The Correction Has Arrived

We worried it would come, and now it has.

The dreaded correction.

Silver and gold have been clobbered, hit for something like 6 and 9% from their highs at one point. The miners have been hit for more. GDX is down 15% from its Friday highs.

This is quite the slap down, the biggest I can remember for years.

What can I say? It was coming.

How cruel a mistress is silver! She did exactly what she needed to do to suck everyone in, even the doubters like myself: went through $50 to $54, persuaded everyone that this time it’s different, sucked them in and then slapped them down. Oh, silver!

Today we consider what to do next, and we’ll start with the big picture.

There are several possible scenarios. Here are three of them:

1. That’s it. The bull market’s over. Silver reached $50, as it did it 1980 and 2011. Now it corrects, and it’ll be another decade or more before it gets there again. Batten down the hatches: we are going into another bear market.
   
   What we saw in the miners was just a 9-month relief rally, much as we got in 2016. Normal gold mining behaviour - relentless declines, in other words - will soon resume.

2. You don’t understand, gold is being remonetized. This is a new paradigm. Buy the dips. We’ll be back at new highs before you know.

3. Nothing goes up in a straight line, not even gold when it is re-entering the money system. Bull markets shake you off. We are going into a sideways correction that is going to last as long as a year. Possibly longer. It is going to frustrate everyone, bull and bear alike. The weak, hot money needs to be purged, the system cleansed of excess, before this thing can get going again. It’s a mid-cycle shake out.

Which of these is it?

And, most importantly of all, what do we do now?

I’m going to give you my opinions on gold, silver, the miners, and the speculative positions in which we own stock.

I’m also going to give you some target prices.

This is what I think happens next.