Oh OK...makes sense now. In late Dec. of last year PM (silver in particular) had fallen from grace, and investors were interested in liquidating (to buy all those Christmas gifts), sentiment was very negative, and Jim was just going with the flow. As a side bar, the day after Christmas I sold a big chuck of my small PM miner stocks and bought a monster box of silver eagles (spot was in the $27s and I paid just over $30 ea for them). This turned out to be the right move as mining stocks did not participate (generally speaking) in silver's run up to $37 we saw in the coming months. Jim was right about avoiding gold mining stocks, and gold has been much less volitile since (compared to silver). What would he say now? I wonder. S~P