Are chocolate stocks also addictive, and can we turn goldmines into chocolate?
week 5 2025
Introduction
Addictive stocks, or at least the products that the companies behind the stocks produce, such as tobacco, do well in our portfolio. As with any addiction, the demand for the product does not decrease quickly, even in times of crisis, and this makes these such good stocks. This week we have an article about the addiction chocolate. Subscribers of IA pro can read our newsletters, including the new stock we bought in the chocolate sector: https://investor-assistance-pro.com.
Chocolate addictive?
We are not joking, chocolate is addictive. Furthermore, a warning is in order here, the title may seem strange to non-Dutch readers since "hier maak ik geen chocolade van" (in English: I can't turn into chocolade) means that one does not understand it anymore. Below we list some serious sites that write about how to help people with a chocolate addiction:
Chocolate addiction is a condition in which someone has an uncontrollable urge to eat chocolate. You have become physically and mentally dependent on the active substances in chocolate. For example, sugar and caffeine in chocolate activate the reward center of the brain. With chocolate, it can be difficult to determine whether there is a real addiction or just a strong preference or habit. With an addiction, you experience withdrawal symptoms if you do not eat chocolate for a while, such as intense cravings , according to a 2013 study in Chocolate in Health and Nutrition. You also eat chocolate out of compulsion .
The causes of a chocolate addiction are mainly the substances in chocolate that activate different neurotransmitters in the brain: sugar, caffeine and theobromine. Sugar ensures that more of the neurotransmitter dopamine is released, which gives you a good feeling when you eat chocolate . Caffeine, which is found in cocoa, increases dopamine and reduces drowsiness by blocking the neurotransmitter adenosine. Cocoa also contains theobromine. This stimulant increases dopamine and can reduce stress like opioids do. Caffeine and theobromine are mainly found in dark chocolate. Milk chocolate and white chocolate contain more sugars on average.
There are also some psychological factors that can contribute to chocolate addiction, according to psychologist David Benton. Some people develop a habit of overeating in response to negative emotions, such as sadness, anger and frustration. A food addiction can also develop when chocolate is used to provide comfort and relief during times of anxiety, stress or boredom. In addition, some people have a genetic predisposition to addiction . For example, they may react more strongly to the effects of a piece of chocolate, which can lead to tolerance and dependence.
Ok we'll stop here for a moment, I assume we've bored most of you by now. For those who are really interested, or those who think, shit I have that too, can find more information via the following link: Chocolate addiction: Causes, consequences and prevention . In our country chocolate is simply delicious and many people buy it as a snack. And because almost everyone likes it, sales are and remain constant and high. This ensures that the product is not very sensitive to crises and always provides a steady profit.
This is however a bit shaky at the moment. Why? Cocoa is simply very expensive, and therefore the raw materials are expensive that the chocolate producers have to pay for. See below the graph of Cocoa.
This also puts pressure on the earnings of the companies. And as usual, the market exaggerates this by lowering the prices of these types of shares. This is also the case with the company we bought. In the newsletter that members of IA-pro can read, we explain why we think that now is a good time to buy this share. As with any addiction, it does not matter what the price of the product is, people will buy it anyway. We have tried to find a correlation between the cocoa price and shares that produce chocolate products. There is some correlation, but not enough to show you this. However, we think that if the price of cocoa were to drop to normal levels, the margin of the company's products would skyrocket. This is because they have now started to slowly pass this on to the customer, of course.
Do we buy every company in this sector? No, certainly not, this is a renowned company, which has been increasing its dividend for years. The dividend is not as high as with other shares in our portfolio, but if we buy on the dip, like now, the return on the purchase will increase over the years. These types of shares should become the cornerstone of our portfolio. Of course, the share must continue to prove itself and we must monitor this.
Gold and Silver
Let's start with a pun. We don't make chocolate of this anymore. Of gold and silver themselves we do. Gold regularly hits an all-time high and silver is on the rise. See the image of gold below.
Gold has broken out, as we indicated in previous articles. Silver has also definitely broken out (we will not show you a separate image here, but believe us on our blue eyes). However, we cannot make chocolate of the gold and silver shares. They do absolutely nothing, the mines really have to show profits with these prices. However, investors leave the sector as dead. This will change one day, that is why we remain invested. But we are increasingly inclined to do this through a fund because time is getting too long. There are always issues with mining. An example is the problems in Congo, this has an effect on a share in the portfolio (not in gold but another metal, but it is the example). Another example is a company that only produces gold and does not dig the stuff itself. We wanted to make this our pride and label it as a good company, now they are selling part of the shares to another company below the market price and more or less leaving us retail investors out in the cold. This happens often, and the upward trend, which we need so badly, is delayed for too long. As a result, sentiment continues to decline and companies make somersaults. As said, we will remain in the sector, but will increasingly play it via a fund, should this last longer. In addition, we will always hold some individual shares to maintain leverage on the market.
Another means that we personally use is to sell physical gold and silver, and put this in the fund with mining shares. However, we do not show this on the site because we have not included this in the portfolio. We think that there will come a day when we can make chocolate of the valuation of the gold and silver mines. Especially of silver, this is increasingly becoming an industrial material. Mountains of silver are needed for the production of solar cells.
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can be accessed via our website.
Portfolio update:
The income portfolio.
Addictive stocks: Peace is returning to this portfolio. Even the Chinese tech stocks are happily rising. While their American brothers are falling. This is exactly what we expected, and we believe this trend will continue, although not always clearly visible. Furthermore, this article is of course an update and asset from another angle of this sector.
Metal Mining Stocks: Gold and Silver rose again this week, the mining sector hardly reacts to this, so it remains quiet on the other side. See our commentary in this newsletter.
Oil and natural gas stocks. This week we fell a bit again. The Trump effect, so to speak. Here too we are going to adjust the portfolio a bit. We will write about this in the coming months.
Coal stocks. Prices seem to be stabilizing. It will probably take a while. We'll leave the portfolio alone for a while.
The speculative portfolio:
Precious metals. Stocks in this sector are doing absolutely nothing despite many records in the gold price. This remains truly unimaginable to us, patience is really needed here. We are increasingly transforming into a fund-like structure, see commentary in this article.
Base metals. Copper has become increasingly attractive lately. However, we believe we are sufficiently invested in the large mining companies. We are still looking for a pure copper producer with a lot of potential. The annoying thing is that there are so many opportunities in the raw materials sector at the moment that it is difficult to choose. Furthermore, we do not think that 2025 will be the year for copper. We think that this will play out after 2026. We are waiting for a big dip in copper stocks and hope to have enough money to enter the sector. So nothing has changed in our view since last week.
Oil and natural gas. We are going to adjust this portfolio a little bit in the future by separating the wheat from the chaff.
Crypto Corner: If you want to see which cryptos we have, you can see it here: crypto corner . The cryptos are consolidating a bit in price. We'll wait and see, maybe Trump wasn't such a good move here after all.
The trading portfolio. We are positive again. Having said that, we need to work hard to improve our performance here.
Motto remains: Hold on a little longer and buy in 2025 when there is a nice dip in commodity stocks.