Up is down, and down is up....This market cannot be logically analyzed. It is an exercise of futility, as it is not operating on a logical premise. Example, the market hears the word "tapering", and immediately begins a free-fall. Tapering in this case is reducing the flow of money creating out of thin air. In other words, free money. If there's no free money, they don't want to play (invest) anymore. Then we have weak data being delivered a few days later, showing perhaps the economy isn't so rosy. What happens? We rally! Yay! Um......really?.....yes, really.....because weak data means a weaker economy, which means the Fed will keep printing the gold old free money and keep the ride running. So, yay! Let's bid up stocks! Weak data? No worries, we're getting free money! The fact that interest rates have moved up substantially plays no role in their analysis of investing. Free money is free money, and that's good, and that means the economy is good, and that means we buy stocks. So the lemmings think. The institutional money knows it. They are in the process of unloading their shares to the lemmings that are buying it. And all that debt? No worries, the government will "find" a way to pay it down.....even if interest rates are beginning to rise. And yet the US dollar and US stocks are relatively strong with all this going on. Why? #1, becuase the bagholders are buying both. #2 US stocks and the dollar are the least dirtiest shirt in the closet....there's no other viable choices. But everything reverts to the mean, and the dollar's day of reckoning will have to be met at some point, most likely sooner than later. The rest of the world won't stay a mess. They'll eventually get their own problems under control, and when that point comes, watch the dollar drop like a rock. In the mean time, gold and silver are basically sitting in 1999 all over again. Nobody wants them. Except, of course, the manipulators. Those being the bullions banks. They are now at pre-2000 levels for the amount of shorts held on gold. In other words, they are not very keen on gold going much lower. They have been accumulating the gold that the lemmings have been selling. The smart money institutions have been accumulating the cheap miner equities that the lemmings have been selling. They are loading their gun. This time around, their guns won't be six-shooters, they'll be oozies. In other words, they will ride this next wave much higher than the 2008 transfer-of-wealth that was orchestrated. The lemmings who have sold will serve a purpose...to fuel the next leg up even higher. Dummies selling SSL/SAND for $5? Survival of the fittest. Dumb money goes to smart money yet again. Don't let fear determine your destiny. Just do you own research, and ask yourself a simple question....has anything changed?