form of a flat referral fee of $750 for each client that engages Namsoft as a result of Promoter's promotional activities. Because Promoter is compensated for this endorsement, a material conflict of interest exists, as Promoter has a financial incentive to promote Namsoft's services to you. This endorsement is delivered as part of a podcast or other audio program produced by Promoter and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation that any particular advisory arrangement is suitable for you.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:16 Why Gold Could Hit 5K

05:45 Geopolitics Over Rates

09:24 Portfolio Positioning

12:28 Managing Miner Cycles

16:26 Plutus

18:26 Bearish Oil & Fertilizer

20:28 Oil Thesis & China Inventories

33:23 Royalties as Exposure

36:07 Valuing Royalty Companies

42:48 Why Uranium Now

46:10 Uranium Contracts & Supply

51:10 Energy Security and Nuclear Buildout

54:31 Copper Bull Case in AI Era

01:00:05 Picking Copper Stocks

01:06:43 Five Commodities Recap

01:11:26 Closing and Where to Follow

Jack Farley is joined by David Busch, Chief Investment Officer of Trajan Wealth, to discuss rising U.S. Treasury yields, persistent inflation, and the Federal Reserve's monetary policy trajectory. Busch breaks down the structural drivers behind elevated bond yields, including $40 trillion in national debt, geopolitical energy shocks, and massive corporate debt issuance for AI infrastructure. He explains how higher interest rates and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bond buyback program impact market liquidity and equity valuations. Moving to equities, Busch argues that software stocks like Intuit are heavily oversold regarding perceived AI disruption risks. He highlights the real bottleneck of the AI boom, pointing to critical supply needs in energy, rare earth minerals, and nuclear power. Busch also warns investors about hidden credit and liquidity dangers within private credit markets. Finally, he lays out why 3-to-5-year U.S. Treasuries still serve as an essential portfolio ballast in high-yield regimes.

Jack Farley on X https://x.com/JackFarley96

About David Busch https://trajanwealth.com/leadership/

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This Monetary Matters episode is brought to you by Fiscal.ai. Get 15% off any paid tier at: ⁠https://fiscal.ai/mm/

Former Fed trader Joseph Wang joins Jack Farley live to break down Chair Kevin Warsh's third meeting — and his first rate hike, framed as "removing a dose of accommodation" against a Middle East oil-shock backdrop. Joseph explains why he called the hawkish move well ahead of the consensus, reading the Jackson Hole signals on financial conditions and the new emphasis on the "speed" of returning to target. The conversation digs into the hawkish dot plot and higher-for-longer path, what a supply-shock reaction function means for the long bond and 30-year TIPS, mortgage rates above 7%, and the plumbing beneath it all — repo, SOFR, the basis trade, and Treasury buybacks. In the second half, Max Wiethe joins to make the case for refiners as the trade of the year, walking through crack spreads, Marathon and Valero, Chinese crude flows, and diesel and fertilizer dynamics. They close on long-bond convexity versus the rate sensitivity of the AI and neocloud buildout, and why Max thinks estimates for names like Lam Research are far too low. A wide-ranging live reaction spanning the Fed's hardest decision in years and the market's response. Recorded September 16, 2026.

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Precious metal and base metal prices have soared as have many mining stocks, but despite this, Freddy Brick, partner at Muddy Waters Capital says that the industry feels closer to left for dead than euphoric. He explains why that setup and the consistency of the mispricing in the sector brought them to launch a fund with the help of mining expert Darren McLean allowing them to take concentrated investments in the assets they think the market is overlooking while running lower net exposure. He also discusses how they think about hedging in the sector, why they take a bottom-up approach to portfolio construction, and how they approach short and long activism in the sector.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:28 Approach to Portfolio Construction

07:56 Fraud Report Origin

09:35 Block Models Explained

15:27 Why Juniors Are Distressed

21:19 Finding Mispriced Projects

25:12 Venture Like Investing

28:25 Promoters and Capital Raising

33:43 Sentiment and Cycles

38:28 M&A Wave Ahead

43:27 Trading Vol and Hedging

46:57 Long Activism Approach

50:23 Scaling the Strategy

55:10 When Alpha Shows Up

Learn more about LandFund Partners: https://landfundpartners.com/invest#get-started

Jack Farley speaks with John Farris, founder & CEO of LandFund Partners and former World Bank agricultural economist, about the tightening global food equation — and where the return actually comes from in farmland.

The setup: if the world stopped growing crops tomorrow, John says there are roughly 70 days of food in reserve, down from 110 a decade ago. Two billion more people, more protein per capita, less arable land, and productivity gains that have flattened out. Into that comes a Super El Niño that John's heat maps suggest will hit Brazil, Argentina, and India — the last of which depends on the monsoon to grow the world's most-consumed calorie: rice. Commodity futures prices have risen significantly this year.

That's the backdrop. The investment argument rests on three things.The first is a value that sits on no balance sheet. Across most of the eastern US there are no formal water rights, so LandFund carries its water at zero. In the Colorado River states, where those rights did develop, they've compunded at roughly 11% a year over the past thirty-five years, outpacing the S&P 500 over that time period.John argues the same legal framework is coming to the Mid-South within ten years, pushed by the hyperscalers already knocking on his door for water offsets — and that when it arrives, a line item currently marked at nothing gets marked at something.

The second leg is convergence. When LandFund started in 2013, Midwest row crop farmland traded roughly 140% above comparable Mid-South ground; today the gap is 80–100%. John's argument is that the gap should be zero, and that it inverts: land with 300 years of water, 93% irrigation, and the ability to rotate between ten and twenty crops is worth more than land that is high-quality soil but weather-dependent — not less. Iowa bets on rain. He doesn't have to.

The third is operational. LandFund required regenerative practices in its lease agreements since 2021, and John walks through the J-curve economics: $50–100 an acre and a couple of lean years up front, then lower fertilizer use, fewer passes across the field, less irrigation, and net income he estimates runs 30–40% higher than it otherwise would — which flows straight into rents, which flow into rents.

Also covered: the "dirty secret" of powering data centers using 100x the water they consume, riparian rights and what happens when states start metering overuse, what the One Big Beautiful Bill did to price floors through 2032, solar developers paying 3x farmland value for ground with transmission lines, and why US row crop farmland has been negatively correlated to both stocks and bonds.

Disclaimer: This episode is a fireside chat sponsored by LandFund Partners. Any data, statistics, or information discussed is for informational purposes only. This is not an offer to sell securities. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

About LandFund Partners: https://www.landfundpartners.com/#home

LandFund's piece on water rights: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesfinancecouncil/2026/06/23/water-rights-the-invisible-asset-farmland-investors-are-beginning-to-price-in/

John Farris on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jofarris/

Jack Farley on X https://x.com/JackFarley96

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Timestamps

0:00 Intro on John Farris and LandFund Partners

4:22 70 Days of Food Reserves?

7:45 Super El Niño Risk in 2026

8:31 Iowa vs. the Mississippi Alluvial Aquifer

13:49 Beating NCREIF and the S&P 500: The Playbook

14:55 Water Reserves in Mississippi Alluvial Aquifer Are Immense

20:51 "300 Years of Water at Current Draw Rates"

26:28 Improving the Land and Regenerative farming

32:40 Farm Subsidies and the One Big Beautiful Bill

38:07 Crop rotation: cotton, corn, rice, soybeans

42:53 Is rice the trade right now?

46:39 Soybeans, fertilizer, and China buying again

48:38 Rice at all-time highs

50:11 Optionality beyond farming: Solar, Transmission Lines, Minerals

55:27 Data Centers?

56:09 What's next for LandFund

1:00:37 Why Farmland Has Had Negative Correlation With Risk Assets

1:04:35 Super El Niño: What to Expect

1:06:51 Feeding ten billion people

1:07:40 The 20-year outlook for all Four Crops