Have a quick look at the graph on this site. I haven’t audited any of the numbers, but if the author has done his homework, it fortells fairly clearly what oil longs have to expect.

For the moment, all of my short exposure is being pesteringly resilient; most probably because I am counting on those positions to even out my account. So of course, oil is holding up here, the euro is trying to push higher, and TSLA recovered a $3 move.

There’s no reason for any of those things other than that they hurt Cain Hammond Thaler. The market is trying to harm me, because that is the only consolation anyone in these positions will ultimately have…if they can shake me out.

But I have the patience of sheet rock. You will not win.

Current positions by size (greatest to least)

Cash – 27%
CCJ – 18%
CLP – 8%
AEC – 8%
SCO – 8%
EUO – 8%
Silver – 8%
BAS – 7%
RGR – 7%
January 2014 TSLA 35 Puts – 1-2%

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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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There is quite an enigma going on here in the silver market. The price is around $23 an ounce, yet when I go out looking for actual silver to buy, funny enough…there isn’t any available. If you can find it, it was going for $28 minimum a few days ago.

Would someone care to clue me in on the secret here?

I’ve got two theories myself, one of which must triumph over the other:

1) Silver demand is enormous, and pricing has been artificially pushed way too low, probably through the paper markets. If you sell, you’re a sucker, because the well connected are front running the blood (they probably helped make) to rob you in broad daylight. More importantly, small time players are not invited to buy here – You’d better be dropping $10K allotments or piss off.

2) PM brokers are in deep. They ventured outside of the normal safety of the bid/ask spread, taking on larger than life long positions in a way that would make Jon Corzine blush, and now that pricing has collapsed they can’t afford to sell at the lower pricing, so they’re waiting out praying some put orders come along the line while yanking their own inventory off the market.

Either one of these could explain why, just a few months ago, I could literally shower myself with silver bullion, but now can’t find anything smaller than 100 ounce bars.

A healthy silver market should have lots of smaller denominations available for purchase. The lack of all small ounces for sale seems relevant. A large move will be coming, and I’m betting either silver prices make a total recovery, or you’re going to see a lot of these silver and gold prop shops that sprung up everywhere since 2009 get incinerated.

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Would someone care to explain how a guy who’s sitting on 35% cash, short oil and the euro, can possibly be getting torched to the tune of 3% in one day?

I’ll tell you how. Silver. That’s how.

“EEEUUUGHGHH-BBBBLEEEEBLLUUUGH”

That’s the sound I just made; I encourage you to tap into its phonetic discourse and let it reverberate throughout your physical space.

How the hell is physical silver off 10%?? Good God, I mean, I understand why gold could bust a move like that, but silver? How many speculators were in the silver market? Clearly more than I thought.

The basic theme here is: own stuff, get beaten.

My salvation is that silver cannot possibly have 10% implosions for months on end (crosses self). It just has to find a bottom – even if that bottom is at $20, the pain will stop.

A very disappointing Spring is upon us folks, just like I warned you all it would be. That being said, I certainly didn’t expect I’d be a casualty.

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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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Okay, I had to step in to the silver market today, taking a leveraged ETF play with AGQ.

I’ve owned silver, more or less continuously, since 2009 – in the physical form.

But every now and again I also leverage up the play with moves in the financial products. Now is just one such time.

Silver is a component of my 9th floor. I’ve used it in the limestone stucca that adorns my walls. I used it in the mortar to build the very foundation of the room itself. It’s a staple, because it is so undervalued, I can off the back of my hand say “silver is undervalued” at any time of the day, and probably be right.

I got into AGQ for $41.77. This is just for a trade.

The Fed is printing another trillion dollars, and the debt crises of the world are nowhere near the halfway mark yet.

Mull that over, why don’t you…

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