Raoul- European banks recently did not renew the gold agreement. If there truly is some liquidity disaster, won’t central banks be forced to sell their reserves as in 2008? Gold shot up once QE began. Do you have any advice here? Are you also still long on Eurodollars? Do you recommend a higher strike price than 99?

Sounds all rational but for some reasons I am rather optimistic in the sense it might not be as bad and hopefully might not endanger the secular bull market we are still having. This could be a simple pause. I see major risks in your scenario: 1) The whole world is buying bonds for capital appreciation and not for yield. We all know well how that kind of behaviour terminates. A bond crash could be a good opportunity for central banks to collect the debt further without distorting the system. 2) EU banks are just badly shorted indeed, despite all negative news, they make money and are restructuring hard. Hopefully ECB is going to do something about it but now sellers are pushing on the string. It could well be a false break out. Option interests and everybody are all but massively short. Again one crowded trade with no much valuation fundamental, usually don't end too well. 3) Germany has a lot of room to fiscally spend and are making money to do so, however Merkel appears quite sick and the next election is far. I think they are just waiting for the right time, potentially linked with their car industry. I cannot really explain why is it it makes me think it's just a slowdown, the main reason possibly is that everybody is so expecting a bad recession but when it's too much of anticipation rather than a surprise usually it doesn't happen (economic agents have a chance to behave way safer than they would have had otherwise; I think it is what you see in the economic data at the moment). Another strong reason which keeps me optimistic is that, I am a believer of an automobile boom hopefully in 2020 as a few popular (plug in hybrid) models are coming onto market, that might explain also the weak economic data at the moment as people might be confused onto to what is the future for cars, so they differ their purchase. The negative on that front is the US is losing this race also, so finger's cross they won't kill it.

Any comments on safety of capital (UBS Switzerland) under worst case scenario painted by Raoul?

Raoul: Thank you for the insight. As we know, Central Banks have been buying gold at a pretty hefty rate. Do you think this is an acknowledgement that the banking system, or in extremis, the fiat/MMT system is on a knife's edge? Do you see the major risk to buying gold is confiscation.....again?

Raoul - is it better to long gold in psychical form or through contracts? I can see the owning the real thing VS leverage, easiness to enter in/out/manage in general but I can’t assess the macro risks of all. What are the potential advantages and differences in these cases? Can you please expand on this?

Hi Raoul, Is the ED Dec-19 trade still good or should we move out to 20/21/22 dated contracts or 2 Year USTs (in case of funding issues)?

At the risk of being called a pedant, below your commentary on German exports, you have use a graph titled ‘Germany Imports’, which is then replicated lower down when you actually are talking about German imports.

Hey Raoul do you plan to sell some ED when the first cut is made and then scale back in on a correction even if a cut comes before the Sept meeting?