Your IMPORTANT Weekly Briefing: (14th August 2026)

Welcome back to this weeks newsletter!

It’s been a crazy week for me as we were finally granted permission to continue work at the Castle (after the Health & Safety closed us down last week). That's why I wasn't able to post any videos or do any live streams during the week, it was all out chaos.

Luckily, the H&S department allowed us to get going again on Monday just as fast as they stopped us from working - and with no explanation. It was a bizarre one, that’s for sure.

“Stop! Oh, no it’s fine - you can continue…” - with a weeks work lost in the process.

1. Weekly Spotlight

$13 Billion In, $300 Million Out

Since January, $13 billion of Venezuelan oil has been sold under US supervision. But only about $300 million of it has been publicly traced back to Venezuela.

I've spent time this week following the money trail of what happened to the rest... !

As you may remember, on 3 January, US forces took Maduro out of Caracas. Six days later, Trump signed Executive Order 14373, setting up an arrangement where the proceeds from Venezuelan oil sales are held by the United States in what the order calls a "custodial capacity".

Which means Venezuela still owns the money on paper - but America holds it. And for Venezuela to spend any of it, they must submit a monthly budget request.

Interesting…

I think we know what this means in practise.

So how much of the $13B has gone back to Venezuela? Around $3 billion, according to a State Department testimony in April.

Caracas even set up a website so the public could follow every dollar. It has exactly one entry on it: A $300 million sale in March.

So that leaves roughly $10 billion nobody has publicly accounted for, which is very unusual.

A lot of questions have been raised as to where all that money has gone:

• 28 January: Rubio tells the Senate the first $500 million went into a Qatari bank account, and admits no audit process has been finalised.

• 4 February: Bessent can't say which accounts hold the money, and agrees to provide the legal authority for holding another country's assets.

• 5 March: Two separate bills are paused, demanding an independent audit.

• 17 April: A congressman writes to the government auditors directly.

• June: Rubio tells Congress that KPMG audits the sales.

But after that, the trail goes cold. So where do I think the money is?

My best estimate is a boring answer. I think that most of it is still sitting in that bank account and being held over Venezuela, potentially for rebuilding later.

Trump has already said he wants American oil majors to put $100 billion into rebuilding Venezuela's industry. And back in January, Venezuela's National Assembly rewrote the oil law to strip PDVSA of its majority stakes, so foreign companies can now operate and sell the crude themselves.

So I suspect that’s the crux of the matter. The US holding the funds, with US companies receiving the funds to invest into Venezuela later - a closed loop system.

2. Quick Takes

Here are the other top stories shaping the week:

• Iran Wants The War To Last Until Trump Is Out Of Office

  A top adviser to Iran's Revolutionary Guard says the plan is to drag the war into the next US presidency and wear America down. The military has been reorganised around attacking rather than defending. Iran has worked out that the US won't invade on the ground, so the stalemate hurts (but isn't fatal). Iran has stopped trying to win and started trying to outlast the US.

• The US Says It Will Starve Iran Like The World Has Never Seen

  Treasury Secretary Bessent has promised economic measures never before used on Iran, ‘total isolation’. Plus a blockade stopping anything moving in or out of Iranian ports, with more announcements next week. Hegseth says it can run indefinitely by rotating ships, and 59 vessels have already been turned away.

• Trump Just Put A 100% Tariff On Imported Drones

  Tariffs of up to 100% on imported drones and parts, 25% on smaller models, 15% for allies like South Korea, most of it from September 3. China's DJI controls over two-thirds of the global drone market, and Beijing has already restricted drone exports and blacklisted six companies. Ukraine, which planned to sell billions in drones to Washington, gets caught in it too.

• Brazil Is Threatening To Suspend American Patents Over Trump's Tariffs

  Brazil has opened the formal process for retaliating over 25% US tariffs, plus another 12.5% tied to forced labour claims. Brasilia calls them unjustified and arbitrary and wants talks first, but Lula will invoke the Reciprocity Law if that fails, potentially hitting US film and streaming companies or suspending American patents.

• Russia Rejected A Black Sea Shipping Truce Within Hours

  Ukraine floated a deal through a mediator to stop both sides hitting civilian ships in the Black Sea. Moscow dismissed it the same day as a "half-measure" giving Kyiv breathing space. Ukrainian grain exports are down 76% year-on-year this month, with 90% of shipments leaving from three Odesa-area ports. Russia hit over 80 vessels in July alone, and Ukraine has just knocked out all three grain terminals at Novorossiysk.

• Britain To Spend More Closing North Sea Wells Than Drilling New Ones

  The UK spent a record £2.6 billion tearing down North Sea oil infrastructure last year, and from 2029 will spend more shutting wells than building anything new. Roughly 500 wells are waiting to be sealed, with 1,000 more due within five years. Burnham is expected to approve some new projects but that is most likely not going to come to much. The destruction of our energy supply is the one certainty I see of this cabinet.

• Water Rationing Has Started In Britain

  Affinity Water has capped new business connections at 20,000 litres a day across London and the south east, blocking three data centre projects which needed 21 million litres daily. Anglian Water has done the same. Households aren't being cut off, but 27 million people already face restrictions, and Ofwat agreed to even more price rises for five suppliers on Thursday, partly to build capacity for data centres. Yes you heard that right - the people are now being forced to pay for data centres to get connected, the very same data centres stealing their water.

• Burnham Promises More Business Rates Cuts

  Burnham says he'll go further on business rates at the October 28 budget, after cutting VAT on electricity and giving pubs 20% relief, funded partly by taxing vape shops. He admits the cost of doing business is too high, with his spare fiscal room reportedly as low as £8.2 billion after previous national insurance rises.

• Nigel Farage Beats Man Dressed As A Wheelie Bin

  Farage quit his Clacton seat in July to run again - for his Clacton seat… I know I know, all very odd… But not as odd as the actual race where every other major party boycotted it, leaving Count Binface as his main rival out of 34 candidates. Farage took 22,239 votes to Binface's 9,455 on a 44% turnout. I must admit, I was breaking a sweat just watching it. I had the same question in the back of my mind: “What if counting face actually wins?!”

• Bitcoin Miners Are Giving Up On Bitcoin And Renting Their Power To AI

  Bitcoin miners cut their computing power 13.4% between late 2025 and June 2026. Mining a single coin now costs close to $90,000 while Bitcoin sits near $63,000. Core Scientific made $136.7 million renting out data centres last quarter against $27.5 million from mining.

• Only 3% Of Americans Trust AI With Their Money, But 20% Use It Anyway

  A Gallup poll of 5,075 adults found just 3% have a great deal of confidence in AI managing their finances, yet 20% who sought financial advice last year got it from AI. Around a quarter of Gen Z and millennials used it, against 7% of boomers, while 73% of everyone just did their own online research. Cost explains most of it, as advisers are expensive and chatbots are free

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3. Chart Of The Week

Gold Has Completely Replaced Bonds In The Best-Performing Portfolio

Goldman Sachs data shows the optimal World Portfolio for 2025 is 55% US equities and 45% gold, with bonds sitting at exactly zero.

But rewind back to 2005 and bonds made up 80% of that mix while gold was nothing at all. Gold first crept in around 2010 at 23%, faded back to nothing by 2020, and has now jumped to nearly half the portfolio.

The classic 60/40 split, stocks for growth and bonds for safety, has stopped doing its job as inflation and rate swings eat into exactly what bonds were meant to protect against.

Gold pays no interest and earns nothing, but it holds its value when everything else is in trouble.

4. Market Overview

S&P 500 (U.S.) 
Up. Cooler inflation readings on both CPI and PPI took the heat out of September rate hike, and the index closed at a record high. Tech did most of the heavy lifting again, though energy was the standout sector after the US resumed the Strait of Hormuz blockade and oil jumped. It wobbled a bit on Friday when consumer sentiment came in gloomy, but the week still finished ahead.

FTSE 100 (UK)
Down, and it was the miners doing the damage. Antofagasta slid two days running after trimming its copper production guidance, with Glencore, Fresnillo and Rio Tinto dragged along as metal prices came off their recent run. Pharma didn't help either, with AstraZeneca and GSK both weak. Software was the one bright spot.

S&P/TSX Composite (Canada)
Higher, with record highs and a six-day winning streak, its longest since April. Energy led early as crude climbed on the Hormuz standoff, then gold miners took over on a weaker dollar. Earnings chipped in too, with Bird Construction and Shopify both well up.

ASX 200 (Australia)
Fell. Reporting season is in full swing and the market wasn't in a forgiving mood, with losses in five of the past six sessions unwinding the record high set the week before. Banks were a weight, and the gold names gave back some of their run as bullion paused. Tech was the exception, with Block, WiseTech and Xero all having a good week.

🇺🇸 United States – S&P 500

• High: 7,815

• Low: 7,717

🇬🇧 UK - FTSE 100

• High: 10,893

• Low: 10,728

🇨🇦 Canada – TSX Composite

• High: 36,824

• Low: 35,319

🇦🇺 Australia – ASX 200

• High: 9,273

• Low: 9,091

Cryptocurrency:

• Bitcoin (BTC): -2.7%

• Ethereum (ETH): -1.6%

• Tether (USDT): 0.0%

• BNB (BNB): 2.3%

• USDC (USDC): 0.0%

• XRP (XRP): -1.5%

• Solana (SOL): 2.4%

• TRON (TRX): 1.5%

• Figure Heloc (FIGR_HELOC): -2.7%

• Hyperliquid (HYPE): 1.1%

Metals Market:

Gold–Silver Ratio: ~67:1, Fell this week. Both metals rose after cooler inflation data and soft retail sales knocked back the odds of a September Fed hike, but silver did the better, it gets paid twice, once on the rate outlook and once on industrial demand from solar, grids and data centres

Gold & Silver:

• Gold:  0.89% with a Week High: $4,449 & Week Low: $4,311

• Silver: 2.32% with a Week High: $66.81 & Week Low: $63.03

5. Faith & Success

I shared at the start of this email how this week was very difficult. I think last two weeks were probably the most stressful two weeks I've ever had in my life. Truly.

Imagine having 30 workers stood around not knowing what they are and aren’t allowed to do - totally confused by why they couldn’t continue work. That's what happened to me last week.

And then finally on Monday, the health and safety department did a complete U-turn and allowed us all to continue work again… !

Great you may say! Well… it's not quite that simple - I had sent the guys off on other projects, and some had other projects of their own. So getting people back on site at the drop of a hat was not so easy.

Getting the right permits to continue certain jobs was also not so easy either.

However, we did manage to get everything done today, (although we haven't finished the wall that we were building) - a wall that I wanted ready for the motorcycle races that begin this weekend.

But to be honest, I think I stressed myself out just as much as the Government officials stressed me out.

Because I'm not used to being in an environment where I don't have any control whatsoever, and with no certainty. Usually there’s someone I can call, or there's an appeal process that one can take.

But when it comes to health and safety, there's nothing like that. They do an investigation, and you simply have to wait.

Fortunately, I had a great structural engineer who kicked butt and emailed H&S the load calculations and plans for the wall to show that it was absolutely safe!

And I think that’s the problem sometimes… to one person - an engineering project can look unsafe, but to an engineer, they know exactly what they’re doing.

And I think this is where I was completely out of my depth last week, not to mention my comfort zone. And by the time I got lawyers involved, everything was approved to restart with no amendments or changes required!

It was incredibly frustrating, but I learned a lot about myself in the process. I learned that I need to just let go, and not get so annoyed over such things.

I wasted an entire week just running around making 20 to 30 phone calls a day, writing emails and trying to put pressure on Government departments to pressure the H&S team - all to no avail!

When in actual fact, and with no real announcement, a week to the day, everything was opened again, and that was the end of it. We got the green light to restart.

The other lesson I got from this was just to be patient. Because all that running around actually achieved nothing.

It reminded me of a story someone shared with me once. I can’t remember it fully, but there were 2 farmers… The first farmer planted his seed, watered the ground and then returned several months later to harvest the crop. The second farmer did the same thing, but all month he would go and watch the crop, not actually doing anything, just watching it to make sure it was okay… worried that it might fail.

At the end of the season, both farmers harvested the same crop. But the first farmer had done a lot of jobs around the farm, where the second farmer hadn't really achieved much because he was focused so much on the crop that would have grown anyway.

I was the second farmer this week… but with more stress.

A good lesson for me indeed, I learned a lot from the experience.

Have a great week my friend!

Take care, and God Bless.

Neil,

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DISCLAIMER
This newsletter is 100% FREE & is designed to help your thinking, not direct it. These newsletters shall NOT be construed as tax, legal, or financial advice and may be outdated or inaccurate; all decisions made as a result of this information are yours alone.

Trading/Liability: Neil McCoy-Ward operates/trades under a private Ltd company within the Isle of Man.

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