Juniors And Metals For September 9, 2012

After leaping like a scalded cat these past two weeks, gold hit an all-time high against the Euro on Monday, rising above (EU) 1,360 for the first time. The end of summer may be a week or two hence, but as we noted last week, the end of the doldrums came earlier than even the early Labour Day. Silver also has performed handsomely, closing the silver:gold ratio from its 57:1 mid-summer ratio down to 51:1 this week.

Always the last (or so it seems) to know, the big banks piled upon one another with revised upwards forecasts for the gold price. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and B. of A. Merrill Lynch all went bullish last week. Latest to join the fray was Switzerland's United Bandits and Swindlers (UBS) – don't blame us: that's what the Swiss were calling them during the meltdown four years ago – who upped their three-month-out estimate for gold by $100, from $1,750 to $1,850 an ounce. UBS also oops'd their silver forecast from $32 an ounce to $37 three months hence.

(Conspiracy theorists sensibly figure that when the Big Banksters go public with bullish forecasts, they're privately getting ready to short silver and gold.) But forget the conspiracies; the current prices are more than adequate to drive both early- and late-stage juniors into increased share prices and heightened volume.

We're not stock-pickers here. But as a whole, we see the junior sector right now the way the market saw it in the post-2003 era. There could be fortunes to made. Consider the recent antics of the European Central Bank, which is starting to act like the U.S. Fed, buying debt from its client governments. This so-called “quantitative easing” just turns the printing presses on – forgive us, not just on, but cranking faster. It's the only thing central bankers in the U.S. and Europe know how to do, according to a recent interview with Dr. Doom & Gloom, Marc Faber:

“I have roughly 25% of my assets in gold. I buy every month, and I will never, ever sell it as long as people such as Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Obama, Biden, Bernanke, and Geithner are in government. I will never sell it. Never,” said Mr. Faber.

The nastiness in the South Africa gold fields continues, with several majors hit with strikes and violence at the PGM and gold properties, MineWeb reports here . . . ZeroHedge's Tyler Durden notes the China imported more gold this year than the European Central Bank holds in its entirety, a scary thought. . .

So let's see: Shortages of gold, PGMs (and likely silver) are on the immediate horizon. Might be worth rubbing elbows with the folks who are looking for these elemental minerals on North American soil. The players will be hanging out in Toronto later this month, and in Spokane in late October. Would it not make sense to hang with them? After all, mineral juniors are limited by law and regulation and markets as to how many shares they can issue. The ECB and the Fed are not

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