John Lodra
Lead Partner | New Harbor Financial | Macro analyst focused on precious metals and real assets
"Macro overlay on precious metals and real assets, with a debt-cycle and dollar framework"
Biography
John Lodra is a Lead Partner at New Harbor Financial and a recurring voice on the Thoughtful Money with Adam Taggart podcast, where he sits alongside fellow partner Mike Preston to walk viewers through the macro backdrop behind commodity and equity markets. For resource investors, his value is the macro lens: connecting Federal Reserve policy, the U.S. dollar, and the multi-trillion U.S. debt trajectory to what actually happens to gold, silver, and the mining equities that depend on them.
Lodra's recent commentary has leaned bearish on broad equity valuations — he has highlighted the S&P 500's narrow leadership, the heavy capex tied to AI and data-center build-outs that are inflating reported earnings, and the case for a true bear market in 2026 — while staying constructive on hard assets. In conversation with macro guests such as Darius Dale (42 Macro) and Tom McClellan, he has framed precious metals as one of the few sectors still trading at attractive valuations relative to the inflation and debt backdrop, and has pointed to gold and silver's recent breakouts as evidence that capital is finally rotating into real assets.
His approach is data-driven and chart-led. Rather than pitching individual mining stocks, Lodra works top-down: he tracks the dollar, real yields, debt-to-GDP (which he has cited north of 120% on a $36 trillion base), and intermarket signals to time exposure to miners and the metals themselves. He has been explicit that he prefers investing in "real things" — physical gold and silver, royalty and streaming vehicles, and the producers with the lowest AISC (All-In Sustaining Costs — the full per-ounce cost of pulling metal out of the ground) — over long-duration assets whose terminal value depends on stable monetary policy.
For a mining investor, Lodra's contribution is timing and context. His breakdowns of valuation extremes, his willingness to flag when equities are decoupling from the metals they pull out of the ground, and his macro-then-micro sequencing give resource investors a framework for deciding when broad commodity exposure makes sense and when single-name stock-picking is the higher-conviction bet. His current focus remains the intersection of the U.S. debt trajectory, Fed policy, and what that means for precious metals into 2026.
Note: Lodra's commodity relevance is macro and second-order — he is not a primary mining analyst, geologist, or producer executive. His usefulness to a resource investor is as a macro overlay and a real-assets advocate, not as a source of single-name mining calls.
Videos (4)
Have Rising Bond Yields Just Killed The Bull Market In Stocks? | New Harbor Financial
Time To Start Getting REALLY Bullish? | Tom McClellan
Pre-midterm seasonal bottom should clear within a week, kicking off the historically bullish year-three rally of a presidential cycle. A recurring seven-year cycle in margin debt points to a 2028 top, with crude oil and Treasury yields also set to crest that year. Gold leads Treasury yields and crude oil by roughly 20 months, suggesting a sharp climb ahead in both over the next 14 months. QE (Quantitative Easing, the Fed's bond-buying program) has historically sent Treasury prices lower, the opposite of what buyers would expect. New Harbor pushes back on the bond bearishness, positioning for a tactical long-duration rally if equities roll over first.
Is The Market Breaking Out Or Breaking Bad? | New Harbor Financial
- Top takeaway John Lodra frames today's Treasury buyback announcement as a sign of intervention rather than stewardship, noting it appeared right as long-end yields hit multi-year/multi-decade highs and as the July monthly deficit ran near the biggest since 2021; he stresses this is not QE — the Treasury is shifting long-term debt for short-term debt, similar to a maturity/duration twist.
- He highlights a healthy, systematic broadening of the rally: equal-weighted indices outperforming mega caps, small caps gaining on large caps, and lagging sectors like banks, real estate, and healthcare rotating back into relative-strength favor over the past several months.
- Lodra treats the debasement trade as a multi-year regime rather than a short-term trade, arguing governments historically print and extend rather than default or become austere, which underpins a persistent bullish stance on precious metals despite the earlier-year pullback.
- On TLT, Lodra is cautiously constructive near term — expecting a possible test of the upper end of the multi-year range (roughly 80 to the low 100s) on the back of Treasury intervention — while cautioning that the longer-term path for long-duration bonds remains challenging given the fiscal backdrop.
New Harbor partners read the broad market as breaking out: the S&P 500 has pushed past 7,000 and equal-weight indices like RSP print new highs. They interpret today's expanded Treasury buyback as stealth intervention, not QE — a yield-curve twist aimed at capping long-end yields. Gold above $4,500 and silver near $66 reflect what they call a debasement regime, with policy tools steadily eroding the dollar's purchasing power. The GDX gold miners ETF just broke out of a multi-month triangle after bullish percents washed out under 10% — a historically rare setup. TLT and other long-duration Treasuries likely have a near-term floor as buybacks ease yields, though the longer-term debt trajectory remains murky.
Fed To Drop Market By 20%? | Darius Dale
- Top takeaway Lodra says his firm's weight-of-the-evidence dashboard is strongly bullish across multiple timeframes and asset classes, with small caps overtaking mega caps on fund scores since mid-January, signaling a healthy broadening rally.
- He characterizes current conditions as one of the biggest stock market bubbles of all time by valuation, but argues the price action has not yet shown the narrowing or weakening typical of major tops.
- Lodra sees a plausible blow-off top scenario and would attempt to capture some of the late melt-up rather than fully de-risk, while layering option hedges to cap downside below set levels.
- He highlights a sector rotation out of utilities (sold after a long hold) and into healthcare, regional banks, energy, and real estate, framed as evidence of broadening participation beyond AI and tech.
- Lodra urges viewers to use late-summer bandwidth to review financial goals, with Roth conversions and IRMAA-aware Medicare surcharge planning as priorities before year-end.
Darius Dale sees a 15-20% 1998-style stock correction as likely, with the Fed tightening this fall to appease the bond market before easing in 2027. He argues the Fed should use balance-sheet tightening over rate hikes, targeting the long end without crashing rate-sensitive sectors of the economy. Hyperscaler borrowing and slowing global savings growth now compete for capital, pushing the market-implied neutral rate higher by 50 to 75 bps. The Paradigm C run-it-hot regime appears to be peaking in 2026, though 42 Macro's macro weather model still signals a net-positive outlook for risk assets. New Harbor partners flag August as the smart window for Roth conversion planning before IRMAA Medicare surcharges hit later in the year.
Key Quotes
"Precious metals are still one of the attractively valued sectors out there."
— Wealthion / Thoughtful Money episode reacting to Michael Every's debt-crisis thesis
"The precious metals really finally came into their own."
— Buyside Digest podcast on the 2025 precious-metals breakout
"Prefer investing in real things — physical gold, silver, royalty and streaming vehicles — over long-duration assets that depend on stable monetary policy."
— Thoughtful Money with Adam Taggart, broad market outlook segment
Key Works
New Harbor Financial (Lodra and Preston) on AI/capex-inflated earnings, narrow market leadership, and a bear-market case into 2026.
Lodra joins Darius Dale of 42 Macro on Thoughtful Money to map Fed policy scenarios against gold, silver, and equity risk.
Lodra and Tom McClellan read intermarket breadth and McClellan-style technicals for commodities and equities.
Lodra and Preston react to Michael Every's macro/debt thesis, with Lodra reiterating the real-assets and precious-metals conclusion.
Specializations
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