Wow, the sell off in the pm's has just been brutal in the last few days. And this a.m. is particularly nasty.

It is just a warning shot across the bow as the Great PsyOp continues. The housing bubble is real, huge and the deflationary effects of it popping could be extraordinarily damaging. The financial markets are levered to the hilt as are individual balance sheets. We have a housing and auto recession now and are staring an industrial recession in the face. The financial services economy is running on ever increasing amounts of credit creation. Organic growth is damn near nil and on a real basis is nil. The market wants so bad to have a repeat of 1995 when the Fed engineered the proverbial soft landing. Too bad that we 1) aren't in the middle of an economic expansion but at the tail end of one, and 2) don't have the BIRTH of a housing market bull to rely on for household wealth creation but the death of one.

Based on Bill's prior recommendations I have positions in KRY, SLW and UXG (UGSL). I'm happily way up on KRY and was up on SLW and UXG till recently; now my positions on SLW and UXG are about even, slightly negative on UXG. My goal/plan was to hold for longer term and in each case go for a double in price based on target prices.

Many of these are right at their longer term support lines and there are some that think the drop in gold isn't near done yet.

My inclination since my original goal was to hold these for longer term is/was to hold and maybe even add to the position soon but I was looking for any other opinions.

Thanks

Mike

How about a WMT comment. Does that fit here?

As many have heard, WMT plans to implement variable employee scheduling, based on real time traffic flow data. Employees are to be scheduled as they are deemed needed, and sent home when not. Thus it becomes impossible for the store's low paid employees to budget and very difficult for them to “have a life.� If, for example, you need a babysitter when you go to work, good luck. There's no telling when you'll be called, nor how long you'll stay. Make yourself available at all hours, and you can expect to be called in often. Limit your availability and…well…it's not good for the bottom line.

This comment has no place in a capital markets blog, but maybe it does in a social equity blog. Is there a point at which a company may be pulled from a recommended list due to such practices? I do not mean this disrespectfully. Bill has pulled companies for corporate shenanigans. Walmart, they say, is a major force in checking consumer inflation. That's no small feat. But when it is achieved by beating the snot out of their own people, you have to consider. Their people truly are the little people. I'm not so principled that I'll never shop at WMT but it's never my first or second or third or fourth choice.

I don't work for a brokerage. I've worked many jobs, including some in retail. I haven't merely talked with these people; I've been one of them (not WMT specifically). They are not happy. Sometimes you will find them beaten into submission, but that's not the same. Walmart's not the first outfit to use such a system, but they are the first of size. As Walmart goes, so goes the industry.

I've never written a WMT comment before. I'm not the source of Bill's anti-WMT missives. But this report made me mad.

They walked out at this store….all the more remarkable as there is no union…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15305178/

Bellcow has now shaken off the gold raid. That's a good sign.