[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RabhcwuTjAo 450 300]

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We’re getting into the gambling season, boys and girls.  Not just the annual March Madness, which is pure nirvana for we college hoop fans, but we’re also starting to talk Derby Prep racing, and even some golf course skins.

What better time, then to start pushing “all in” while everyone else is scurrying under rocks and diving for cover?  Listen, I have friends in Japan, people I went to school with, so I don’t mean to disregard this great tragedy, or diminish it’s human impact.  But if you think the market is turning because of Japan, or becase of Wacky Quadaffi, or for any other exogenous reason, you need to start thinking about a good index fund, and maybe concentrating on your brackets.

Listen close, as this may be one of the last few times you’re blessed with the benefit of my counsel.   You have very little time left to get your portfolio right, and I’m a very busy, busy man.   You’ve been running around, like a man in a wifebeater tee shirt with an insane clown posse tatto on your right shoulder, and you’ve been buying “the hot thing,”  “the sexy thing,” and let’s face it, “the easy thing.”  This game is not meant to be easy.  It’s meant to be a bare nekkid, blind folded race through a maze full of knee-high bear traps snapping away at your bag.

It’s time to stop screwing around.  This market is very close to getting that last bit of string pushed out, and you are better off closing out all your positions and going to cash like Scottie than continuing to chase every fleeting fancy sparkler in these latter waning days.

Needless to say, I’m not going to cash, though I did raise some today.  How?  By selling out the remainder of my non-PM, non-core plays.   I made the exception by keeping a little bit of hedged MON and UPS, but everything else that does not glitter or end up in the tank of my car is now gone.   And even my earl plays are very minimal.  I’ve got a little bit of ERX and a little bit of PBR and a smidgeon remaining of OXY.   Everything else — gone.

I will likely take some of that cash and use it for some additional leverage, probably for in-the-money calls on GDX, GDXJ and SLW.   These are more liquid PM option plays, and I don’t plan to be in them very long, but I will know when to climb into them.  It will be when the hammer below breaks through the glass flooring that has become so brittle… so brittle:

Print this page out, tape it to the top of your moniter, and refer to it frequently whenever you get the urge to purchase something frivolously. 

My best to you all, really.

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Listen up kids, I don’t do drugs.  

No, really.

No, I get high on… silver highs.   New one’s especially.  ‘Fact, I might even OD on breaking all-time highs, but I am doing wind sprints and having my sons jump out of random closets at me— “Cato-Clouseau-style” — in order to get my adrenaline glands in good condition for the eventuality.

Cause I’m pretty sure it’s coming.   Tonight we have new 31-year highs at $33.12, which is making me very happy.  Mind you I started buying physical silver at about $4.50 an ounce, and have never sold any of it.  That’s over 630% since 2002.  I wish I could say the same for my silver stocks, which I’ve traded perhaps with over-zealous vigour (sic).  In truth, they’ve been even more volatile than the commodity price itself.  

My favorite silver play continues to be the royalty play Silver Wheaton — SLW— which does not dirty its fingernails with crude dirt-scratching but instead secures royalty payment in silver at a certain price in exchange for financing miners.   Would you screech out loud if I told you that SLW had arranged to be paid in silver at the equivalent of less than $5.00 an ounce?   That’s like taking a time machine back to 2002 and rifling the unsuspecting corner numismatic storedfront for less than appreciated 100 oz. ingots, only to return to February 2011 and have them assayed for over $33… and counting.

Can you see why I’m so excited about royalty plays?  They are, in fact, leverage for the leveraged price of the precious metal, as that is what the miners do — they allow one leverage on an increasing precious metal price.  The royalty play is one step higher up the chain of amped return.  Is there risk of default and other mining related problems?  Of course, but like a bank, a diversified portfolio will absorb some of that volatility.  

 Remember this SLW  chart from a couple of weeks ago?   The two arrows are the places where I’ve made recent buys.  We’re still not back to our old December highs, but I think we’ll be there, maybe as soon as this week.  

 Royal Gold — RGLD — is another royalty play, this time on the gold side, and with an even more diversified portfolio than SLW.   That’s another Jacksonian you want to own.

I also like EXK, AGQ (be careful with this one), PAAS, MVG, SVM, AG, CDE (small), and SSRI.  Another great catch all for all of these (or most) is SIL, the silver miner ETF. 

For gold, the old standards, ANV, EGO, RGLD, IAG, GDX, GDXJ, NGD  are recommended, and newcomers IVN and AAU to taste.  I continue to believe also that the rare earth metals will resume their volatile climbs, and I like AVL and QSURD best.

Nothing going on in the U.S. stock markets tomorrow, but the precious metal, U.S. dollar and futures markets should be fun.  Ciao for now.

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufn_pUVzZBg&feature=related 450 300]

(The 1970’s are back in California, at least)

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It ain’t easy keeping up with my family for a long weekend mini-vacation let me tell you.   It seems we did it all this time around– the full blown resort/ winery grand loop/ top-eating halls/ Napa-Sonoma scenario, and even added in the occasional valley balloon flight and a “little” family party at a relative’s Fairfax home in the hills.   I think we also greatly depleted the stock of the district, so it’s a good thing that harvest is a little late this year.

Because let me tell you — they’re going to need more grape jooce (sic) when we finally vacate the air space.

Going into this week I am going to exercise some caution.  I still have a little bit of my ANV and SLW hedges left and I may add to them perhaps get some GDX and even GDXJ covered calls.  Both gold and silver are magnificently stretched here and I’m looking for a respite at least.    I woulodn’t be surprised if that respite went hand in hand with a similar pullback on the SPX.

To that end, I may trim my sails on some of my stock positions also, including TCK, TC and ANDE — the non-precious Jacksonians.  I will keep all of my MON as that seems to have a counter-cyclical trend to its trading recently.

Besides, it’s a long term hold play, and I’d be comfortable adding lower, so why sell some now?

I am bone weary and getting up early tomorrow to take on the San Fran Airport.   I will try to check in via Crackberry, but until then bon chance!

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I got a question in my comments section yesterday about two smaller Canadian juniors — RBY and BAA  — that we’ve discussed in the past, and which look to be ready to turn back north, or disappear down the drain for the duration.  

Note, even in this wildly successful bull market for gold and silver, there are still doggy outliers with such grandly incompetent management (or who have the misfortune to operate under the purview of such confiscatory national governments) that they have not benefitted in the “rising tide.”   

I often cite the South African DROOY, as an example of said phenomena, but even poorly managed HL and CDE can be placed in that category.   The difference between DROOY and Idaho-based CDE and HL — where I would not invest in the former, but have done so in the two latter — is in nationalization risk.   In this rising tide, CDE and HL, though managed ham-fistedly, might actually become buyout candidates thanks to their assets in the ground.  

DROOY on the other hand, increasingly becomes a nationalization candidate as it’s home nation (South Africa) slides further into the traditional socialist morass under the leadership of the ANC.  Happy World Cup, by the bye, fellahs.

Back to our two small Canadians, who are, again, very low nationalization risks.  With Canada’s strong support for it’s PM industry, they maybe even lower risk than the gold miners of the United States (lol!).   I will show the weeklies to illustrate the long term trends, as usual.    BAA, which just a month back raised over $130mm at $2.05 Canadian (or $1.98 U.S.)  a share, is showing a possible bottoming here, which is not atypical a month after a major dilutive action.

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One quick aside on the major risk of juniors in a gold BULL market (the major risk in a non-bull being that they are actually held accountable for their crappy earnings, lol!).  In a non-nationalizing State environment, the greatest risk to junior investors is in dilution.   Many many many managers of these juniors (rightfully) see an increasing stock price (thanks to speculation) being an opportunity to raise cheap capital.   And even if the capital is not so cheap, the market will assign a discount to it upon a dilutive offering anyway.   Hence, in the case of BAA, we had a large new issue of equity sold at $1.98, but saw the stock pull back (this week!) all the way to $1.61 — a 19% discount from the original offering price.  That’s HUGE in a bull market for gold.

The good news is that BAA is now going to be a much smaller dilution risk going forward, and in fact, one might even say we can take that risk off the table for up to 24 months… which may mean all the way to the end of this bull.  With such a capitalization under their belts, BAA also gains more leverage in an M&A scenario.  Because of the fresh capital, they will not be forced to accept a low bid to monetize their assets, as this offering gives them additional dry powder to do so internally (for the time being).   

Long story short, if you owned BAA prior to this dilutive event, you  are pissed about the set-back (although, if you are like me, you are long used to it in these juniors).   This is one reason to greatly diversify your junior picks, either through a large group of names (as I’ve done) or via ETF’s like GDXJ and SIL (less bang for the buck, but a greater diversifier for those w. smaller accounts).

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The good news is that now that BAA has taken the dilution risk off the table, this may be a good time to begin accumulating at these prices… Note our weekly chart:

We could see this thing drift down another 10 cents or so (which is a lot, admittedly) if there is a consolidation of the latest gold pop, but I think the I-bankers at CIBC World Markets (the underwriter of the shares at $1.98) would be catching a lot of grief were it to descend much lower than the $1.55 range (a 22% discount and home to much chart support).    I may add to my holdings come Monday.

Note:   a large part of BAA’s holdings are in The Democratic (hah!) Republic (ha-ha) of Congo, so there is nationalization risk, but less so, thanks to BAA‘s being a Canadian-resident company.  Ironically, foreign companies– especially those based from Western NATO allied countries — are more immune to nationalization in rogue states, whose loosely held governments are dependent on their income to survive.  In fact, because SA is not a rogue state (i.e., essentially government-less), it actually poses a greater confiscatory risk, thanks to the Dunning Kruger effect posed by imagined competancy  (see Venezuela as a great example, or even the Obama and Bush Administrations), than the tenuous ex-Zaire of DRC.

Also, please keep in mind that while BAA may not be subject to nationalization risk, there’s still higher political risk due to the fighting going on within it’s host state and on it’s border states in the Congo.

Rubicon Minerals’ (RBY‘s) position is a lot more secure, with most of their assets residing in Canada and the U.S.  That said, they too have had a sharp pullback from highs (see chart below).   They had their big dilutive offering (they bought back debt too) in 2009, with over $210 mm in “bought deal financings,” which are essentially privately placed public equity (like PIPES here in the US).

I also like the chart, which seem to indicate a cup and handle, with a subsequent breakout.   Now it seems we are consolidating that breakout and it may be time to “nibble” once again.   I may also look to RBY on Monday.

 

Note, I will be increasingly selling down my non-gold & silver  movers, save for a couple of small positions in UPS and MON and perhaps CREE.   I think we are getting to a point where a concentration in PM”s may be again warranted.  This will be especially true if the dollar starts to break down here, as I think it may.

Best to you all, and I will try to get a piece in on the TRANnies before weekend is out.

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You bring the dough, I’ll crank me goooolden pasta machine.
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Have you just arrived at my blog after visiting the site of M. Le Docteur de Le Fly? Did you watch that video with the eerily calm-voiced man who is sketching our collective doom via Youtube videation?   Are you now in need of a mug of chamomile tea in order to calm your nerves?

Well, goodness knows, there’s other comfort foods available for your consumption, including Jake’s yummy pasta.  Remember this [[AIPC]] name from the other day’s post “Pennies for Pennes?”    Here was the original chart from 10 days ago:

And here was Friday’s close — a mere week later: 

Keep in mind, that’s a launch off support in one of the worst week and halves of trading we’ve had in 15 months.  Admit it, you didn’t touch this stock, because you thought maybe I was nuts, offering Italian carbohydrates whilst the Greeks burned the Parthenon down.   But you must keep in mind that trending stocks that display relative strength in bad markets are generally some of the safest names you can own in a storm.   

I think [[AIPC]] may take a rest/hit tomorrow, and it may be a good time to scoop some up.  Don’t wait too long, however.  There’s someone after this one, I think, and he’s/she’s/they’re no piker.

Speaking of strength in the storm, let’s not forget that [[GLD]] and [[SLV]] have been acting very cheery in the face of this Eurotardation, much to the chagrin of Mr. Samsonite Hamburg-ALL-er and his boss, a Mr. The Devil Dog.    What’s more, even the miners, which tend to wane in sympathy with the overall markets, are showing strength.  

If you watched M. le Docteur’s scary video, you may find the answer therein.  Me, I’m not going to invest in reverse-Oliver Stone type fright films, but I do know a trend when I see one.    As you can see, my plan remains the same, and so does my target for the Amex Gold Bugs Index [[HUI]] :

I like what I’ve been liking for months now, but I may not have mentioned them all, so here are some look sees:

Gold miners (Large): Goldcorp Inc. (USA) [[GG]] , Yamana Gold Inc. (USA) [[AUY]] , Newmont Mining Corporation [[NEM]] , and [[GDX]] for the grouping

Gold miners (Medium): Allied Nevada Gold Corp. [[ANV]] , Eldorado Gold Corporation (USA) [[EGO]] , IAMGOLD Corporation (USA) [[IAG]] , Gammon Gold, Inc. [[GRS]]

Gold miners (Small); Golden Star Resources Ltd. (USA) [[GSS]] , NovaGold Resources Inc. (USA) [[NG]] , New Gold Inc. (USA) [[NGD]] , Northgate Minerals Corporation (USA) [[NXG]] , [[BAA]] , Rubicon Minerals Corp. (USA) [[RBY]] , Exeter Resource Corp. [[XRA]] , Taseko Mines Limited (USA) [[TGB]] and the catch all [[GDXJ]]

Silver miners: [[PAAS]] , [[CDE]] , Silver Standard Resources Inc. (USA) [[SSRI]] , Hecla Mining Company [[HL]] , [[EXK]] , [[MVG]] , [[SVM]] ,  and the catch all Apex Silver Mines Limited [[SIL]] .

Royalty plays:  Royal Gold, Inc. [[RGLD]] and Tanzanian Royalty Exploration Corp. (US) [[TRE]] for gold, and my baby Silver Wheaton Corp. (USA) [[SLW]] for silver.

Best of the litter — Silver Wheaton Corp. (USA) [[SLW]] and [[PAAS]] for silver exposure, then Royal Gold, Inc. [[RGLD]] and [[GDX]] for gold glamour (sic).

Best to you all, have a nosh of rotini, get some sleep and do not let the Samsonite Hambug-ALL-ers bite!

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