LT--you are right about the dilution and HL will have a tough time going to the old highs, but $20 silver and $1,000+ gold will certainly help. HL is a solid producer and they always move first when PMs break out. Explorers and more speculative miners (OTC, Pinks, etc) usually pop toward the end.
I am not an expert trader. I follow the charts, news and technicals and make my best guess. Sometimes no matter how much DD you do, it still seems like guessing. I do best when I take easy profit when handed to me while maintaining a core position. Gotta take stops too.
We're reaching a tipping point with gold and silver. Silver in particular has been the whipping boy for powerful short entities (JPM, GS in particular) and if they lose control of it we could see another Madoff situation. It won't take much buying, either. A few billion slips of fiat dollars poured into silver could cause the reflective metal to double overnight. Easily. Why the Saudis and Chinese aren't doing that already is a bit baffling. Perhaps they hold too many dollars and don't mind gold and silver suppression because that's an easy way to paint a rosy, happier picture for the dollar. That should end now that they're seeing they've been duped--as evidenced by the Fed news the other day. Trillions and trillions can't be printed from thin air without consequences for the dollar!
--M