Read the new Trey Reik report on gold and the gold stocks

Posted: 20 Mar 2019 12:20 PM PDT

Right here. Another best-of-breed commentator, this time the sharp eye on gold has his say on the stocks that mine the stuff.

Yet another impressive market call from Gary Tanashian

Posted: 20 Mar 2019 11:22 AM PDT

If you, like me and hundreds (perhaps thousands) of others who get Gary Tanashian's NFTRH update mailers, saw the High Priority update published by Gary two hours ago, you would have nailed the gold sector rebound that just kicked in and probably paid for several years of his subscription service in minutes (frankly, he should charge more). Yet another highly impressive and accurate market call from Gary, the best chartist I know. Go see.

The liars and thieves at CEOca are at it again

Posted: 20 Mar 2019 07:29 AM PDT

Your humble scribe's eyes are directed by A. Reader to the den of iniquity that is CEOca, specifically the way in which those self-entitled brats continue to lift, in wholesale and without any sort of permission requested or granted, entire posts from this site. Example here:

You click on the link there and read every single word of the post published on these pages on Monday. This is copyright infringement, you lying two-faced con artist Humphreys. Take it down immediately and also be clear that your scam pusher site has a permanent ban on re-printing a single word of IKN. But that's not all, because just under that full-length rip-off of IKN we get this joker spreading lies about my good person:

That's not true, "Zentrarian". I am not a short seller, nor am I a pump and dump artist (though coming from CEOca, pump-central for the whole sordid Canadian rip-off market, is rather funny. Nor am I buying, holding or selling any of the stocks mentioned. So if you want to play at funstuff Zentrarian, how about I find out your real identity? Be warned that I'm pretty darned good at this game, too. You have 24 hours to issue a full apology and retraction, starting now.

Venezuela: Hope you didn't hold your breath

Posted: 20 Mar 2019 06:15 AM PDT

In The IKN Weekly IKN505 dated January 27th, a piece appeared entitled, "Venezuela: Do not hold your breath". At the time, as much of the world though it was only a matter of hours before the newly self-proclaimed interim president Guaidó would topple the dictator Maduro and his regime. The IKN message that weekend was "well that would be nice, but don't bank on it". 

Here's an extract from the piece. It's held up better than most people's analysis of that week.

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As things stand, President Maduro is keeping a hold on power over President Guaidó, but it now seems to be a case of whoever manages to convince the military generals will win through. However and despite the best wishes of just about all the democratic and free world, be clear that mere “people power” is not going to be enough to dislodge Maduro. I cast my mind back to midweek and recall the amount of people who told me that “Maduro is toast” when in fact, under the circumstances he has so far played his cards carefully and well. One tell is to note how little he has been seen in public, there’s no need for him to convince or play catch-up to the throne pretenders. The situation could indeed change rapidly (army generals moving to Guaidó’s side is top of the list of possible game changers) but no news is always going to be good news for the installed regime. The longer this goes on, the more the support from Russia/China will win out over USA/allies (who will not have the stomach for a hot war). The person risking most is Guaidó, up to and including his life, because if the international concerns decide to defer and wait for another day, it will be the equivalent of throwing the man who would be king under a bus.

As for our sector (or any other opportunity for FDI in fact), the tried and trusted maxim “buy when there’s blood in the streets” is the best guideline, but it also specifically refers to Maduro (supporter) blood. A successful bloody repression of protesters by the armed services means status quo (no matter how much hand-wringing over human rights or police brutality follow), the only way Venezuela becomes a live investment option is with the fall of Maduro and his government (both those things). Then it would be game on, but those assuming a swift resolution are likely to be disappointed. If I had to guess at this point, I would go for continued street protests with violent clashes, a Maduro who stays out of harm’s and microphone’s way (political assassination is a possibility) and inertia setting in that leads nowhere after a few weeks, all akin to the Arab Spring results in places such as Egypt. All this means that we shouldn’t be champing at the bit just yet to deploy our speculative dollars in Venezuelan assets.

Think Zinc: Andy Home does the Zn market

Posted: 20 Mar 2019 05:54 AM PDT

A really interesting piece on the current tight supply in the zinc market by Reuters' ace metals commentator, Andy Home, right here. Well worth yourn time, metalhead.