RE: Reasons for volatilityHistorically, coming out of a bear market into a bull market, juniors do considerably better in terms of initial performance. Conversely, when coming out of a bull market into a bear market, juniors perform the worst. Juniors are high beta, which means they are extremely volatile. A lot of people are selling and hoarding cash. They're even bailing out of quality gold stocks into cash, because the fear is that real right now. 2012 could be an absolutely horrific year in the markets. For the past several months, it's the shorts who have been the ones making money. The "long" game is not in play right now.