Mike Larson – Big, Boring, And Beautiful Defensive Portfolio Positioning
Mike Larson, Editor of The Safe Money Report, joins us to outline the big, boring, and beautiful defensive portfolio positioning he is discussing with his subscribers. We start of reviewing the correction in most sectors, starting with early warnings in the implosion of meme stocks, smaller tech stocks, SPACs, cryptos, and over-inflated growth stocks by the 4th quarter of 2021; which then carried over into larger tech names and sector leaders by year-end and for most of this year. Even strong defensive sectors like consumer staples, utilities, and gold have corrected some recently, but they’ve just pulled down less than other sectors. We point out that in this kind of sell-everything environment, that having an asset class like gold pulling down less than other sectors, is a benefit in and of itself.
Next we pivot over to dismal performance of bonds after rolling over two years ago, and point out that the several decade bond bubble has been bursting right before investors eyes, dismantling the traditional financial planning model of the 60% stocks / 40% bonds allocations. Mike points out that the higher interest rates are also starting to impact the real estate markets, and that while this may not be another 2008-2009 Great Financial Crisis, the impetuous is there for a more drawn-out downward pullback in markets more reminiscent of the 1999-2002 Dot Com bubble correction. This change in market tenor is due to the last few years fiscal and monetary policies leading to high inflation, cost pressures to both consumers and businesses and slowing growth. We outline that if these cost inputs are not resolved, and business keep getting hit in their earnings like we saw with Walmart and Target just week, that it could escalate into cost cutting measure that leads to more job layoffs, and an environment more akin to a 1970s style stagflation.
We wrap up with a discussion on which kind of safer assets investors can turn to ride out the coming financial turbulence, and that other than gold and dividend paying stocks, that Mike sees cash as one of the better places to be. While the US dollar is getting eroded at over 8% by inflation at present, he points out that this is better than losing multiples more than that being overexposed to the equities markets, and that cash provides investors with some buying power once the corrective move has played out.
‘When It Unwinds It’s Going To Be Violent’
Jesse Felder – The Felder Report (05/14/2022)
‘Keeping Your Head When All About You Are Losing Theirs’
Jesse Felder – The Felder Report – May 11, 2022 #AudioInterview
What Should We Do If There Is No Fed Pivot?
Michael J. Ballanger – Streetwise Reports (5/16/22)
https://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2022/05/16/what-should-we-do-if-there-is-no-fed-pivot.html
Are Markets in the Eye of the Storm with John Rubino
May 17, 2022 – Kerry Lutz’s Financial Survival Network
“John Rubino returns… The markets are stabilizing. Is this the eye of the storm? Are SPACs and NFTs completely over? What about stablecoins? Inflation seems to be accelerating: Gas prices hit record. Baby formula is in shortage. Bird flu spikes egg prices. Diesel shortage spreading. Hilarious Fed news: Bernanke criticizes current FMOC officials for being too dovish. Europeans fold, agree to start paying for gas in rubles. Is this the first step on the way to commodity-backed currencies? Or is it one more sign that the dollar is losing its central place in the global monetary system? European Natural Gas Prices To Triple In “Perfect Storm.” Musk puts Twitter purchase on hold because so many accounts are turning out be bots.”
Broad US Stockmarket Update – Is It At Or Close To A Tradeable Bottom?
Clive Maund – Thursday, May 12, 2022
“In this update on the broad stockmarket we are going to look at the remarkable similarities between the way the charts looks now and the way they looked in the run in to the 2008 market crash, but also highlight some major differences between then and now that must be taken into account.”
Elan Musk whiffs a market selloff. He sold a bunch of Tesla at the top. In 60 days he could buy Twitter for 35% off
Well at least Elon did what most traders seem unable to do (sell high). If he buys back after a 35% haircut in the stock price, then he’ll have done better at the (buy low) part of the equation in his own company stock, compared to most of the generalists trading it. He’ll probably do something similar with Twitter, and already out-traded many of the Crypto-kiddies selling the rips in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu. Gotta love it!
Nickel demand boomed in 2021; This Year It Will Be Supply
Reuters | May 18, 2022
“Global nickel usage surged by an extraordinary 16.2% last year on the back of booming demand from both the dominant stainless steel and fast-growing battery end-use sectors. The result was a supply shortfall of 168,000 tonnes, the largest production deficit in at least a decade, according to the International Nickel Study Group’s latest statistical snapshot on the market. The group expects usage to grow another 8.6% this year, exceeding the 3.0 million tonne mark for the first time ever.”
https://www.mining.com/web/column-nickel-demand-boomed-in-2021-this-year-it-will-be-supply/
No matter how you look at it today was a frightful day. The Dow at one point was down more than 1200 points and it closed just under that. When you look at the green screen at The TD bank those numbers mean something more than moving figures they mean the smash up of the hope of years. Markets are all about psychology. My favorite movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, will be lived out by people looking stunned and in disbelief watching the red figures moving across the normally green screen. DT
Agreed DT. There’s been lots of red on the screen, even in the general markets, since Q4 of last year, and it’s only accelerated into Q1 and Q2 of this year. Add to that a negative Q1 GDP growth result, and persistently high inflation, while the Fed has never been more behind the curve in their current rate hiking cycle and it’s not a pretty picture out there.
Nobody can say it’s really that much of a surprise though. We were saying on here 2 years ago that with the world locked down due to the political policies around the handling of the pandemic, and insane amount of money printing that we’d see those chickens come home to roost in a year or 2 in the form of runaway inflation and slowing growth. Boy have we sure seen that!
It was an odd bifurcation of opinions last year when we spoke to people because so many actually believed the Fed jawboning that inflation was just going to be “transitory,” when anyone with a clue realized there was no way it was going to work itself out in March/April/May of 2021. Clearly it didn’t end in Q2 of 2021 and has been anything but “transitory,” which is not a surprise in the slightest.
We mentioned back in late 2020 and early 2021 that when inflation started taking it off it was going to shoot well past the Fed’s target of 2%, and yet, some of the mind numb commentators on CNBC and Bloomberg just parroted their recency bias that we’d not seen any inflation in 10 years, so there was nothing to worry about and all that was simply “doom and gloom.” Haha! Yeah…. No….
Many of us on here mentioned that once the inflation genie got out of the bottle that they were going to have a bugger of a time getting it back in the bottle…. Welcome to 2021 and 2022.
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We also cautioned over and over again in 2021 that if the Fed quit it’s “emergency” accommodative bond buying of $120 Billion per month, and actually did it’s tapering of bond purchases in early 2022, that nobody would be buying those bonds. That’s the whole reason the Fed had been buying them since 2009 in endless QE and once that gravy train was over, and rates hit 45 basis points in August of 2020, that marked the end of the 40 year bond bubble. Old ideas die hard, and many traditional investors and financial planners still have not come to grips with this.
I probably asked over a dozen of our KER show guests the same question: “If the FED actually does taper, then who in the hell is going to buy those bonds.” We had some Fed apologists that felt things would be fine and they’d get a bid, and few that said it would be international investors, but most just stammered out a few noises and admitted there was no good answer to that question. I’d follow the question up with, “Well if nobody buys those bonds then won’t that just force the interest rates up on the 2-year, 10-year, and 30-year treasuries, and won’t that in turn pressure the general stock markets?”
Clearly that is exactly what has played out… people didn’t want to buy sinking bonds for a coupon rate of 1%-3% over the last year, even though rates did go up proportionately more than any time in recent history from 0.45 to 3% in the 10-year, because newsflash… even the government massaged CPI numbers have ranged from 4%-8.5% over the last year so bonds are guaranteed loosing investment. Again, nobody wanted to buy those bonds. Now, short-term, they are so oversold (not a surprise) that they will likely get a relief rally, but again, all of this was very easy to see coming down the pike.
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Many of the folks here pointed out ad nauseum that you can’t shut down all the businesses in the country for covid, then sucker punch the businesses in 60 major cities with riots and arsons destroying the downtown commerce right when people could finally go back out without it crushing both companies and their staffs. Then things were compounded by having everyone working or flat out not working at home, causing so many people to keep suckling the government teet on perpetual unemployment and then not paying rent to landlords etc.. without it severely impacting growth, and it clearly has.
We have not even seen the other shoe drop yet as far as how growth will be muted over the next year or two, because the real carnage hasn’t even started yet. People haven’t fully depleted their savings quite yet or fully maxed out their credit cards…. but that is not far off (12-18 months). Companies have not fully dealt with the rising prices and lower revenues, but that is also not far off, and then the layoffs will start. Hello Stagflation.
It’s funny that in 2021 when bringing up the topic of the likelihood of coming Stagflation, by reading the macroeconomic tea leaves and seeing how things were going to unfold, some considered it a laughable point… Really? Inflation, soaring energy prices, slowing growth, and business revenues getting hit by persistently high cost inputs… How was the idea ever laughable? We were told it’s different than the 1970s because of the huge national debt loads now compared to then. OK, well that just means the Fed has less options because they can’t pull a Paul Volker and raise rates to infinity and beyond, so it will be even harder to manage this time. Now in mid-2022, all those people seem to be in agreement that clearly Stagflation is at our doorstep. Oh really, what took them so long to wake up to this finally? It was clear as day that this was going to unfold over a year ago, but their recency bias couldn’t allow them to see it… until it was staring them in the face.
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Well, in 2020 and 2021 genius investors then fell in love with the “Stay At Home” stocks like Zoom, Peloton, Teladoc, Square, Paypal, etc… and had the naïve belief that stocks could only go up. It was strange herd-think, and when we’d point out how insanely overvalued these sectors were in 2020 and early 2021 on so many metrics, people shrugged it off with the typical “buy the dip” and “valuations don’t matter only price action” mantras. Well now…, clearly those stocks have been taken out to the woodshed and completely been dismantled over the last year crashing 60-80%. Boy, who could have seen that coming? (only anyone with eyeballs and 2 brain cells to rub together)
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Then people got all amped up on the “reopening trade” but, scratching our heads as to what all the excitement was about, we mentioned it would just be a temporary sugar high of pent up demand, and not a sustainable trend. But no, we were told we’d have years of growth and the worst was behind us… because people were out at restaurants, events, taking vacations, and going back into the office again. WTF? What planet are those people living on?
To anyone dealing in the real world, instead of just main stream financial media fantasy, it was clear that many people and families were far worse off than they’d been in many years, and it’s easy to see why. So many were not working or only working part time, and many went from a double income family to a single income family. How could that not put a dent in their spending? Anyone spending just a few minutes on the metrics around consumer and household savings rates would realize they were quite dismal, especially compared to areas like Asia that have had much more robust saving rates.
Then when looking at most of the emerging markets in Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Africa, etc… it was clear people were hurting. For anyone in touch with average people it was abundantly clear most families didn’t have much saving left, and this was not going to be a boon for international corporations or domestic companies.
Sure, after 2 years of house arrest hell during the lockdowns, maybe people would collectively go out an blow their wad with some discretionary spending and getting out and about on a vacation or going out to eat, but this reopening trade was never going to be nearly as good or last nearly as long as many of the talking bobble-head expectations on main stream media outlets were clamoring for. And clearly it was over almost as fast as it began, and those “reopening stocks” also tanked over the last 6 months.
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How some analysts can believe that the consumers are still strong is mind boggling. Consumers are getting hit with higher prices in all areas of life (not just the ones blamed on Ukraine or Supply chains, but clearly those didn’t help the cause). People talk about the wage increases in the markets, which has been starting to happen, but even if workers got a raise in pay, it was not even close to the same percentage as the rates inflation have been running out for over a year now, so it’s still sliding backwards. Then just look at the rates of increase of consumer credit, and it is clear that many are surviving right now by living off plastic…. which can only persist for so long before that runs it’s course and we start seeing people default on their debt, and that will have a ripple effect.
Just look at the results from Walmart and Target from this last week, and it tells people everything they need to know. Companies are struggling as input costs go up as a result of inflation, earnings are not trending in a good direction, and these are the places average consumers shop. Groceries are up double-digits in almost all categories of food, and that is on last year’s crops. We haven’t even see how bad food costs are going to get yet, once all the Ukraine/Russia, India weather issues, and high fertilizer costs get tacked on to this year’s food crops. Is that going to bolster strong consumer spending? (clearly not).
**Bottom line: Most financial pundits on the main stream media were dead wrong about inflation being transitory. They were dead wrong on investors continuing to buy bonds in the face of high inflation. They were dead wrong about where energy prices would top out. They were dead wrong about the “stay at home” stocks trend, about growth stocks, about the “reopening stocks”, and that stocks would just keep heading higher. They were dead wrong to laugh at Stagflation, and they’ll be dead wrong to shrug off Recession as just more “doom and gloom.”
People can scoff at the idea of a Recession coming in the next 12-18 months (or sooner) all they want, but we already had 1 negative quarter of GDP. If we have 2 negative quarters of GDP in a row, then that is a textbook Recession reading. We already had the fuel prices triple, an inversion of the yield curve, slowing growth, persistently high inflation, and now suddenly people realize that many company valuations are still overcooked and we are seeing the first real correction in 2 decades. If people are shocked by any of this then they simply have not been paying attention, or they are suffering from recency bias from the last few years, and don’t realize the world has fundamentally changed, and the cheese has been moved.
Hi Ex, great piece, I will just put it on my plastic, I don’t have to pay it back it’s only plastic. LOL! The mainstream media will label thinkers who express the truth of using fear to create an atmosphere of distrust, and therefore are a menace to the community. You can’t win these days but you certainly have opened a lot of eyes to what is going on in the street and in the marketplace. DT
“Klaatu barada nikto.”
Classic line from The Day The Earth Stood Still…
Thanks DT. Yes, there is often the mindset that if it bought on plastic it isn’t a real expense, just monopoly money. This is why casinos convert to chips, to get people to see their hard earned fiat as just play tokens (even though many would argue that fiat “money” isn’t that much better).
The sad part is that many are putting debt on credit card because they don’t have an adequate income stream or deep enough savings, and don’t have any other choice when faced with a large automobile issue, or health expense, or things for their children.
Ultimately it comes down to monetary discipline, and living within one’s means, but in today’s culture of consumption people are taught all the wrong habits and attitudes around spending, saving and investing. The mass media hypnosis has people trying acquire status by purchasing overpriced brands, cars, clothes, accessories, and pampering themselves with perceived luxury items, travel, and keeping up with their neighbors.
It’s sad, but plastic gets used to put on credit and pay interest on these illusory dreams, but stems from people living beyond the means of the income they personally generate. Then when you ask them about saving and investing, they say they have nothing left to save or invest… but they have money for a $5 coffee several times a day or $250 purse or $50,000 truck that they can’t really afford. Now with inflation eroding purchasing power and thus prices climbing higher and higher, it isn’t a surprise to see the trend of consumers backing down on consumption and focusing on just acquiring the necessities.
Over the next year or two, for many families it will be much more about financial survival, and many will be forced to cut the fat in some discretionary areas, and that is going to hit many businesses hard, and hurt economic growth. Wild times!
ex, that synopsis and yours earlier has me in a fetal position awaiting gold’s valiant effort to close above the 1850 threshold, close but no cigar yet for another potential pop up with gold shares as alternative to spx conventional market,
Let’s see if in fact it does break below last week’s 3860 low. Right now dont have a dog in this fight. But who knows??
Certainly won’t be the porn doom posters who have been calling for the great collapse since the last covid selloff Mar/20 at spx around 2200, missing out on more than a doubling in value to 4800 this past year end high.
Yes, all we can do is take things one day at a time (preferably not in the fetal position).
As mentioned a number of times the last 2 years, many people got fatigued by the doomers and gloomers spending 2 decades howling at the moon about the great collapse in the stock market or the US dollar. It’s a shame as those that were pounding the table on on this since the Dot Com bubble bursting and since 9/11 desensitized people to the very real potential for a market contagion and prevents meaningful discussions on the topic without people tuning out. People shrug off the very real things happening today and the very tenuous situation, because they feel like they’ve heard it all before and nothing ever played out as people had warned.
However, I’ve been saying repeatedly this is very much like the “Boy That Cried Wolf” story where he desensitized the town to danger of the wolf too often and when it was not applicable, to the point where when the wolf really did come to town, nobody believed him. This is very much what happened in the hard money community for the last 2 decades, although I’d point to the 2008-2009 Great Financial Crisis as the period where the wolf first came to town to eat the sheep.
Rather than deal with the wolf, the powers that be just cloned a bunch of financial sheep and printed insane amounts of money to reinflate the system, bail out companies that were deemed “too big to fail” (interfering the free market forces where those companies should have gone bye bye and actually failed) and embarked on a dozen years of propping up the markets with central bank shenanigan’s. Now a much larger “everything bubble” was blown and the markets were prevented from having a meaningful correction through direct interference, accommodative bond purchases, TARP, Twist, Reverse Repos, even more company bail outs, and it’s all quite disgusting what has transpired, only prolonging the inevitable and kicking the can down the road for much longer than most imagined they could.
However, if dealing in the real, inflation was above 2% long before it showed up in the governments selective CPI readings last year, and it simply got too big to contain any longer. While we’ve had CPI prints of 4%-8% over the last year, true inflation is now running in the double digits. The Fed has never been this far behind the curve, and some members (and ex-members) are suggesting losses should finally be permitted in the general markets to help quell demand and thus fight inflation that way. There is a breaking point on rising interest rates too much or too fast that would crush the markets, and definitely a point where the debt service would become mathematically untenable, so they can’t get the Fed funds rate up above the rate of inflation without being crushed by debt or imploding the markets. We’ve already seen energy prices triple, the yield curve invert, a negative quarter of GDP, 2 years of draconian political overreach forcing lockdowns on citizens and businesses, excessive government handouts and insane fiscal policies that need to keep getting larger and larger to keep things afloat, and finally a rollover in many markets over the last 6-9 months that qualifies as a correction in the US and Canadian general equities markets. It’s not a stretch or doom & gloom to state things factually as they are, and be concerned here, or to look at prior periods in history as guides as to how things could benefit the precious metals or energy sector.
We are definitely living in interesting times, and nearing a tipping point of epic proportions. The next 12-18 months have all the hallmarks of being a very difficult time, and one has to wonder if this is being orchestrated purposely to bring on The Great Reset that the global elitist want so badly. It’s the classic Problem/Reaction/Solution process on full display once again, and sadly many people globally will be hurt by these terrible policies and decisions. All we can do is our best to navigate the turbulent waters and try to stay afloat, and create a financial lifeboat for our families. Wishing everyone the best regardless of the strategies they employ to prosper financially, and more importantly prosper in life.
certainly Ex, this could be the time that the Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario is the real thing. And it would be catastrophic as all previous doomer calls proved false, If that is to happen I simply need more evidence than listening to the usual group of pundits largely talking their book. At least a break lower for spx with accompanying upticks in unemployment from historic lows, new highs in energy, and other chaos
At the moment and having nothing in convention market I’m more tempted to take a flyer on the upside with spy calls than downside. At least for a pop.
But I could be one of those who finally gets caught so don’t follow my lead. LOL
Crash or no crash, the stock market is in a bear market that is unlike any we’ve seen since the 1970s and is likely to be worse than that one for a bunch of reasons.
When this bounce is over, it will be off to lower lows.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%24COMPQ&p=W&yr=3&mn=11&dy=0&id=p42665834175&a=942652907
love when you talk dirty Matthew.
preparing the bunker in Chile with that poster Clive Maund mentioned here on occassion.
Wish I could say that I love your ignorance.
Ditto Ex…………. No surprise……….. great short story…. 🙂
Much appreciated OOTB. Yes, none of it is much of a surprise, but it’s good therapy to rant it out. haha!
Ditto……… on the rant……… a good rant is needed now and then…………. 🙂
EX is truly great editorialist and commentator….and future novelist…Hope he gets rich and retires to writing about global truth via story telling regarding planet earth circa 2020’s…glta
Ha! Thanks for the kind words Larry, and glad the rant was well-received. I’m not sure I’ll get rich in these crazy markets, but hopefully with us all sharing information and perspectives we’ll all be better informed, minimize the pain, and maximize the prosperity. Wishing you good trading sir. Cheers!
Target, Walmart: 3 Takeaways From ‘A Wild 48 Hours In Retail’
Brian Sozzi · Yahoo Finance, Editor-at-Large – Wed, May 18, 2022
“It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to suss out a host of negatives from the brutal earnings results and conference calls from Target and Walmart this week.”
“All of them come to the same conclusion though: Consumers are being financially battered by inflation and the economy is slowing much quicker than Wall Street economists have factored into their 500-step multi-factor models.”
“It has been a wild 48 hours in retail,” Jefferies Analyst Steph Wissink said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “We heard from Walmart yesterday and Target today. One of the things that stood out to us was the common patterns. We are seeing both companies are signaling that their stores are seeing strong traffic versus e-commerce. Both are seeing high costs to execute their business. Consumers are moving more towards essentials versus discretionary merchandise.”
Trend Turn Table: https://tinyurl.com/mt2berap
NatGas is turning. PMs may have.
War of the Worlds?
The gold weekly chart can easily make a swing low next week, which should help coax longs into the market.
All that has to occur next week for a swing low is for the gold price to get above today’s high (so far, $1850) and stay above this week’s low ($1785).
The strongest stocks like Newmont and Pan American are probably a couple of years more mature technically speaking than the mining indexes and silver, with NEM and PAAS’s 200 WMAs having crossed above their 600 WMAs over two years ago. So while lower risk, they probably don’t represent as much potential upside as smaller miners.
In contrast, GDX’s 200 WMA is just now about to cross above the 600 WMA. If you are a believer in the bull market, given how close price is to the 200 WMA, this is arguably one of the lowest risk entries in GDX you could get.
Silver’s 200 WMA probably won’t be crossing above its 600 WMA until early 2023, and so it stands to reason it could be subject to relatively more volatility in the short run.
yup. Green.
However all the historical tech talk and kitco type promotion is interesting but the real story is in the actual price action of gold related equities vs underlining gold/silver price. Most of my holdings dsv, amx, cde are showing promise today. Couple more days of similar outperformance and I’m in the black.
Wasn’t expecting SIL:Nasdaq to be quite so strong today. While it’s possible that “this is it” and the ratio just proceeds to take off to the upside, I am still going to be a bit cautious over the next couple of weeks. Of course, a very powerful move and weekly close next week would seal it for me (for example, back up to the upper weekly bollinger band).
Some caution signs for me that we could be coming back down in the next 2 weeks are that the weekly stochastics haven’t reached oversold levels yet and the MACD hasn’t gotten back to the zero line. While neither of those things is necessary for SIL to rip higher relative to the Nasdaq, avoiding either of those things at this point would be fairly exceptional.
Hi Ho Silver. Gitty up.
And the excitement continues tomorrow with option expiry,
FREAKY FRIDAY……………… AGAIN…………….. 🙂
I already posted this over on Jordan’s blog, but it summarizes my personal take on things, and really ties in better to the discussion up above with Mike Larson.
Yes, the continued pressure across the board in almost all markets is rough, but most of the analysts, fund managers, and economic thought leaders we’ve been speaking with this year feel this could be more prolonged than many of the main-stream generalist investors are used to. This is not just a V-shaped flash crash, and is more akin to a real market correction — something we’ve not seen in 2 decades.
The conventional market generalists perpetual “buy the dip” crowd, has finally pivoted over to more of a “sell the rip” mentality. After a 20 years of believing the general markets can only go up, 12 years of Fed intervention and liquidity injections to prevent any real corrections, and with speculation in 2020 and 2021 reaching a crescendo of ridiculous levels of frothiness; this was long overdue to happen.
Now that so much money has been evaporated in the general markets, really starting in the middle of last year all the way through to the middle of this year in Meme Stocks, Growth Stocks, Stay-At-Home stocks, Reopening Stocks, SPACs, Cryptos, NFTs, Biotech, Cannabis, Transports… you name it…. there is far less capital left to buy any dips or push things to even higher nosebleed valuations. For so long when questioning the valuations and PE Ratios and lack of earnings potential, we were told that those kind of valuations didn’t matter and that prices going higher was what was primary. Well, now many of those traders, that fashioned themselves investing geniuses, that only knew a 1-way market to higher and higher levels, are finally getting a valuable and character building front seat to what an actual correction (not just a flash crash) actually looks like.
Like the classic Warren Buffet line states…. “When the tide goes out you get to see who was swimming naked.”
Now as for the PM markets, we are quite used to gut-wrenching corrections every few months, and wild volatility to the downside and upside, so this is just more of the same for the resource sector. However, the moves down over the last month in the PM mining stocks (especially the juniors) have been the most extreme pressure we’ve seen since the pandemic crash, and the sentiment is really bad once again. I’d expect at least a relief rally soon to ease some of the selling pressure. Personally, I was active again today doing very small adds to a number of gold and silver stocks, and blew out a few more exploration drill-play dogs, as I feel much more comfortable in the producers, royalty companies, and advanced developers at this stage in the cycle.