Dave Erfle, Founder and Editor of The Junior Miner Junky, joins us for a deep dive in the precious metals sector, looking at both technical and fundamental drivers for gold, silver, and the PM stocks. We start off recapping the solid break higher in PM prices over the last 2 days; with gold getting up to $2224 on April futures in overseas trading the evening after the Fed meeting. Jerome Powell commented at the press conference afterwards about holding steady with expectations for 3 rate cuts later in the year.

Silver got up to $25.97 in overseas trading, on the back of this news, but then when it tested that stiff $26 overhead resistance, it dropped right back down to below $25 during the US markets session; reversing the moves higher we were seeing in GDX, GDXJ, and eventually gold.  Dave pointed out again the need for a definitive monthly close above $2100 in gold next Friday, to confirm the technical breakout from his perspective.  We point out that even with gold having consistently broken out to new all-time highs on the daily, weekly, and monthly charts already, that it’s breakout move has been mostly lost in the shuffle in the general markets. This is likely because many market sectors, stock indexes, and even many cryptos have also been breaking out to new highs in tandem.

We then shifted the discussion over to the gold and silver stocks, looking at how margins are going to be increasing in the first quarter, and if this will spur along producers to start making more acquisitions of the juniors to feed their growth trajectories. With regards to mergers and acquisitions Dave would like to see less “takeunders” where quality projects are getting picked off near lows, and see more of the sector rerate higher before the better projects get acquired, allowing investors to make some money.   This M&A money, once freed up, then can circulate around to other stocks that are still undervalued compared to the moves in the metals prices. Silver stocks remain the most beaten down, and could represent a good contrarian opportunity, as eventually the rising gold price will drag silver and the related equities higher.

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