Miners Making Progress in 2023

In this post I will show various charts of the progress miners and metal are making thus far in 2023. I will include various ratio charts to illustrate just how well our holdings are performing, but I will save new trade setups and signals for a separate post. First, lets take a look at the SILJ etf WEEKLY chart, now trying to work over the horizontal trend line. I fully expect this fund, which is comprised more of mid-cap producers than actual junior explorers and miners, to make significant all time highs in the next 1-2 years, which would be huge gains from today’s levels. Not only do I expect miners and metals to be the best performing group for the foreseeable future, they might be the ONLY group to own, as just about everything else drops. Simply put, there is not much competition for safe havens any longer, as the 40 year bond bull has rolled over and gotten battered, bitcoin and cryptos even worse, being down over 60% last year (and many cryptos down 90%, while exchanges like FTX vaporized to nothingness), even real estate has turned the corner and while at least its tangible, can still drop sharply at times like in 2008. Meanwhile, everybody should own some miners and metal, and almost nobody does, even long term gold bugs. What an opportunity this is, as money has just begun to flow back into the group.

SILJ is working through that area where I have drawn the horizontal trend line. Keep in my trend lines are subjective and can be drawn wherever a person wants, so its best to think of the line more as an area or zone, than a line in the sand. Not only are SILJ and the other miner etfs like GDX and GDXJ trading above their 30 week moving averages, note the moving average itself has just turned higher, which suggests a longer term trend has likely just begun and could last 1-2 years as mentioned above.

Now lets take a quick look at the daily time frame, and since most of the miner etfs are looking more similar than different, we can swap out SILJ for GDX, which is the biggest etf if the group. Personally, I am invested more in SILJ since I think it has the most potential upside of the mining etfs, and I like that while its called the Silver Junior Miners etf, it actually ends up being diversified between gold, silver and base metals, as there are very few, if any pure silver miners. Silver is mostly produced as a by product of other metals mining, and many of the stocks in the SILJ are roughly half gold production and half silver production. IN the chart below, we see GDX, along with most etfs in the group, has just seen the 50 day MA cross above the 200 day MA, also know as a golden cross. also like it is mostly comprised of mid-cap producers that have lots of upside (more than majors), and less risk than junior explorers which have been starved of capital and usually don’t perform best until the latter stages of a bull move. Don’t get me wrong, I like true juniors as well, but only when it’s their time, and we might take some profits off the table at some point and put that money to work in dinky juniors for the last leg, but isn’t imminent because explorers will have to raise cash after a long drought, as soon as their stock prices rise. First the majors move, then the mid-caps, then the more risky little junior explorers.

Enough for today, in the next posts I will show some new setups and positions we have just begun to nibble on, such as natural gas, and why we bought the commodity instead of the companies that produce it, for the time being, as well as some important ratio charts to illustrate what is happening beneath the surface. If one is not yet invested in the precious metals or the miners, now is an ideal time to do so or as good as it will get since late October was best, with the benefit of hindsight. This bull has a long way to go with much higher prices ahead, more so considering there are not many viable alternative now. I have put my money where my mouth is, and am aggressively long for myself, family and friends.