painful The banks typically push gold through hedge fund stop loss points ahead of rate hikes, while claiming the rate hikes will make gold fall down. The huge shorting scams the banks have run on the gold miners while the miners set record cash flow numbers would be akin to having Exxon trade at 20year lows while hitting record cash flow. That would never happen. Only in the gold sector can they get away with this type of thing, and only as long as there is no serious unleveraged institutional investment. That investment is near, but not quite here. More stk mkt and bond market pain, and more inflation, is required to make it happen. For now, instead of "Nine Is Divine", perhaps I should rename the senior gold stocks portfolio "Nine Is Swine"? Watching gold stocks careen under their December lows on record cash flow while bullion is far above its December low, you can see why I link buying gold stocks to buy points for bullion. If bullion has not arrived at a buy zone, be very careful about loading up on gold stocks until that happens, let alone doing it in a deflationary environment. Gold is risk-off, and does well in a deflationary risk-off environment, but gold stocks need inflation to consistently outperform gold. The bull era for gold bullion is fundamentally underway now. As the world gold council notes, most of the long term price appreciation for gold that is retained has come and will come from Chindian income growth. Gold stocks are not ready to join bullion in the bull era, and that's because Chindians have little interest in the mining stocks, and so Western unleveraged institutional buying oriented around inflation is required for the miners to join the bull era party alongside bullion and bitcoin. As always, consider the use of put options if you are more gold stock oriented than bullion. The use of put options is helpful, but optional. The use of all the intestinal fortitude you can muster isn't optional. It's mandatory. Let's bring all the optional and mandatory tools required for the bull era onto the price gridlines now and I'll see you there!