Excuse the lapse of writing, particularly during such an eventful day as yesterday. A family member realized some damage to their house from the wind storms that struck Wednesday; missing shingles, broken trees, some little things like that…and I said I’d help them out.

Today, I’m rather tired and, since I forgot to apply sunscreen, baked like a manicotti.

My outlook on equities remains cautionary. I have a large cash position and ample shorts with SCO and EUO that give me, I feel, a 50/50 cash/invested stance. My longs are AEC, CLP, CCJ, BAS, RGR and silver.

AEC was hammered yesterday, one of the top losers in the market. They announced another secondary, which they’re using to get their debt lower. AEC executives I believe are very concerned about the ability of interest rates to hold. They have been for over a year now. And not just for interest rates from treasury yields, but also there have been subtle drops of fear about what would happen if a push to reform Freddie and Fannie upended the new loan origination process. So possibly expect more dilution. But, earnings are set to improve from the move, FFO remains strong, and as long as they keep pushing the business towards expanding operations (California is their big push at the moment), I will be willing to stomach some stock sales.

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Uranium prices continue to get compressed towards $0, as a few week hiatus of the blood was met this morning with the first real print in weeks – and it was an ugly one.

My impression is that the uranium market has been dead for months now, while the major players of nuclear utilities and uranium cake producers play a game of chicken with one another. And unfortunately, because nuclear reactors can run so long without refueling, this game can go for a long, long time.

I’ll take a moment to remind you of advice I’ve given before; every now and again it needs to be repeated.

Stay out of the small uranium miners.

Just because I like CCJ does NOT mean I like CCJ’s half-starved siblings. CCJ has a war chest and controls 20%+ of the market. CCJ’s competition sometimes isn’t even producing uranium. If you’re not playing the waiting game with a billion dollar budget, at minimum, I hate to tell you this pal…but you’re prey.

I’m in CCJ from the onset because I know how this ends; countries are not going to diversify away from nuclear power. That would be stupid. However, that doesn’t mean Japan wouldn’t like very much to see its public utilities able to load up on fuel contracts at dirt cheap prices. Or that every other reactor globally wouldn’t like to devour Japan’s reactor fuel should they be forced to market.

In the meanwhile, without a price recovery, CCJ’s stock is going to be horrible. $13 is not out of the question. But they’ll survive, and if you think they have pricing leverage at 20% market share, well…it’s only going to get more ridiculous.

I will buy my next batch of $CCJ if it hits $15.

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I am becoming increasingly cautious as this rally is now sustained on the backs of defunct maritime shippers, the airline industry, and pharmaceuticals. Most of this trash would never be permitted to find its way into my holdings.

As summer sets in, the theme will settle on a single discord: disappointment.

The other day, I had a family gathering about 100 miles away. Along the trip, I counted almost 300 acres of land for sale at “NEW LOWER PRICES”. This is what I saw along my way; I didn’t go out looking.

There is a shadow inventory overhanging this market, and the chord that is holding it up is made of the ability of an aging Baby Boomer generation to tolerate pain and discomfort – two things which that group of whining malcontents has never been particularly prone to enduring.

And Europe continues to circle the drain in a slow bleed. You can stop looking for the inflection point, where suddenly everything starts to become increasingly easier and growth picks up. Thanks to binging on positive carry trades for two decades the system has been made recalcitrant and calcified. The arteries are hardened and strain for blood flow.

Thanks to my maneuvers in the Fall, I’m up 21% since November. Yet, more than half of this is contained in just two positions forcing higher by large margins – CCJ and BAS. It could all vanish in a hurry.

This is why I pushed to raise 30% cash recently, although my exposure to CCJ and BAS remains extreme. I have faith in these two positions; they will continue to benefit and outperform remarkably over the next few years. But the swings will be gut churning and disruptive.

Factoring in EUO, my net artificial cash position is closer to 40%. If we crater, EUO is going to spike (more than it has been). I’m also treating BXG like a cash position, as there is an all cash offer (even though I’m hoping/expecting the deal to fall through). That puts me at ~45% cash.

I’m almost ready for the fireworks to get started.

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Alright, so the instant I switched over from “merely rapaciously expectant” to “full blown, mind numbingly jubilant”, the market turned on a dime and started punching participants in the face. That should have been clear before I did it. It always happens like that.

So on behalf of everyone whose kids can’t attend college now, I’d like to say, “I’m sorry.”

In times like this, it can always be difficult to answer that most important of questions. No not, “am I properly managing risk.” I’m talking about the even more important inquiry…”Whose fault is this?”

Now, there are several ways you could play this. Personally, I’ve decided to blame it on people using trailing stops. Dicks…littering their homes with half eaten burgers strewn around in McDonald’s bags all over the floor…all while smoking and ashing right on top of them…just begging to burn their house down…

There, you see how I did that? Make sure you ramble a little and trial off at intervals, to really get the “I’m-slightly-unhinged-talking-almost-to-myself” effect.

At any rate, the markets are getting lit up, and all is despair. If you’ve been living the Pisani lifestyle, I’m afraid you’ll be made to eat your hat by a short seller, who will watch you doing it while flinging small handfuls of sand in your eyes. It hurts, I understand. You have my sympathy.

Thankfully, I had the foresight to sell into the strength as opposed to throwing weight on the downdraft and cutting myself down by 5%+ all in one go.

My anticipation, for the moment, is that we will finish this selloff quickly and then surge higher.

I made a (now obviously) misguided purchase of AGQ a few days ago, but other than that I’ve been very good about holding that cash and keeping my hands off it. EUO, my hedge, is running, as this selloff seems to be driven as much by dollar strength as anything else.

The REITs are holding up decently well; AEC and CLP having nothing but cash and sterling operations.

BAS is not so fortunate.

If you owned BAS and didn’t know this quarter was going to be hard: please dispatch yourself in a grueling fashion. That was the most obvious loss in the history of loss-taking. Still BAS is way up from last year and I will consider adding on dips.

CCJ got hit yesterday as well, and RGR seems to be collapsing predominantly on profit taking. Both are buys; both will see much higher prices.

Finally, silver. Silver is the butt of jokes being told on Twitter; that place where everybody sees everything coming and makes 500% annually. Well, the jokes going to be on all of you. Silver is going to explode higher when you least expect it. I remember the circus at $15 /ounce. How it was going single digits. Then it lit you up.

I remember when it went from $50 to $25, and the same people were guffawing how it was going back to $15. Then it lit you up again.

Now it’s off to below $30 (meanwhile the Fed is dropping money like it’s worthless), and the same folks are howling that it’s all done for.

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Lording from the 9th floor, I can see men and women walk by, as if ants, scattering across the ground below. There is absolutely nothing that can stop me now. I’m high on this bull market, and cast nothing but aspersions from my window.

It’s a dreary day, but I don’t care.

CCJ is breaking higher. RGR is breaking higher. BAS is breaking higher. God, basically everything I own is higher.

Except for AGQ; that is lower. But I just can’t care. Too many gains are overloading my system. I am experiencing pure ecstasy here. It’s a party, and bears aren’t invited. Keep your crying pessimism to yourself – thank you very much.

The 9th floor offers no condolences to you for missing out on the spectacular fun. Our streamers are flying higher, our windows are spotless, and we’ve got money to make.

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Alright, so today was very nasty for me. RGR, CCJ, and BAS all cramped up, and are busy drowning in the pool. I can guess why CCJ is having trouble – their earnings sucked wind. But RGR and BAS are something of an enigma. RGR has no news pushin git, and the only thing that happened to BAS was it caught a downgrade from some analyst.

Of course, all three names are up so much in the last month it could just be some profit taking. CCJ is pushing back below those magically colored lines, which I have learned is the ultimate arbiter of reality. Ergo, it must be in serious trouble…

Anyway, throw in the price of silver with those two and this was a bad day. The first bad day I’ve had since November or October.

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