Copper, iron, tungsten and antimony held for years through unnamed companies — the US is "behind the eight ball" on critical minerals vs China and Russia.
The bottom of the miner ladder — "the smallest one we like" — a small producer at 5.5× 2027 earnings held as the high-octane end of a diversified group.
The low is in near $3,950–4,000: gold retested it four or five times while the consensus called for one more leg down, and "all hot money… got rung out." "You're in the early innings."
Bought ~7–8 weeks ago at ~$18 on a 10% yield (now ~7.5% after the move) — the non-operated model gets paid in cash while the oil price does nothing dramatic.
Sold in full above $100 into the late-'25/early-'26 blow-off after a 212% year, re-bought much cheaper and added again — the take-profit-and-re-enter discipline in one position.
Owned but not added — copper "stayed at that high and then made new highs," so the position is held on supply/demand while fresh capital goes to the metals that corrected.
The half of the copper book he rates higher — "a lot of people always talk about Freeport, but Southern Copper is really good company" — also a hold, not a buy, at these prices.
In the same vulnerable trio and the one carried furthest by flow — "Intel hadn't gone up much at all until this last run"; also his 1999 sale that took 26 years to be vindicated.
Third of the named run-up examples — "these semiconductors can really correct on you in a big big way" once the hyperscaler capex that justifies the price is questioned.
The group diagnostic that condemns it: pull every constituent's chart, all at new highs, the basket up 20% — "you probably don't have a lot more to go."
A generational bear market is coming, and the ten years after it belong to hard assets rather than mega-caps — "you need a portion of your portfolio in commodities. I think you're making a mistake if you don't." Oxbow reads the market at Templeton's euphoria stage, carries 45–50% in sub-two-year Treasuries as a paid option on lower prices, owns energy across the entire value chain plus the metals and critical minerals the US can't supply itself, and sells mechanically when the valuation stops holding the price — most recently exiting Microsoft outright after ~15 years.
Euphoria on the Templeton clock — a 35–45% generational bear inside 15–18 months. Valuation, retail participation and the IPO/debt-and-equity offering wave are "all in place." The S&P could reach 8,000 this year, "but I'd have to be surprised that you would do a fifth year." The trigger he names is the AI/data-centre overshoot coming "back to Earth," and the setup is that "there's hardly anybody out there looking for that" — 2027 will be 19 years since 2008, "so you have a whole generation that's never really seen anything really bad."
Positioning: liquidity as an option, not a hedge. The two equity strategies carry 45–50% short-term Treasuries under two-year maturity — "they've done well this year, actually" — plus ~40 diversified undervalued stocks (Booking, Mastercard, Visa recently added), a heavy precious-metals sleeve and a large energy book. "We carry a lot of liquidity. So if we get a lot of cheap prices, we look at it as a positive." No long end: nobody "wants a 30-year bond right about now."
Energy across the whole spectrum, not the best segment. Producers Chevron and Exxon (large) and Matador (midsize) plus Northern Oil & Gas — bought ~7–8 weeks ago at ~$18 on a 10% yield, now ~7.5%; gas via Antero ("God, what a cheap stock. Seven or eight times earnings") and APA; pipelines via Enterprise, MPLX and Energy Transfer; a small services sleeve of Schlumberger, Noble and Transocean. The number that carries the thesis: oil settles "between 65 and 85," and "the energy companies can make a lot of money at $75… they don't need a $100 oil to do that."
Gold and silver: the low is in, and it's "the early innings." Gold retested $4,000 four or five times while every commentator called for one more leg to $3,500–3,600; "all hot money… got rung out between really February and about six or eight weeks ago," and the poke to ~$3,950 was where Oxbow put money to work. The ladder runs Agnico Eagle (biggest) to Equinox (smallest) with Alamos in between, plus the royalties — Royal Gold, Wheaton, Franco-Nevada — and Hecla on silver. Silver was sold entirely above $100 after a 212% year, re-bought much cheaper, and added to the day before the 2026-AUG-19 interview.
Hard assets and critical minerals, held for years — not a new trade. Copper (Freeport and Southern Copper — owned, but not added while it makes new highs), iron, tungsten, antimony, fertilizer/farm companies and uranium: the US uses ~50M lb of uranium a year and produces 2.5–3M, "a demand supply curve that's out of balance," and "there's numerous things like that." Real estate and oil & gas count as hard assets; US farmland does not, at 5× the Brazilian price per acre. The frame is a multipolar world where "everybody's hoarding their assets."
Sell when the valuation no longer holds the price — and take the tax. A commodity that doubles obliges you to sell (silver +212%, sold in full). An equity that outruns its numbers is sold in tranches on strength: Microsoft was trimmed "all the way up two or three or four times" over ~15 years and is now being exited completely — "for us it looks like the valuation doesn't hold the price." Low-basis accounts are worked down over time, not held forever. Baseline holding period is 3–10 years unless a move makes the stock overvalued.
Avoid the crowded mega-cap / semi / AI trade. Semiconductors are "feast or famine" over 46 years — pull every SMH constituent's chart, all at new highs with the basket up 20%, and "usually that's a sign that you probably don't have a lot more to go" (AMD, Intel, Nvidia named). On the hyperscalers, back out the debt taken in and the depreciation still to land and "I don't think those earnings will hold up" 24 months out. The analogue is Cisco in 1999: the paradigm arrived, the capacity overshot it, and "it ended up in different ways, not what everybody thought."
Valuation discipline as a governor. CAPE at 42 and rising four months straight, the top 50 S&P names at "almost 80% of the value" ("you're not really as diversified as you think you are"), and Mike Green's estimate that passive ownership is within 5–7% of the level where the flow reverses. "If I can't buy the valuation, we're just not going to buy it" — and the cost has been small: "we haven't really been left that far behind." Also avoided: big banks at three times book (only US Bank owned) and airlines outright.
The macro backdrop: stealth inflation, then stagflation. $40 trillion of debt "that we cannot get out of in any ordinary way," hitting the entitlement wall within ~5 years, "and there's nothing they'll do about it because they will not be austere." The way out is post-WWII-style stealth inflation, 8–10 years of stagflation, and a dollar that "will decline the rest of your life" — which is why gold is held as a currency hedge and an insurance policy rather than an S&P competitor.
The product
What it is: Oakley's public-facing output is a books-and-commentary business sitting on top of a private wealth-management firm. Oxbow Advisors is an Austin-based registered investment advisory managing roughly $3.2 billion for high-net-worth investors, entrepreneurs and families; Oakley is its founder and managing partner, a CFA and CFP with more than four decades in the business. Everything a non-client can consume is free: 11 books on investing, wealth preservation and intergenerational wealth, a newsletter, a YouTube channel and the interview circuit — all routed through one address. "The best place is at oxbowadvisors.com, the website. We're real simpletons. Everything we do is on there. We don't really try to hide anything and we make mistakes and you'd see that too… If you want a copy of a book, we'll be happy to send it to you." (Grounded in the 2026-AUG-19 interview, 47:04–52:30, plus the newsletter references at 3:00 and 8:00.)
Offering
What it is
How he runs it
Seen in the index
Oxbow Advisors (the firm)
An RIA managing ~$3.2bn for high-net-worth families, run in three strategies — "the primary two that are involved in stocks."
Bottom-up stock and bond selection ("we buy really mostly stocks from the bottom up"), a hard valuation filter, and a large short-duration Treasury weight (45–50% under two years) held as dry powder.
Every Positive row is a live Oxbow position; the Neutral rows include genuine holds not being added (FCX, SCCO).
The books (11, free on request)
The Psychology of Staying Rich, Stay Rich with a Balanced Portfolio, $30 Million and Broke, Second Generation Wealth, and Asleep at the Wheel due late 2026.
Written from four decades of client experience rather than market theory — the concrete rules are behavioural ("you owe them an education… no debt, have a car paid for, from that point forward… you're on your own") and allocational ("your assets need to be balanced because then it gives you some options").
Not a securities product; the balanced-portfolio argument underwrites the 45–50% Treasury weight and the hard-asset sleeve.
The newsletter
A free written commentary the interview hosts quote back to him — the Templeton cycle-stage framing and the Zoom / DocuSign / Peloton round-trip examples both came from recent issues.
Cycle-stage diagnostics and case studies rather than trade calls; the positions show up later in interviews.
ZM, DOCU and PTON appear as Neutral context rows sourced from those issues.
YouTube channel + interviews
Oxbow's own channel plus the long-form circuit (The David Lin Report, The Real Story with Michelle Makori).
Free, unpaywalled, and specific — he names the tickers, the entry prices and the exits, including the ones that went against him.
The dated archive pages here are built entirely from these appearances.
How it serves retail investors:
The positions are named and priced. Not "we like energy" but Northern Oil & Gas "seven or eight weeks ago at around 18 bucks. It's a 10% yield," Antero at "seven or eight times earnings," Equinox at 5.5× 2027 earnings, gold bought at ~$3,950–4,050. A retail investor can check the arithmetic instead of taking the call on trust.
The exits are disclosed too — including the unpopular ones. Selling all the silver above $100 ("we got a lot of heat"), selling Microsoft after ~15 years, selling Intel in 1999 and watching it double. The losing half of the record is the part most useful to copy.
The method travels further than the picks. Templeton's four stages, the CAPE and top-50 concentration checks, the all-constituents-at-new-highs group test, the hot-money-rung-out bottom read and the domestic-consumption-over-domestic-production supply screen are all reusable on names he never mentions — which is what the actionable-insights pages capture.
The wealth-preservation books address the part portfolios don't. The forthcoming Asleep at the Wheel is aimed squarely at baby boomers "90 95% in the market" who own nothing else, and the argument is optionality rather than return: "if you've got all of it in one thing, you don't have many options if that one thing goes bad."
Nothing is gated. No subscription tier, no alerts service, no upsell — the books are mailed free on request and the site carries the rest. The commercial interest is the advisory business, which is disclosed up front.