I totally agree - and it would be true of someone who invested in tech stocks and got out at the right moment, and someone who rode Nortel to the ground - they would have completely different outlooks.

And to follow up on a point you made - inflation is a monetary event  - all prices rise as the currency gets debased - gas prices going up, per se, is not inflation.  Just a pedantic, Milton Friedman point - which I wanted to bring to the fore.  People mistake rising prices in a sector for inflation, and this is relevant to the gold bubble nonsense being put out there.  The price of gold is not rising, the currencies are failing.

Good  thoughts GL.

Rants and raves against the system and the grave injustices are all well and good for blowing off some steam, but if that steam turns into a cloud that blinds our judgment, we are led into poor decision making.  When we think something is unfair, we already have a bias for the fair outcome. Nothing wrong with that, that is our moral compass.  But if we make investment decisions based on our ideas of fair and unfair, we can be deaf to what the market is telling us. I have been guilty of that several times and paid the price. Hopefully the lessons learned and wiser heads here will help me make better decisions as we move forward.

The unfolding of the action in the miners is going to very interesting, for those (like me) who have skin in the game and for those that don't.   But, as you say, that's the risk/reward that we choose.  I have chosen the rollercoaster. Wheeeee, been up and whooosh been down. Will it go up again or is this the end of the ride? Will I choose when to get off, or will I be thrown off?

8:15 a.m.:

but in my VERY humble opinion, the POSX is headed lower and quickly. 

Been looking at the following all morning:  Weekly, Daily, 4hr (key chart), 1hr, 10min.

USD/JPY... broke support Friday in a BIG way

AUD/USD... big pop off of support on Friday

WTI... nice break through resistance on Friday and support looks good.

Silver... nice break through resistance with a pullback to support still happening.  Expect a bounce and rally this week.

If you're a stacker, may be the cheapest chance to buy right now.  I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that $30 was the bottom.  You may get a pullback after the upcoming rally, when the POSX bounces off the 200ma, but it'll be back to the $32 range after we smack $33.50 or maybe $34... and after that, I'd bet we see the Silver climb begin.  It'll be a slow climb until we break the $37.50 area again, with a pullback here and there... but a climb none the less.  I guess if you stack a few oz's at a time, a dollar or two doesn't mean anything.  And it shouldn't.  Just get it.  Period.  Your family will be glad you did.  If you still swap paper...well, best of luck to you.  I hope you're doing good with your profits.  There are lots of folks who would love to be in your shoes.  Consider yourself blessed to be able to do so.

Big prediction:  2nd week of June... SPY will take off...as the POSX tanks below the 200ma.  Spain will be a non-stop headline maker, with Italy waiting in the wings.

Really sucks... nice to see Silver showing signs of life, but all of us who live in the US and have to budget are going to get smacked with a new round of higher prices for essentials, while our non-essentials (and real estate) lose value.  Don't get me wrong, we've had it too good for too long...we've become complacent.  But other people all over the world have it much, much worse.  It's time we took our medicine.  Sucks...but it's unavoidable. 

Oh, and yes, I realize it's all "manipulated"... but c'mon, you cannot deny the trends.  You just can't.  They tell you everything.  We're living the collapse... one day at a time.

Just some random thoughts.  Check the charts...what do you see??

Oh...btw...  THANKS TF!  Great interview with Andy!

Be well, y'all!

C1

21 Sad Facts About The Deindustrialization Of Britain (& applicable to most western nations) :-

http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-factory-job-loss-oil-2011-11?op=1

Said it before, but 15 trillion to 16 trillion happened really quickly - this could happen faster than they think.  Then the headlines will turn towards the States, and away from Europe, and the slow, managed, descent of both currencies can continue.  But I think gold will have to nudge up.

"Debt ceiling looms again – Congress has a full plate 

12 April 2012 

The US government might be bumping up against the debt ceiling 

already by October, at the height of the presidential election 

campaign and significantly earlier than many analysts seem to 

expect. 

• According to the White House’s 2013 budget proposal (hidden 

in Table 6-2), US federal debt subject to the statutory 

borrowing limit will be USD 16,333.9bn on 30 September 

2012. The debt ceiling is USD 16,394bn. 

• The possibility of reaching a deal to raise the debt ceiling is 

pretty slim before the election. 

• Therefore, the Treasury will  likely use the same accounting 

moves as last year to push the drop-dead date until after the 

election. So by January 2013 at the latest, the debt ceiling will 

have to be raised again at the same time as significant tax-cut 

expirations and spending reductions are set to take effect.  ...

...

Risk of a major political accident is very real,  

and it might come sooner rather than later."

http://newsroom.nordeamarkets.com/en/files/2012/04/Debt-ceiling-April-20...

...screaming jet. 

That's the fastest trillion I've seen accumulated yet and it's quickening.

Bad outcome likely on the red ink horizon....

I'm not much of a believer in TA. This is why I stack when ever gold is near or below the trend line:

http://www.caseyresearch.com/gsd/sites/default/files/Gold%20Trend%20Line.jpg

Clearly we could be $1300 to $2000 and nothing out of the ordinary would be occurring IMO. 

I see your point.  I spend most of my waking hours on blogs, learning, planning, prepping, stacking.  It can easily give one "SHTF fatigue."  I've tried to moderate my online time but things are moving so fast now that we're watching history unfold in real-time.  

One thing I've come to believe is that the likelihood of a singular SHTF moment is less than the incremental march of tyrrany were currently experiencing.  Everyone is waiting and watching for the Reichstag moment, when in the past 30 days numerous little events (EPA Regs killing bacon in Michigan, for one of but many examples) continue to erode our freedoms.

I may be totally wrong and one day we'll wake up to the same programming on all 800 channels, telling us that our USD has been devalued 80% overnight and martial law and bank holidays were implemented WYWS.  But I doubt it, and even if it does come, I feel prepared to weather the first round of die-offs.  I was the guy taking my surplus ice around to my customers after Ike, driving my care with the air on while whistling since I had 30 gallons of gas put up while others stood in two-hour lines at Chevron.  Prep on, grasshopper.

CRITICAL FACTORS THAT WILL IMPACT SILVER

It gave me extra inspiration after listening to Turd and Andy to finish my article.  I agree whole-heartedly with Andy and his views on gold and silver.  It is simply amazing how MSM propaganda can even infiltrate gold and silver bugs here and on other websites.  My article is to explain how some of this MSM rubbish does not pass the SMELL TEST.

Here is one chart from my article.  There are 15 charts and graphs:

The notion that INCREASED inventories on the COMEX will impact the price of silver is a meaningless.  I prove this with historical examples.  Gold and Silver Sentiment have to be controlled as all the US Dollar has backing it is confidence.... or the lack thereof.

The article comes out tomorrow on many internet Financial websites.

I am lifting a comment made on another site by "Bowskill" who signed off as John. It struck me as genuine, if so the content is important and it was an insight not available to premier analyst Jeff Christian writing as Metalfacts to whom John is responding...

Several pages back, MetalsFacts wrote:

The average operating cost of production for gold in the world at present is around $670 per ounce. Full in costs, including discovery, finance, corporate overhead, interest rates, depreciation, etc., are around $800, maybe $850 per ounce. So, gold mining on average at present is returning about a 100% profit. There's a long way to go from current prices before production would be constrained. 

I have a close friend who was a senior geologist and moved up to managing gold mines in Australia, South America, North America and Africa. He told me that costs are divided into cash expenses and capital expenses. He more or less concurs that operating cash expenses are around the US$600 mark pretty much in any mine. However the "capital expenses" are usually understated and the actual total costs per ounce comes in between $1000 and $1300. The real bottom line profit margin is more like 15% than 100% in many cases. He says a sustained drop in gold price much below US$1500 per ounce will start to see mines mothballed and production cease. For that reason, miners believe there is a higher floor to gold prices than many think.

Energy costs are about 30% of cash expenses or around $180/ounce currently.

The reason that "capital expenses" are understated is the way miners go looking for capital investment to open new mines. They write a prospectus to financiers hilighting the cash expenses and hiding the real capital costs in the fine print, thereby giving the impression that the investment is safe.

This information was given to me over a beer, but it was from the horses mouth.

Done.

Ah, yes...a classic for sure. 

XTY,

I agree with you!  Good communication skills is important.  Nothing wrong with raising the bar.   I'm not offended.  Thank you!

Excellent discussion, very informative and full of learning (except of few personal attacks/fights).

As I made my silver chart as a copy/paste from about 10 years past silver action at some point which before that point matched in pattern the pattern before March 13, 2011, and the silver bubble in May I saw coming, just changing time/value scales to match the current scales, and PROJECTED forward i.e. copy pasted its part that went beyond the matching part, i can say that due to the charts accuracy so far:

The markets at that point of time and in that time and value scale were manipulated almost EXACTLY in the same way as TODAY.

Does not say much for increased manipulation argument. In fact, the pattern I took from past was in much smaller time/value scale, almost unnoticeable.

What was common , though, both before current (after 2008) and then market action there was a shock event that brought EXTREME cooperation (groupthink, herding) in all markets that later , in silver market, deco operated (individual participants looking after their interests in more and more divergent ways)  in the same way, producing the same pattern.

What my idea was, each market as a system has its distinctive way to decooperate ( seen in price over time chart pattern) after shock events, which should more or less repeat itself every time these shock events lead to ultimate freezing, or herding, of market at question.

Similar to an eg analog electronic circuit: by putting a delta impulse at the input, the circuit based on its internal "black box" structure will give similar output every time, on any scale as long as it stays linear ( i.e. input amplitude is not too big/small). The black box action on delta impulse or sharp loss/gain in value= Heaviside step function ( shock event) will then be described by a single analog parameter =chart =so called  transient response function.

If the system ( market) internal structure (and that includes everything)  does not  change much during time, it will always respond the same way. Well , of course, real shocks differ very much, but some of them are so strong that action on market can be considered similar.