InvestMacro

I will discuss gold in a few paragraphs, but first. . .

Andrew Ross Sorkin

At the exact moment where I thought I could move on from this incessant preoccupation with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, along comes one of the Wall Street media “royalty,” author of the book Too Big to Fail and a regular morning anchor on CNBC, Andrew Ross Sorkin, who makes the fateful decision to interview SBF in a global broadcast effectively allowing the alleged mastermind of the largest “misallocation” of customer funds in history a virtually unchallenged opportunity to pre-plead his case.

Notwithstanding the softball questions and buddy-buddy repartee between them, Sorkin and the NT Times audience actually applauded Bankman-Fried at the end of the interview.

Granted that the young man has not been indicted for any crime yet, these media gluttons are free to take whatever cash he transferred their way in return for the venue. They were (and still are) free to do anything they so choose with him because he is innocent until proven guilty, despite the admissions of the comingling of customer funds with that of his private trading entity, Alameda, as well as failure to adequately explain why he felt it excusable to buy tens of millions of dollars of real estate and put it in his own name or that of his parents.

The only reason I bring this up lies in the now-famous quote by the late, brilliant comedian George Carlin, when he said in reference to the elites that run the nation, “It is one big club, and you ain’t in it!”

Now, I am not going to continue to beat this dead mule as it truly serves no purpose but what I will say is that I find these interviews in poor taste at best and obscenely greed-driven at worst with the determination of legality to be decided at a later date.

To think that political parties on both sides of the aisle were given enormous amounts of campaign funding as well as all of the media companies, is an absolute abomination and an abject conflict of interest of staggering proportions.

The only reason I bring this up lies in the now-famous quote by the late, brilliant comedian George Carlin, when he said in reference to the elites that run the nation, “It is one big club, and you ain’t in it!”

To have such a prominent Wall Street cheerleader like Ross-Sorkin sit there and serve up overhand smashes for the fully-prepared SBF was, at least for me, an offense. It makes one wonder just how much the average investor is getting played by the Wall Street titans that control the behemoth software programs that are able to identify trades nanoseconds before they occur.

As my late friend and technical analyst Ian McAvity used to say, “In the hold of every sunken ship, you will always find a chart.”

It makes you wonder whether the bid offer for a particular security is real and whether the research report recommending an issuer is the product of actual research (as in “unbiased”) or whether it is part of an investment banking agreement where the only research generated with positive tilts are those attached to banking fees.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose,” (The more things change, the more they remain the same.) wrote French writer Alphonse Karr and in the case of Wall Street, it is a most-fitting and very apropos phrase for describing an event that mirrors the unbridled hubris of the 2001 DotCom crash and the 2008 Subprime crash, two of the most recent examples of Wall Street Gone Wild under the influence of the most powerful narcotic known to mankind — greed.

I want this chapter to be the last in the sequence, but until someone actually goes to jail for white-collar crimes of ever-increasing magnitude and audacity, it is an exercise in futility.

The Fed Concerned About Overtightening

Moving along, this week was dominated by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, so I will provide a sample of Email Alert 2022-109 sent to subscribers on Thursday morning pre-opening:

“I am concerned about overtightening.”

— Jerome Powell, November 30^th, 2022

Yesterday afternoon, one solitary word  — “overtightening” —  sent the Dow Jones Industrials up 2.18% on the hope and prayer that the rate-hike cycle is soon coming to a close.

The S&P 500 popped 3.09%, with the NASDAQ an impressive 4.41% as the beaten-up technology issues caught a hefty, short-covering bid. That he reaffirmed the Fed’s intention to continue increasing — as opposed to lowering — borrowing costs means nothing when the bulls decide to charge.

What I take to the bank about yesterday’s reaction to Powell’s speech is that it was most certainly not his preferred outcome because rising stock prices are in direct opposition to the stated goal of reducing demand in the economy.

I have often referred to the asymmetrical wealth effect, which was first introduced in the 1980s and assumes that rising equity prices have a positive effect on consumer spending habits. A big year-end rally that begins at the end of November will give the holiday shopping season a boost from improved month-end statements and portfolio values.

Gold Advancing

The good news for me was that while everyone was mesmerized with stocks, the gold and silver markets advanced 1.28% and 4.45%, respectively, in response to Powell’s “overtightening” fears.

In markets dominated by apprehension, knee-jerk reactions tend to be overblown by abnormally-large short positions and/or FOMO (fear of missing out), but while I think that applies to stocks, it was not the case for the precious metals, where an orderly advance simply gathered steam as the session wore on.

What is usually absent from the gold and silver markets is next-day follow-through, so to have gold nudging up against US$1,800 resistance and silver blowing through US$22.00 resistance is encouraging (verging upon exciting).”

The highlighted part is particularly important as Thursday saw an extremely powerful follow-through, with February gold punching out through that US$1,800 resistance and actually settling at US$1,815.30.

From the CME pit session close Wednesday to the pit session close Thursday saw a US$55.30/ounce pop, which broke it out through the 200-DMA as well.

The next two resistance levels are US$1,825 and US$1,875, but with the RSI settling on Thursday at US$71.22, gold moved into an overbought condition and in need of a sideways consolidation with which to work it off while holding US$1,800.

Mind you, it should be known that coming off the COVID crash lows of March 2020, gold stayed in overbought condition for eleven days, with RSI eventually topping out at US$91.57.

As I have been discussing for the better part of twenty years, the prices for precious metals are inextricably linked to the U.S. dollar because all commodities are priced in the reserve currency of the globe.

It is akin to a “peg” only because if your domestic currency is the British pound and you step into the London Metals Exchange to buy a carload of gold, you are paying the dollar quote, not the pound quote.

Weakness in non-dollar units of exchange will buy less gold per unit and vice-versa.

This chart is a clear illustration of the near 1:1 inverse correlation between gold and the U.S. greenback, with tops in the dollar on September 28 and November 3 coinciding perfectly with lows in gold US$1,622 and US$1,618 before embarking on the current almost US$200 per ounce rally.

To try to map out the course for gold and the dollar for the next six months is more an exercise in mindreading rather than an analysis of the economic or geopolitical landscapes.

There are just so many possible policy alternatives, all being weighed upon by domestic and foreign policy agendas related to inflation, oil prices, and partisan politics, that you have to read multiple minds to achieve accuracy.

Since mind reading is only possible if one wears a cape and goes by the title of “The Amazing Kreskin,” I depend on the predictive power of technical analysis to guide me in the general vicinity of accuracy because all of those head-and-shoulders tops and bottoms and ascending cup-and-handle mumbo-jumbo “signals” are simply clues to the mystery and not the ultimate solution.

As my late friend and technical analyst Ian McAvity used to say, “In the hold of every sunken ship, you will always find a chart.”

In all successful starts to bull moves in the precious metals, you need a combination of positive events occurring simultaneously. You need the more speculative assets classes to outperform the more conservative — i.e. junior gold miners (GDXJ:US) outperforming senior gold miners (GDX:US) and silver (SLV:US) outperforming gold (GLD:US) with the shares outperforming the metals.

This is exactly what we have seen off the September 28 lows all coincident with U.S. dollar weakness and declining bond yields.

Gold Versus the Basket

There used to be an expression about a certain profession that went like this:

“How do you tell if a <insert profession> is lying?”

“His lips are moving.”

Well, the profession that has earned that reputation is now all central bank governors, presidents, and vice presidents, with the chairman being the leader.

As the former head of the European Central bank, Jean-Claude Juncker, once said, “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” So with the global economy, with particular emphasis on the U.S. economy, decelerating rapidly, I would surmise that we have reached the point of “seriousness.”

Jerome Powell addressed the Brookings Institute on Wednesday afternoon, and despite reiterating all of his warnings about “higher for longer” (interest rate levels and duration), the infinitesimal wisdom of stock markets determined that Mr. Powell was “lying” and decided that the “pivot” was “on” and that seasonality would trump policy into year-end selling dollars and buying stocks and gold and bonds as if this was April of 2020.

Only time will tell, but I learned a long time ago that markets that spit in the eye of the consensus view are markets that should not be faded (sold).

This creates a monumental problem for the Fed (as discussed earlier), but it creates an even greater problem for me in that despite the awesome technical set-up for the precious metals as we move into December, one word out of Powell’s mouth at the December 14 FOMC meeting could derail the dollar decline and stock/gold/bond rally in a New York minute.

On the other hand, what if the events of September 28 in London, where the Band of England was forced to reverse their QT course and instead launch a QE rescue mission for their pension funds, was a precursor of systemic risks to the global financial system due — once again — to the excessive use of leverage in meeting yield requirements?

If that event is what is spooking Powell & Company, then the “pivot” actually began in clandestine fashion in late September, with all markets around the globe looking far beyond the futile jawboning of the Fed and its “honored representatives.”

Only time will tell, but I learned a long time ago that markets that spit in the eye of the consensus view are markets that should not be faded (sold).

The Friday Jobs Report came in hotter than expectations but failed to derail a major chunk of the weekly gains, most of which came after the Powell speech. I find it hilarious that a mere two days after the narrative turns “pivot positive” due to that one word — “overtighten” — a jobs report that is a lagging indicator of economic activity brings about yet another 180-degree shift in sentiment.

I suspect that in a couple of weeks, the NFP will come in under consensus with revisions to Friday’s report knocking it back to a “miss.” However, profits were taken before the Powell speech, so I am now looking for a suitable re-entry point in anticipation of a continuation of the seasonal rally into year-end.

I suspect that in a couple of weeks, the NFP will come in under consensus with revisions to Friday’s report knocking it back to a “miss.” However, profits were taken before the Powell speech, so I am now looking for a suitable re-entry point in anticipation of a continuation of the seasonal rally into year-end.

With the Dow actually up after being down US$350 on the opening, it did a complete 180 — to my absolute AWE — and closed up US$34.78 to add 82 points for the week. Astounding, but not unexpected for followers of my weekly diatribe . . .

I suspect that in a couple of weeks, the NFP will come in under consensus with revisions to Friday’s report knocking it back to a “miss.” However, profits were taken before the Powell speech, so I am now looking for a suitable re-entry point in anticipation of a continuation of the seasonal rally into year-end.

Ditto the precious metals, where I have been looking to add aggressively on dips under US$1,800 and did today with the early plunge under US$1,800. For an old gold trader like me, trained in the late 80’s bull market where a lifelong narcotic was injected into my bloodstream, the action in gold is reminiscent of the period 2009-2021 for tech stocks — all dips are bought, and no pops are sold (at least for long).

Silver went out with a US$0.57/ounce gain on a day where all other white metals (palladium, platinum) lost 2.48% and 2.80%, respectively. Copper also had not only a decent day; it had a decent week giving me great confidence in the outlook for 2023 for all these metals AND for the junior wannabes that are either searching for or developing them.

Today’s resiliency for all markets in the face of a hostile jobs report and in the face of overbought market conditions reeks of too many portfolio managers (not yet born when the market crashed in ’87) underweight equities and panicking to get back into “fully-invested” mode.

If this trend accelerates, there might be an EPIC short squeeze into year-end that could rival the one that nailed those fuzzy-cheeked whiz kids back in April of 2020 when they were certain that the global pandemic was going to throw us into the 1930s again, which was EXACTLY what I was told by one of the kiddies in 2008 after junior stocks all crashed.

It never happened then, and it won’t happen now as the BIG MONEY wants a rally, and that is all one needs to know.

End of story.

Michael Ballanger Disclaimer:

This letter makes no guarantee or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. Nothing contained herein is intended or shall be deemed to be investment advice, implied or otherwise. This letter represents my views and replicates trades that I am making but nothing more than that. Always consult your registered advisor to assist you with your investments. I accept no liability for any loss arising from the use of the data contained on this letter. Options and junior mining stocks contain a high level of risk that may result in the loss of part or all invested capital and therefore are suitable for experienced and professional investors and traders only. One should be familiar with the risks involved in junior mining and options trading and we recommend consulting a financial adviser if you feel you do not understand the risks involved.

Disclosures:
1) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of Michael Ballanger and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. Michael Ballanger is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not involved in any aspect of the article preparation. Michael Ballanger was not paid by Streetwise Reports LLC for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: None. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

3) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports’ terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

4) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the decision to publish an article until three business days after the publication of the article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.

With little over thirty-six days left in the fiscal year 2022, it is critical that investors remember that bear markets do not last forever. Alas, neither do bull markets. And while the Jim Cramer’s of the world want to remind you that “there is always a bull market somewhere,” the reality is that there are also bear markets out there all of the time as well.

Home Stretch of 2022

As I enter the “home stretch” for calendar 2022, I can only recall one time in the past forty years that markets had a serious decline in December, and that was in 2018. Mind you, a Christmas Eve emergency meeting between Fed Chairman Powell and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin quickly remedied the Grinch-like behavior resulting in a Santa Claus rally that carried right through to new highs by the end of February 2019.

The Fed’s posture in 2018-2019 was accommodative, and their love affair with the asymmetrical wealth effect of rising equity prices was free of the impairment brought on by a 9% inflation rate so “conditions” in December 2018 were starkly distant from the conditions I face in 2022 (and beyond).

The Fed will “re-allocate” aggressively between now and year-end, and that combined with the historically high short interest should (operative word) propel stocks to higher levels by New Year’s Day.

As the portfolio manager horses gallop their way down the final few furlongs of 2022, they are not nearly as deeply underweight equities as they were in late September (when I turned on a dime and went bullish), but they are still underweight and need to deploy larger than normal cash positions before the auditors record their final holdings for 2022.

You see, they cannot have an abnormally high cash position and still charge 2% management fees without severe client pushback, so they will “re-allocate” aggressively between now and year-end, and that combined with the historically high short interest should (operative word) propel stocks to higher levels by New Year’s Day.

The month of December ranks number three in performance for two of the three major averages (Dow and S&P at number three with NASDAQ as number two), with small-cap issues outperforming the blue-chips starting around mid-month due largely to the cessation of tax-loss selling and rebalancing. There were some shaky weeks, such as in 2008 and in 1987, but since 1950, stocks have enjoyed fifty-three winning Decembers versus eighteen losers for a 74.6%-win ratio.

With that in mind, my positioning should be bullish stocks, and has been since late September, begging the question, “What could go wrong?”.

What Could Go Wrong?

The troublesome idiosyncrasy of the current profile for equities lies in the behavior of the sub-groups — as in Dow Jones Industrials — which have very few tech stocks and which are massively outperforming the S&P and the NASDAQ with the health care stocks taking on leadership roles.

That is exactly how one positions portfolios if one looks for more bear market action in 2023, which means that the defensive sectors get pumped while the heroes of the last bull get dumped.

My point is this: I think there are going to be a great many of the players exiting the markets before year-end for fear that the “Q1 Crash” narrative plays out, so when matched up against the “performance chasers,” it may just be that the net effect is a flat December and that the bulk of the gains actually was made in the first two months of Q4.

That in itself is where my contrarian nature starts to rebel because every single market pundit that I hear or read is positive for the seasonality trade but negative due to expected earnings markdowns in Q1/2023.

I cannot figure out whether it is a reverberating echo — a feedback loop —  that keeps circling back to the accepted narrative or whether it represents the “collective wisdom” of market participants and one that I should actually heed rather than dismiss as “adolescent idolatry” because the kiddies that run the billion-dollar funds love to hide in the anonymity of consensus investing while old geezers like me absolutely revel in isolationism. (BTW, neither is optimum behavior.)

Make no mistake; swimming against the tide is not always the easiest nor the smartest strategy, with tech stocks and crypto being generational favorites amongst the younger crowd but toxic waste for those that are older.

As timing is everything in the world in which we trade, there was a time to listen to the kiddies, and there was a time to send them into a corner wearing dunce caps so as to cast judgment on the investment acumen on a generational basis has devolved into a name-calling mug’s game and one which I prefer to avoid.

My point is this: I think there are going to be a great many of the players exiting the markets before year-end for fear that the “Q1 Crash” narrative plays out, so when matched up against the “performance chasers,” it may just be that the net effect is a flat December and that the bulk of the gains actually was made in the first two months of Q4.

The Junior Sector

I only speak of the broad equity markets because against the backdrop of a hostile Fed and decelerating global growth, it is hard to imagine people suddenly going stark bullish on commodities, led as always by gold and silver, which is precisely what is required to light a fire under the junior resource sector, a space where I, unfortunately (due to a gambling addiction) have a large portion of my investable capital.

As I have written on countless occasions, if I woke up tomorrow from a twenty-two-year coma and scanned all news headlines related to geopolitical, fiscal, and monetary events over that time period, I would have expected gold to be priced at US$30,000 an ounce with silver at US$600. I would also have the Canadian dollar trading at US$0.10 while its citizens combat a 75% inflation rate.

However, through the machinations of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, the legions of desk traders under contract to the National Security Services have been assigned to maintain U.S. dollar hegemony, sparing no expense and taking no prisoners.

To be sure, they have done a superb job while their bosses have been able to print astonishing amounts of phony money through unbridled DEBT creation and, until 2022, enjoyed a disinflationary, Goldilocks Nirvana where literally everything moved into “bubble” territory — except of course — the two metals that over the past five-thousand years represented safe haven, sound money status, gold, and silver.

Gold put in a triple-bottom in Q4 at between US$1,618 and US$1,622, after which it responded to the collapse in the U.S. dollar index from 114.76 to 105.26 within a three-week period in November.

After testing the highs of the rebound near US$1,792, it is now working off the mid-month overbought condition by pulling back to test the 100-DMA around US$1,720, then closing out the week at US$1,754.

The MACD indicator is threatening to flip into a bearish crossover, but it did that very briefly back in October without derailing the advance, so I am placing minimal emphasis on the MACD unless we break the 100-DMA with RSI reversing back into a downtrend; neither of which I see as being “in-the-cards.”

As for the juniors, could there be a more pitiable sector in which to throw away your savings than in the junior gold miner space?

Since the 2008 Great Financial Bailout, there have been two serious rallies in the miners — the first off the major bottom in gold prices in late 2015 and lasting until August 2016 and the second being of the Fed-induced major bottom in “everything” after the Covid Crash of March 2020, with that advance, also ending in August.

Other than that, the junior gold space (GDXJ:US), shown above when priced against the gold price, is trading at levels it last saw in Q1/2016 when gold was under US$1,200. There are dozens of other studies depicting the extreme levels of undervaluation for both senior and junior gold equities but nowhere is it more shocking than in the juniors.

Gambling Versus Speculation

My area of specialization (and passion) has always been the explorers and developers, where the terms “gambling” and “speculation” are often misplaced. This was explained to me a great many years ago after being unfairly accused of being a fan of the “ponies.”

Having grown up in the town of Malton, I used to sell newspapers (including The Daily Racing Forum (“DRF”) at Woodbine at 6:00 am to owners, breeders, and trainers, all of whom showed up coffees-in-hands to give me my US$0.25 gratuity for keeping their papers warm.

One time, I was reading the DRF when a lady in a Saint John Ambulance nurse’s outfit scolded me for being a “sinner” because, in her words, “gambling” was the “devil’s playground.”

Overhearing this exchange, one of the trainers (who turned out to be two-time Queen’s Plate winner Jerry Lavigne) walked over and pointed to the DRF in my lap and said, “Kid, don’t listen to that old biddy. As long as you’re following the numbers in that rag (the DRF) and watching the heats, you are not “gamblin’. You’re handicappin’, which is another word for speculatin’ .“

Junior mining companies, including the explorers, if researched properly, are not to be considered “gambling” because of the immense reporting requirements levied upon the management teams.

Years later, I read the now-famous words of a famous Wall Street speculator that said this: “Gambling” is a venture without calculation; “speculation” is a venture with calculation.”

Walking up to the ticket window at Woodbine and placing a bet on Malarctic Nag because you like the color of the jockey’s tights would not be classified as “handicapping” nor “speculating” because there was no calculation. It was a random selection based on no prior history of performance. If, by contrast, you watched how it ran beautifully in the slop and it was raining that day, those tender hooves would not be affected thanks to the moisture, and it would be a reasonable speculation because there was calculation involved in that decision.

Junior mining companies, including the explorers, if researched properly, are not to be considered “gambling” because of the immense reporting requirements levied upon the management teams. In prior times, due diligence involved buying the penny mining “expert” a drink at the local watering hole for his next “hot tip” and then loading up because you had it “on good information” that they were about to make a discovery.

That, my friends, is gambling. Poring over page after page of geochemical and geophysical surveys, many of which are found on sedar.com and date back fifteen years while under different ownership, after speaking with contacts that have decades of experience in a particular region or with a particular type of geology and then putting the data into a cause-effect format is actually a very sophisticated yet rudimentary form of calculation. It is like looking at the Daily Racing Form at the “heats.”

Like everything else in life, if you put in the hours, you usually have success, and in the world of junior exploration and development, you can have all of the inputs called correctly, and you can assemble all of the data properly, but if the two goddesses of the junior mining universe — Mother Nature and Lady Luck — refuse to bless you, then you are either waiting a long time (at best) or kissing your money goodbye (at worst).

As we hurtle down the home stretch of what has been a very difficult year, the bulls are calling for 4,400 whilst the bears see 3,000, and with both now screaming their cases with decibel levels resembling a 747 at takeoff, it might be a good idea to minimize expectations moving into 2023

The investing world has finally entered an era of non-interference by central bankers and sovereign treasury departments, not so much out of choice but more out of necessity, because they know that accelerating inflation rates around the globe are forcing civil unrest.

Knowing that the elitists that control 90% of the world’s wealth only thrive when they have an obedient populace chasing the clearly-crafted dream of untold riches, status, and social media popularity and recognition.

When the lure of such achievement is finally and summarily dismissed by a generational metamorphosis of expectations, it becomes the personal nightmare of the privileged classes because the tools they have used since 1910’s Jekyll Island event (resulting in the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913) have been rendered obsolete in 2022 by the arrival of a 9% inflation monster and a bear market in stocks.

For the return of Mother Nature’s blessing to the junior miners, the new and very much younger generation of speculators must be repelled by technology and crypto and enticed by physical ownership of hard assets. Once physical gold and silver become accepted by the Millennial and Gen-X crowd, then the offshoots, such as the junior producers, developers, and explorers, will rise like the Phoenix and take their rightful places at the head of the Table of Outsized Returns.

With my portfolio suffering from the apathy surrounding some very well-positioned (and well-financed) junior mining companies, I have allocated some 15% to the double-leveraged SPY ETF trading under the symbol of UPR:US where purchases in late-September/early October have me ahead 20.75%, hanging on to that gain for dear life in order to either add to my metals or re-allocate to the volatility trade (UVXY:US) which is down from its yearly high of US$26.22 to the unfathomable level of US$7.66 before closing the week at US$7.75.

As we hurtle down the home stretch of what has been a very difficult year, the bulls are calling for 4,400 whilst the bears see 3,000, and with both now screaming their cases with decibel levels resembling a 747 at takeoff, it might be a good idea to minimize expectations moving into 2023 because the truly contrarian viewpoint is to expect nothing but sideways action until mid-January.

Would that it could be so . . .

Michael Ballanger Disclaimer:

This letter makes no guarantee or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. Nothing contained herein is intended or shall be deemed to be investment advice, implied or otherwise. This letter represents my views and replicates trades that I am making but nothing more than that. Always consult your registered advisor to assist you with your investments. I accept no liability for any loss arising from the use of the data contained on this letter. Options and junior mining stocks contain a high level of risk that may result in the loss of part or all invested capital and therefore are suitable for experienced and professional investors and traders only. One should be familiar with the risks involved in junior mining and options trading and we recommend consulting a financial adviser if you feel you do not understand the risks involved.

Disclosures:
1) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of Michael Ballanger and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. Michael Ballanger is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not involved in any aspect of the article preparation. Michael Ballanger was not paid by Streetwise Reports LLC for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: None. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

3) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports’ terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

4) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the decision to publish an article until three business days after the publication of the article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.