Yup, gold and silver up, ECU and some of my juniors gagging, as usual. SLV still king of the hill.

To me, the guys with their algorithms playing these juniors up and down remind me of the card counters in the casinos not too many years ago who cleaned up big time with their little card counting algorithms until the pit bosses (the regulators) got wise and put a stop to it, increasing shoe size for one thing, but applying a good bit of violence here and there to make their point. I was around back then, never got to try it, and still remember some of the more vivid stories.

A mathematician named Thorpe started it back in the 60's with his book Beat the Dealer. Could have been one of the first to apply an algorithm, imo, to put the odds in the bettor's favor.

Now I've read that roughly half of the phd type mathematics majors head for Wall Street after graduate school instead of industry, since they can make millions as an algorithm-making quant instead of thousands designing some new spread sheet for duPont, or whatever.

The difference between the algorithm trading stock guys and the card counters is that the casinos have their pit boss regulators to enforce the no card counting rule, whereas the stock markets have no such thing. Only a bunch of no account regulators making believe they're doing their job when, imo, they're simply retired on full salary.