The Editor's Desk - Thurs 29 Jan 2026: Gold’s record run and the looming Middle East storm

I’m joining the dots today between a gold price "running like a scalded cat" and the arrival of Trump’s beautiful armada in the Middle East. It’s a sobering look at why markets are terrified, yet I’m finding a silver lining in a rare, bullish case for South Africa that we simply cannot afford to blow..PS. You can book tickets for the post BNC#8 golf day sponsored by Shyft, by clicking here..Don't miss out on future episodes of The Editor's Desk. Subscribe to BizNews Premium and get the podcast delivered to your inbox daily..Listen here.Read the full transcript of The Editor's Desk podcast below. Hello and welcome. I’m Alec Hogg. Well, you’ve seen the headlines on biznews.com, watched and listened to the interviews on BizNews TV and BizNews Radio. So now let's talk about what the latest developments mean for your money. This is the editor's desk, exclusive analysis for BizNews Premium members.Today is Thursday, the 29th of January, 2026. Glad to have you with us. Often we only understand things in hindsight. And right now we're seeing the gold price shooting the lights out. I cannot believe that we've not been able to join the dots yet, but I'm sure we probably will be able to in the course of this podcast. But to see the gold price jumping $200 on Tuesday night, $300 on Wednesday night and already today it's higher still — it started at over five and a half thousand dollars. It only broke through five thousand dollars last week, started over five and a half thousand dollars this morning and it's just tracking ever higher.Well, in hindsight, it may be because the most obvious next conflict is about to happen. But I'll get into that in a moment. There is a wonderful podcast by Katie Martin and Rob Armstrong on the Unhedged podcast, which is done for the Financial Times. It's behind a paywall there as well, but we have the right to republish it on BizNews for our premium members. So it's a members-only podcast. Boy, it's worth spending the 25 minutes or so listening to it.The two of them admit that they've gotten it very wrong. Indeed, Rob claims that he should be getting the prize for the worst forecast ever; he went short on gold at two and a half thousand dollars. Peter Major, in yesterday's discussion, said that maybe he's right behind him because Pete's also been somewhat negative on gold recently. But how were they to know what was about to happen? A storm was about to be unleashed in the Middle East. And that's what I'm joining the dots with.I'll tell you why. The Financial Times today published a story, which under licence we've republished. So you can go and read it on BizNews. It is all about Donald Trump's "beautiful armada," as he calls it. He has sent one of the US's 11 aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln, from the South China Sea to the Middle East. It entered Middle Eastern waters yesterday. It takes a while to get these kind of huge logistical processes together. Apart from the aircraft carrier, there are three guided-missile destroyers that are making up this "beautiful armada," and they've been headed towards Iran. They're now in place.They bring 5,000 troops and the destroyers have got plenty of Tomahawk missiles. The aircraft carrier obviously has got aircraft — strike aircraft, the most modern in the world. The Americans have also been sending through F-15 fighter planes to the Middle East. Another 12 apparently arrived this week, and they already have 30,000 to 40,000 troops in the region and five air wings who were based there before the arrival of the additional air wing on the USS Abraham Lincoln. That's about 70 planes and more battleships as well. There's quite a task force that has been put together.And as you read that article from our partners at the FT, you'll realise this isn't just being put there for show. Something's going to happen and something's going to happen soon. And perhaps that is why the gold price is running like a scalded cat at the moment. When you listen to Rob and Katie from the FT in that podcast, they make it pretty clear that everybody who has to talk about the markets is speculating, but they make it clear that the debasement trade is not being reflected in other investment markets.What that means is when you have a look at the US dollar and you say, "Oh, the dollar is falling out of bed," there are many of America's enemies who are following that line. The only problem in that argument is that bonds are not falling out of bed. If you're an international investor and you want to get out of the dollar, the first thing you sell is government debt, because if the dollar depreciates and the interest rates actually increase or rise, that means you take a massive capital loss on your investment. If you think that's going to happen, then you get out. But that's not happening. We're not seeing a fall in the prices of US fixed-interest debt.The other reason why people buy gold — and the more rational reason in this case — is because they are simply scared. And if you were sitting in the Middle East right now, well, would you not be hoarding a little bit of gold in the back of your cupboard if you could? The Iranian rial has dropped; last we heard it was down 40% in the last couple of months. So that's fallen out of bed. You need something hard. You need something that is going to retain its value. You would have thought the logical thing would be Bitcoin, which is easily transportable. But Iran is able to cut off the internet as they've done. There's no internet, no messages, not even WhatsApp messages that can be sent out from Iran over the last few weeks as the death toll keeps rising.Depending on who you listen to, it's either 12,000 or 30,000 people that have been killed protesting against the Iranian regime and the Supreme Leader, who's been in that position for just about 40 years now, unelected. There is a lot going down. You can't buy Bitcoin. So what do you buy? Well, there we go. Join those dots together. Has Donald Trump sent this armada, this "beautiful armada" of his? Has he warned the Iranians time and again that he will strike if they kill the protesters? Does he have a need to flex his muscles? And does he have the Venezuelan adventure to fall back on?I think the answer to all of those is yes. It'll be so interesting to see what happens in the next few days. And indeed, if the gold price continues to hold its current levels, should there be a strike by the US — which is being threatened to be at a far higher level than the previous strike — on top of which it seems the feedback we're getting from Israel is that they're just itching to have another go at the Iranians. They were held back in that 12-day war, but it now appears as though the Iranian regime is also preparing. They've got the Revolutionary Guard, and from the article in the Financial Times, the likely target for nearly 100 extremely modern airplanes is going to be the Revolutionary Guard.We shall watch and wait. Our other partner that's based in London is The Economist. And again, we're terribly proud to be associated with this organisation. For my money, the FT and The Economist are the best in the world at what they do, which is what we do, which is financial journalism. They bring us information about the rest of the world that we can share with our tribe here in South Africa. And once in a blue moon, they cover South Africa as well.That's why the piece in The Economist today is so noteworthy. It is very bullish on South Africa for the first time, I think, certainly that I've seen in a long, long, long time. There was some cautious optimism around the time of the Government of National Unity. But how’s this for a headline: "The Case for Optimism in South Africa"? Well, there's not a whole lot there that we as South Africans or indeed members of the business tribe don't know about yet. It's quite a lot of the normal arguments that have been made by people like Piet Viljoen, who explains in some detail why South Africa has been oversold and why the opportunities for South African investors have never looked as enticing.Piet’s been so right on the money for the last two years, where he has put it to very good use in the competition that he's having with real money against Magnus Heystek. Magnus went offshore. Piet stayed onshore, only onshore. And in fact, Piet just put the money into his own Merchant West Value Fund. He's been winning that competition very well, not least because the Rand has been on a tear because it has been benefiting from the higher precious metals prices, which is going to help us as a nation.We're a very small country, a very small country indeed. To give you an understanding of this, Apple is anticipated to come out with about $130 billion in sales for the fourth quarter. So for the three months to the end of December — they'll be coming out later today — South Africa's GDP would make up about just over three-quarters of Apple's sales. So if you took the money that Apple got in for its products over nine months of the year, that would be the same as South Africa's total GDP. It kind of puts it in perspective. So we are small enough to have something really move the needle.And when you've got the gold price moving the way that it is, and precious metals prices are going along with it — of course, for us, much more important than gold nowadays is platinum — well, that means lots more taxes. That also means it's going to help the budget deficit and there will be more money available to repay debt or to invest in social programmes to uplift South Africans.Peter Major makes the point in Mining Web Weekly, which we spoke about yesterday, and I really would urge you to go and watch or listen to that conversation. He makes the point that in the "noughties," in the mid-2000s, South Africa completely blew it in that commodities boom, in that precious metals boom which ended in 2008. Had there been a more appealing legislative environment in this country, money would have flooded in, because we do have these incredible resources in this country.The only thing that's stopping people from coming in and looking for gold — well, the Zama Zamas do it, but they don't employ anybody, or certainly not taxable people, and they certainly don't pay any taxes. So that doesn't help the rest of us if the Zama Zamas are going about scratching out gold. But formal businesses do that. They pay taxes, they employ people, they cut the unemployment rate, and the potential for the mining sector to employ hundreds of thousands of South Africans is huge, especially now when you look at the prices.Because the way mining works is, if you own a gold mine, for instance, you would mine certain areas that are economic depending on the international price of gold. And when the price goes up, then you can mine areas that were previously uneconomic, but are now economic and so on. Now at five and a half thousand dollars an ounce, pretty much everything in South Africa is economic to mine. Well, certainly not everything, but certainly there are massive blocks that previously would have been ignored that are now available and actually could be mined profitably, not just by big groups, but by little guys as well.But none of them are coming in because our mining legislation is such a muck-up. The mining legislation has been designed by greedy bureaucrats and politicians who think that they should be given a cut of the national resource simply because they happen to have the job that they have. Much better is to do it in the national interest. Just get the right people, professionals, to come in. Don't stop them from making their investment. Bring the money in, let them invest here. Mining, of course, is a decades-long investment. Bring them in, let them employ people, let them pay the taxes, let them pay the royalties.And it's not just mining; we should be doing it on the gas off the West coast and the Southern Cape coast. And if you ever want evidence of how Pretoria has blown it — let's not say "we," because there’ve been many people who've been waving the flags — but how Pretoria has blown South Africa's incredible endowment, just have a look at the exploitation of gas fields off the West coast. The same geography, when you go from Angola down, you'll see there are many gas fields in Namibia, up until the point of the Orange River mouth, where that's the border between Namibia and South Africa, and then they stop. No more exploration, no more rigs, nothing.Namibia is widely identified around the world as the next great gas province. In fact, they're talking about Namibia being the next Norway — Norway’s the richest country in the world due to its oil and gas endowment. And so we've got the same geography. We've got everything the same. It's just the legislation that's different. North of the Orange River, plenty of action. South of the Orange River, South Africa: poor legislation. Nothing. Nobody's interested. Nobody's going to put money in there. It's so obvious, it actually makes you cry.Peter Major talks about that. The gold price surge talks to that as well. And The Economist also gives us great reason for hope despite all of these shooting of our own feet. Man, if we could only get Pretoria to get out of its own way. Who knows how fantastic a country this already fantastic country could be.One of our tribe members who's a medical doctor said to me, "I love what you do because you are a thoughtful patriot." And I believe I am a thoughtful patriot. And I said to him, I'm going to steal that term from you because I think that describes best what it is that we try to do at BizNews. Thoughtful patriotism. We love our country. We love our people. We also believe that blindly following those who've been put into power, often through devious means, is not patriotic and certainly not thoughtful. So let's all be thoughtful patriots. Let's question. Let's see where the future could be taking us. And my goodness, the better future has to await with just a few changes at the margin.I'm going to leave it there for today. Keep an eye on your premium newsletter for links to our freshest published content. And please go and read that piece from the Financial Times about the aircraft carrier and the carrier troops that are just now entering into Middle Eastern waters. Is that why the gold price is running? Thank you for trusting us with your time. I'm Alec Hogg. Until tomorrow. Cheerio.

The Editor's Desk - Thurs 29 Jan 2026: Gold’s record run and the looming Middle East storm

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