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The 1,350 to $1,400 area is going to be important here.   We banged against $1,400 a couple of times over the past two days and were not able to surpass it until this  early this morning, when we had a quick break and then a jet to over $1,420.  There was a lot of selling into that break, and so a retest of $1,400 will be increasingly important to see if this will be a failed bear flag or an actual recovery from the recent oversold condition. 

We are as of this writing, trading at $1,407.

There is a possibility that we could snap back extremely hard on this recent down-plunge.  There are stories all over the internet about large physical purchasing going on.  This could be anecdotal (well, it IS anecdotal), or it could reflect the difference between the paper and physical markets.   If the last couple of days action was a desperate move to combat an imminent physical delivery problem (as some have speculated), we could see a torching of the shorts like none have encountered since early 2009.   Stay vigilant and nimble here.

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Everything’s relative, I guess, including pain.  Today’s revisit to the recent lows (and no, we’re not there yet) is not as painful as, say — a bloody compound tibial fracture jutting messily out of one’s shin.  That said, it sure has been a frustrating six months, hasn’t it?   And yet, if you look at all the major charts, it looks like at this late point in the cycle, the worst we are going to get is a revisit to the end of February lows, which — not insignificantly– were at the 200-week exponential moving averages for most gold and silver stocks.  Royal Gold (RGLD) is still my favorite here, but you’d have to be crazy not to take advantage of the yielding plays available through NEM, AEM, and even ABX — and those are large caps you’d never see me recommending in a “normal” market.

But this isn’t normal.  There’s a concerted, global (read Big 8) effort to devalue currencies — and therefore reprice debt — the world over.  The only way those central banks can get away with this kind of routine, and save their debauched systems, is to get it done under cover of a “deflationary” scenario.  The easiest path to that is to keep their foot on the less liquid large commodity and precious metal markets.   This whole American Earl Revolution is a God-send to the central bankers, because it’s bringing supply on line in a period of global currency inflation.  Ask yourself why oil prices have remained so stubbornly high, however, despite the onlining of so much new supply in the world’s greatest petroleum consumer.

How much longer can this kind of thing go on? Until the little guy cries “uncle” as loud as Soc Gen just did?  Given that I was expecting a retest, and the large volume bars we saw at the late February lows, I am thinking this week and maybe the next will be the final washout.  I’m still holding tight to my remaining cash, however.  Like in late February of 2009, I don’t expect these prices to hang around for very long once the next cycle takes flight.   That said, I think there will be ample time to take part once the bull trend resumes.

Best to you all, and Go Cards!

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PS — this retrace is also an excellent time to buy some physical, if you’ve been holding off, including 100 oz silver bars and nice liquid gold coins like Maple Leafs or Eagles.
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Get ye some vampire gold!

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Time and time again, I’ve stood here and recounted the reasons why I stay away from the large cap gold miners like AEM, ABX, NEM and even GG (though I do own a little of this one from the Wheaton Gold days).    Sure, these are all fine old girls, but they often end up on the wrong side of an acquisition play which then ends up trashing their stock price in a volatile gold market.

That means these big hulks are generally buyers, for the most part, as their management team has little to do but acquire more assets in order to expand away from relatively diversified and well known properties.  They need new territories, fresh blood, new meat; and the highest percentage way to continue drilling on profitable properties is to acquire them from juniors who have done the sweat work to seek them out.

Well, it seems my lonely EGO has gotten all egotistical on me and wants to be a “playah” like the big boys.  No more holding it’s hand out as trade bait for the majors, Eldorado Gold is officially leaving the middle-market gold mining community in its dust and going gold speculating in Turkey, Greece and Romania.  

Yes, you got that right.   They’re offering $2.5 bn of their own stock in order to buy a company (European Goldfields) that is looking for gold in respectively, the next Islamofascist hot spot, the First Beggar of Europe, and oh yeah, a place known for producing pickpocketing gymnasts with facial hair and night dwelling blood suckers without.

That should work out well, fellahs.   Probably very little nationalization risk you’ve paid for there….

In any case, these M&A purges usually overdo themselves, so my beaten down EGO is probably a good pickup here tomorrow morning after what I expect will be a final washout.   There’s support at $12, but I’m not sure we’ll get that far.  Nevertheless,  I’ll place my bets in that area, hoping to catch a bounce.

Oh, and I think everything else will bounce as well.  Most especially earl and gold.  So tomorrow, if I get my flush, I’m going to throw down for some NUGT and for some ERX.

Don’t worry, my stops will be tight.   I’m not a masochist, after all.

Best to you all.

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There’s room for Every-frickin’-body!
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It’s quite likely I’ll be busy today, so I wanted to throw a couple of brontosaurus burgers out there for your barbecuing pleasure in case things get all jiggy like yesterday.

‘Cause, make no mistake, we are entering into primo deal season here, if all of my bidness (sic) radar array are working in proper function.  My group is busier than a one-armed Palo Alto Perma-Bear at a self-congratulatory back-patting contest, and if the middle markets are moving, then I’m going bet the big boys have more cooking than just Uncle Warren’s Train Set purchase yesterday.

For one example, look for deals in the edumacation business, for one thing — companies like Apollo Group, Inc. [[APOL]] and DeVry Inc. [[DV]] and Career Education Corp. [[CECO]] have all been beneficiaries of a sea change in education delivery in the last decade or so.  

However, I think the paradigms are going to change even more drastically going forward.  I am getting this intuition from the myriad start-ups and later stage deals I am seeing in this space over the last 12 months.   As a result, I’d look for tuitions at all but the most exclusive post-secondary schools to come down in the very near future.   As a father of four near-genius children, I couldn’t be more pleased.

That aside, I think there’ll likely also be acquisitions in the Precious Metalspace as well,  as the various hedged and non-hedged behemoths squat and mark their territories by gobbling up junior miners with promising cargoes of “ounces in the ground.”   

To my chagrin,  I have no insight from an M&A perspective, as the majority of that deal making occurs north of our borders in the frozen outbacks of Canuckistan, completed by cigar-puffing investment bankers wearing snow-blindness goggles and polar-bear fur pantsuits.

Therefore, I can only point you out the promising junior and middle sized firms that may be in the snowmobile screens of various behemoths like Barrick Gold Corporation (USA) [[ABX]] , Newmont Mining Corporation [[NEM]] , Goldcorp Inc. (USA) [[GG]]  and AngloGold Ashanti Limited (ADR) [[AU]] .    These include:

Golden Star Resources Ltd. (USA) [[GSS]]

IAMGOLD Corporation (USA) [[IAG]]

Eldorado Gold Corporation (USA) [[EGO]]

Silver Wheaton Corp. (USA) [[SLW]]

[[CDE]]

Hecla Mining Company [[HL]]

Exeter Resource Corp. [[XRA]]

[[BAA]]

Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (USA) [[IVN]]

[[EXK]]

[[PAAS]]

Silver Standard Resources Inc. (USA) [[SSRI]]

Compania de Minas Buenaventura SA (ADR) [[BVN]]   ———->>>> note: this one can be an acquiror or an acquiree, given it’s geographic interest.

and of course, the “catch all”  — [[GDX]] .

There are quite a few more that I’ve left off as I’m rushing, so feel free to add your own, and I may or may not add or comment on those later.

Best to you all, and one last thing:  beware the bear traps — and those calling petulantly from within them.

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Update: In a shocking and unexpected move the dollar is down again [[UUP]] .

Who could’ve seen it?  Heh. 

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$1,100 gold is right around the corner and we zoomed over $17 again on the silver to rest currently at $17.22.

As a result, the miners of anything shiny from platinum to tin foil have gone Batman on us and are leaping in grey tights and high-cropped riding boots from roof to roof.

Royal Gold, Inc. [[RGLD]] must absolutley be on your “Grandmother list” and I mean not for your grandmother, but for your grandmotherhood.

You don’t think Social Security is going to keep you in tea cakes and airplane bottle of Chivas, do you?

Also, for your dining pleasure, Fly has engineered a special gold list for The PPT and left it only for those whom I favor. It’s like stumbling into Aladdin’s Treasure Cave without use of magic verse or carpet.

You are that lucky.

You can see everything I mentioned last night launched out of the park today. That’s because Gold — and [[GLD]] has broken out to new highs again, and is on it’s way to $1,250 and then higher still. In addition to RGLD and the Jackson’s you want to get hold of these top Ten Fly Listers also:

Name              Hybrid % Chg              PPT Score/5.0 

1 AUY                 43.21  %                                4.11

2 NXG                    27.36                               4.05

3 EGO                     33.55                                4.02

4 GG                        21.08                               4.02

5 AZK                     32.99                               3.87

6 GOLD                  42.64                               3.78

7 RGLD                 63.64                               3.78

8 ABX                    20.20                               3.63

9 GFI                    50.43                                 3.52

10 NEM                12.75                                 3.45 

Go! 

Be benificent to one another in this day of gloury (sic).

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