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The gold and silver and even platinum plays have been taking off with very strong relative strength these past weeks, even in the teeth of the Goldman Doom on Friday.   Now that it looks like Greece is going to get bailed out to the tune of $150 bn drachmas, or cowchips, or whatever they’re using for currency in Europe these days, I would bet dollars to doughnuts we’ll have a sell the news dollar reversal here soon, which will mean even more money flowing into the precious metal bull in the short term.

But we’ll save that for another day… you’ve plenty of names to consider from last week, and we’ve got other hard asset plays to speak of… particularly those in the Corn Belt, or who create notches therein…

Specifically I’m speaking about our old friend Mr. Anderson: The Andersons, Inc. [[ANDE]] , who has skyrocketed recently to new 52 week highs, only to be brought back down to the top of the breakout area on Friday:

You can see there are three bars of support in the above chart, one of which we rest on as of Friday’s close.   I feel more comfortable with a pullback to the next (middle) level at $35, and that’s where I’ll be adding to this Jacksonian beauty.  

I think we should be keeping our eye on the other ags as well, and while I’m not going to post the ugly chart of Monsanto Company [[MON]] I will tell you that I added another 1k shares to my already large horde at $63-ish on Friday.   As I’ve mentioned before… like Royal Gold, Inc. [[RGLD]] ,  Monsanto is a “set it and forget it” type of long term hold, and if I can find it in the low 60’s like this, I’m going to be a buyers for sure.

In other news, I did attend the somewhat rainy Derby (but was under cover, thank the horsey gods) and had a much better day than the Oaks, nailing an exacta box bet on the Derby itself, and coming away with quite a bit of cash, considering how pikerish my bets remain.   Derby is defiinitely something you’ll want to consider if you are a “bucket list” kind of guy/gal.    For what it’s worth, I’ve never NOT had a great time, no matter the weather.

My very best to you all.

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Everything’s breaking gizzards these days except [[TLT]] , so why not get exceptionally “outre”  in your picking and “dabble in the exotics” as they say down in Derby Land? 

By “exotics” I don’t mean trifectas and daily doubles, but rather palladium and land banks in the form of [[PAL]] and The St. Joe Company [[JOE]] , respectively.

Truthfully, these aren’t exotic at all, and are ony further reflection of the deranged printing press inclinations of Sir Ben of Bern-yankee.  Why do you fight the Fed?  Why do you do it?  Rather, you should be buying palladium dogs like Stillwater Mining Company [[SWC]] and investing in Florida real estate that won’t be developed until the Baby Boomers are all safely in their crypts.

No worries, they are breaking out, and that’s all that matters in the end, no?  Come see [[PAL]] and then Joey.

 

Then there’s Mr. The St. Joe Company [[JOE]] , who’s really punched the number after breaking out of that long term downtrend line I pointed out a few weeks back.  How may of you took advantage?   Propitious that this is the season of Doubting Thomas, no?  

Here’s the line — “hard assets are moving again,” because the currency is dropping out of sight.   If [[UUP]] continues to drop, these are two more weapons for your bag.    Keep them secret, keep them safe.

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PS — Don’t forget about Cree, Inc. [[CREE]] and Veeco Instruments Inc. [[VECO]] even though I sold some of my exposure in these the other day.   These are “put away for the long term” stocks (especially CREE, which is best in class).  Same goes for recently beaten upon Monsanto Company [[MON]] .    Take this hammering in stride and nibble vociferously.  Long term, there’s no one who can match their IP assets.

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Note, upper left corner — “The Perfect Sammich”
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To the chagrin of Bears and cash horders everywhere, the unemployment numbers were magically re-arranged in unicorn land to gallop forth and match the pixie-dust retail fabulations we got yesterday.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to take this moment to thank The Gap Inc. [[GPS]] for saving America. It’s quite obvious that all those laid off investment bankers and advertising execs are putting their latest model Research In Motion Limited (USA) [[RIMM]] and Apple Inc. [[AAPL]] communications devices to work via banana-skin-tight tee shirt sizing down at the Mall of America.

Let’s face it, late stage consumer meltdown (“don’t get mad, go shopping!”) is the only logical answer to our employment resurgance (only down 35,000 jobs this month, President Obama, we thank thee!)– Coo coo coo joo, Urban Outfitters, a nation turns it’s plastic cards to you… hoo, hoo, hoo.

Hoo, hoo, hoo. Now, get back to folding!

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We didn’t get our [[HUI]] touch of $415 yesterday, and that annoyed me, but only temporarily. I think we may get just enough dollar strenth today (DXY rose to $80.89 this morning on the good news that the mall employee to mall attendee ratio was flattening). Same goes for Allied Nevada Gold Corp. [[ANV]] which got as low as $14.33, but did not fill Monday’s gap at $14.24.

I’d keep my PM buys in there at those levels, as I think those gaps want to be filled. Silver Wheaton Corp. (USA) [[SLW]] is a different story, as it fell quite a bit yesterday on typical pre-employment number chicanery trading. I would be buying it right now, as I think yesterday’s washout was a last wriggle before it heads back to the recent highs in the high $17 area.

All that said, I expect to be lightening up on some of my option plays, perhaps as soon as early next week, as I think we’re due for a pullback after fighting the overly bearish for the last week or so. As they pile in, we shall pile out — if only temporarily — from our higher risk positions. That would include my [[GDX]] and Monsanto Company [[MON]] calls, not to mention the previously discussed Silver Wheaton Corp. (USA) [[SLW]] , though north of $16.00 for that last.

Expect the dollar to begin to weaken here (watch [[UUP]] with DXY), after absorbing some of the glow of cheap brandy acclaim from today’s numbers. I still like [[TBT]] , however, as I think the treasury markets will recess in unison with their underlying currency. Chickens & eggs and all that.

Best to you all, and enjoy your smelter sammiches (sic).
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Avast Ye Steam-punk Scalawags!
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Looks like the bewigged and wedge-shoed scarlet coats of the Federal Admiralty have thrown down their first frilly gauntlet and taken a shot across our portside bow last evening with a cannon-load of “hot grape” called “quarter point discount rate increase,” in the less civilized quarters of New Orleans and other pirate dens.

Powdered pooftahs that they are, they are already begging our mercy come the morn as we swing our starboard cannon about to rake their pommy sides amid-ships.    Too late for them, and theirs, I’m afraid, as there’s gold in those Admiralty cargo holds and we mean to have it.

Let’s not get all a-sweat and a-lathered, me scurvy dogs.   The thesis has not changed and certainly the Fed is not going to take the “brave man’s step” of setting the Caribbean afire with rum-soaked English scrip whilst our Parliament (of Whores) continues to spend like grog-stupefied wainwrights on barrel-selling day.    No, maties, they seek to confound us with this Mary-move of callow authority.   No man can call his actions bold while pleading apology in the next breath!  

If anything, said grape-shot toss was mere subtrafuge to cover for additional scrip production in yonder Admiralty’s subterranean printing gaols!  What will occupy the Admiralty’s cargo holds for years — baser and baser scrip — will be what ensures our golden Treasures worth! 

So be not a-feared but rather emboldened by the tightness of Rear Admiral Bernanke’s wedgies, and the sagging of his pompadour.  Now is the time to press the hot cutlass to their throats and let roar with musket, grape and cannon.   The battle is near-won, me swabbies.   Let us not then quail at the size of the Admiralty’s frigates, but rather laugh at their frailty — they are made of paper, lads!

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This day I shall be indulging in all me favourites, but  most especially those in the silver Escudo doubloons, for the price of bonnie silver is racing back up even faster than that of gold.    To that end I shall be indulging in me favourite miners, Silver Wheaton Corp. (USA) [[SLW]] , [[EXK]] , [[SVM]] , [[PAAS]] and maybe even the worm-bitten dogs [[CDE]] and Hecla Mining Company [[HL]] .   [[AGQ]] is only for the traders, but it may boom off of any pullback here.

Don’t forget me favourite golds either, which number three — Allied Nevada Gold Corp. [[ANV]] , Eldorado Gold Corporation (USA) [[EGO]] and Royal Gold, Inc. [[RGLD]] .   Some dogs that may be opportunities thanks to yesterday’s scare off  could be New Gold Inc. (USA) [[NGD]] , Exeter Resource Corp. [[XRA]] , NovaGold Resources Inc. (USA) [[NG]] and Northgate Minerals Corporation (USA) [[NXG]] , along with Rubicon Minerals Corp. (USA) [[RBY]] and even [[BAA]] .  Of course [[GDX]] is a great purchase if you want a catch all.

I also think the Ag side will continue to stay hot, so any weakness in Monsanto Company [[MON]] , The Andersons, Inc. [[ANDE]] , The Mosaic Company [[MOS]] , and Potash Corp./Saskatchewan (USA) [[POT]] should be seen as an opportunity.  I will likely have more to say on this front.   

Many of you may have seen I chose Cree, Inc. [[CREE]] as my March Madness pick (SLW is too volatile).   I like it and Veeco Instruments Inc. [[VECO]] as my two hottest tech names for the intermediate to long term (the only way I play).  

Best to you all, my hearties, and if anything today — WATCH SILVER — something seems to be “up.”

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The Once and Future Gold Standard?
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Some quick notes on direction…

Despite the imprecations of some, this is wholly and incontrovertibly a dollar-dependent market.   Wither the dollar, there goeth the market.   Your bombastic arguments may be amusing, but the Santa Gods only chuckle when you laud “progress” and “economic viability” like some kind of Parallel Universe Bizarro Karl Denninger.

(Slap! Slap! Slap! Slappity-Slap!)  Get serious, at once!  

 This market is riding a giant tsunami of Bernanke dinero and that’s why it’s been going up like a drunk clown in a circus dirigible.   But it looks like Benny’s press machines are getting a rest, ovah heah.   Or maybe it’s just that the rest of the world’s craptastic fiat currencies need a chance to catch up.   In any case, the dollar is back above it’s 50-day EMA:

I think it’s very likely we could see the dollar rebound all the way to its 200-day moving average (between $79-$80) before it turns once again like a wounded albatross and heads for the longer term lows in the $71 range.

As for our friend Baby [[HUI]] , I mentioned the other day that on Wednesday last week it came within $3 of it’s old highs from March of 2008 ($519.68).   That $516.16 high marked the top, however, and we’ve quickly sold down since then to close today at $461.19 — a $55 dollar move in 5 days of trading.   

If the stock market is sensitive to the dollar, then the gold miner market is even more so.   That’s why I think that Baby $HUI has got some more work to do here.   Here are my targets: 

Do I think the 61.8% fib  (@ $378) is also in play?   You bet your sweet bippy, Grandmaw.  Verily, I think the move down here is going to be somewhat soul-crushing, and I think the miners may feel the worst of it.   I bot some more SPY puts ($110’s again) and now my stash stands at 250 contracts, with a number more of sold calls in United Parcel Service, Inc. [[UPS]] . Monsanto Company [[MON]] and Silver Wheaton Corp. (USA) [[SLW]] .

But the bull is not over, make no mistake.  So bide your time wisely, here, and keep your wallet hand loose and well manicured as you get ready for the next swing. 

That is all, save for my final admonition about the foolishness of your not yet becoming a member of the Trading Hive Mind in The PPT.   What gives?  Don’t you like money?

Spock out.

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The Gentle Artisan Hard at Work at His Craft

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I know I don’t usually do these “day in the life” blog posts, but I figured I owed you all an explanation of why I wasn’t blogging like the wind today, promoting the most excellent “on fiah” aspects of The PPT, and generally contributing to the greater wisdom of iBC.com…

Or at least letting some of the Gore defenders have it on that previous posting.  Seriously people, focus like a laser here… loving one’s children and one’s environment and taking it hard to the global authoritarian hypocrites who attempt to manipulate those values for power and profit ends are not mutually exclusive concepts…. sheesh.  

But we’ll continue that discussion at a later date.   First,  my day in hell…

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It actually started last night whilst I was clutching my tooth brush betwixt my teeth whilst simultaneously helping the wee one with some pajama misalignment he had orchestrated.   A faint “click” in the front of my mouth told me something was wrong, and sure enough, one of two crowns I’d had placed on my rabbit chompers after a tragic rugby-game collision-excision had somehow broken loose from it’s mooring, leaving me with a gap in my face that had me looking like an extra on Deliverance, sans classy banjo and bowl haircut.

Not exactly the “captain of industry” look I wanted to work for my Monday morning meeting, however.

 Luckily, my extremely attactive and efficient –if retardedly expensive —Lady Dentist was able fit me into her earliest slot at 7:30 am this morning.  I figured I’d be in and out with a repair before market open.   I thought horribly wrong.

After being ushered into her warmly lit and well appointed rooms, I was quickly and efficiently seated, x-rayed (twice) and tucked in with a descending flat screen and cosy neck pillow rigging by her equally comely Eastern European dental assistant, while I awaited the return of Lady Dentifrice, Lip-Glossed Queen of the latte-set tooth crowd.

She returned all frowny faced, my vexxing x-rays clutched against her charcoal gray cashmere-sweatered bosom, and a gleam of concern nesting behind her au currant steel framed specs.   The news was bad, and I won’t bore you with it, but it did not come out of the “bloodless, pain-free and inexpensive” box from which I’d pulled so many previous procedures in my incredibly lucky 40 year dental track-record.    No this one started with minor oral surgery and ended with expensive cosmetic sturm and drang.

Luckily, she felt she could get most of it done today, and in about two or so hours.   Big deal,  I thought, so I have to watch Kudlow with that weird haircut and Erin suck up to Dubai money men for two more hours… I’ll live…

Two quarts of lidocaine and probably a good pint and a half of my blood later, it was nearing two o’clock and my back was beggining to spasm on me.   While my sturdy and still impeccably lip-glossed Lady Dentite had managed to take care of all the complicated prepping, modeling, whittling, etc., that came with fixing not one, but two of my damaged teeth (turns out the second one was showing similar fractious inclinations, so…), she still had not managed to extricate the last bit of “root” from aforesaid canal…

And it wasn’t for want of trying, either, let me tell you.   The woman has forearms like coiled springs of moly-carbon steel.   But I can only assume she was getting tired of the jets of arterial blood just missing her custom-cut snow white Armani lab coat, because she finally sent me to the oral surgeon to have the final piece removed.

At 2:15 today I drove approximately 1.5 miles to another dentist/M.D. office in the same neighborhood, but I might as well have been driving to the gates of hell.   As warm and inviting as my dentist’s offices were, these new rooms were like something out of a fifties-era Raymond Burr sci-fi movie.   The front office ladies were plump and over-makeuped, and their smiles!… Their smiles put the chill of the winter grave in me…

After filling out five(!) pages of insurance and disclaimer/disclosure errata, I was ushered into the pre-Roe v. Wade clincian’s “operating room” which looked nothing like the warm and modern offices from which I’d just travelled, and really not un-like a not so recently outfitted janitor’s closet.  

The tools of my imminent torture were laid out on a wooden bench that looked like it had been stolen from Jacob Marley.   They were wrapped in sterilized plastic, but they were no disposables… no, quite the opposite.   I was pretty sure that those ratchets, blades and sutures had seen as many summers as I had — if not more.   The drill was brass — I shit you not– as was the suction vacuum!  It was like something out of a steam-punk graphic novel.

At this point, I’m looking around for an escape route out of there, but I have another problem — my anaesthesia from the long hours previous had begun to wear off and the hole in my head was beginning to throb.   I flagged down a passing nurse and she nodded knowingly — “Can you take Vicoden okay?” she asked me. 

I’m like (WTF?) to myself, but then I realize she’s only getting my pain prescription ready for after the coming ordeal, and I make it clear, I need to be “re-Lido’d” post-haste.  (By this time, around 3 pm, I’ve got all the  lingo down cold.)   She ambles off to find the doctor.  

He finally comes in about fifteen minutes later (luckily, I’d brought a book, my friends at CNBC were NOT an option at this shoppe), and he’s lanky and athletic, wearing scrubs that had seen better days.   You ever have that feeling when you first meet someone who’s supposed to be a doctor and the first thing that pops into your head — unbidden — is “Is this guy really a doctor?”   That was my first impression.   

He looks at my x-rays (yes they had to take a third “full header” this time) and looks over at me and says “Number nine… well, you know that’s gonna come out right?”   I think I gulped in assent, because he proceeded to whip out another steam punk-device, a Jules Verne-looking plunger with about a four inch needle on the end of it.   The man could’ve started knitting with this thing it was so big.   He proceeds to do the “shake the lip” needle insertion thing my Dad’s dentist (who I was sentenced to as a kid) did 35 years ago.  

So far so good.   The old half gallon of numb-juice from the previous episode in what in contrast was clearly Ellisium held fast and I only felt about a quarter of the four inch spike he was inserting.   Then he threw me for a loop and said — sorry, we need to get the palette, too.  Gulping again, and praying to the Anaesthesia gods that my personal dentite had sufficiently benumbed the roof of my mouth as well I took a sharp intake of air and he went in…

No dice,  I thought, as I felt him trying to drive that instrument of Vulcan into my nasal cavity from below.   Yipe! I said… “Sorry” he said — very sympathetically, considering the circumstances.   His assistant grinned stoically.  Grimaced, really.    15 more minutes went by as they waited for all this new juice to “settle.”   I began to worry it would start wearing off, when he finally reappeared, smocked out and read for action…

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You know what… I am going to end this here, rather than get into the medieval-on-my-ass scene that followed.   I just realized I’m probably making quite a few of you ill with all this,  and it’s getting late and my Vikes are wearing off again…  Let it comfort your heart to know it all came out well in the end, and I’m halfway done with this “simple fix.”

Salud.

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On market stuff, nothing of major surprise today.  Well, Monsanto Company [[MON]] was a bit of a pleasant surprise, as was the continual holding of the PM markets in green territory.   I still think it’s a mirage however, and my “tell” stock United Parcel Service, Inc. [[UPS]] looks like it’s going to take Christmas break early.

Have cash on hand.   Pullback coming.   Best to you.

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