Woe, woe and thrice woe

Pundits are falling over themselves to explain the collapse in gold and silver prices. I admit that, against my better judgement, I have been reading some of the proffered explanations. What else can you do when the market falls into the hands of a bunch of  inmates from a mental institution who have escaped en masse. I promised myself never to do it again after some sessions looking at bulletin boards to try to fathom why a favourite share was being washed down the plug hole. The fantastic nonsense that I found there was unbelievable, literally. A whole group of people whistling to each other in the dark. Not a shred of real evidence offered to explain their far fetched theories.  Back to today. The two most interesting fantasies that I found were

• nobody has obligations denominated in gold so they have to sell it to raise cash to repay their debts
• governments worry about the public reaction to a gold price above $2000 so they are putting the fear of God into gold bugs by selling the gold market. This one has a rider - that they won't be able to hold the line for long and a massive reaction will follow sending the gold price into the stratosphere. 
• Silver reacts even more than gold in this scenario because it is a thin market. 

The silver price movement really is frightening. It has fallen as low as $26.17 which is close to half of its all time high of $49.86 which is where it was just 5 months ago on the 25th April


I stick to my baby thrown out with the bath water theory for precious metals. And I have been punished for thinking that the bottom had arrived late on Friday night. What I bought then (only a tiny bit) has been devastated by today's movement. And my assumption that the stock market had resumed its fall this morning when the UK market opened (again a small holding) was washed away in the upward tide that followed.

Today must be marked down to a not very happy experience. Never try to catch a falling knife - they say. But you don't always know it has stopped falling. If you don't jump with too much cash and if you avoid leverage, you can bear the consequences of your mistakes.

So what can we say about tomorrow. The DJI chart shows that the market is being supported by that line I drew days ago but it is reluctant to rise so I put my money, but not much of it on a continuing fall. Or is that spike in volume on Thursday the harbinger of a change in direction?

Visitors this weekend and I prepared a nice little pork and prune number. Recipe for those of you who are interested was:

• Cubed pork (none of the ready cubed pork on the shelves in Sainsbury's was marked as outdoor bred so I got the instore butcher to cut me up a leg joint.) I honestly don't know the weight but guess it was about a pound and a half
• A couple of onions roughly chopped
• About three quarters of a bag of chopped prunes
• a pint of port and white wine mixed
• a pint of chicken stock (I use Knorr "Touch of Taste")
• Olive oil for frying
• Small handful of juniper berries
• A heaped serving spoon of flour

I fried the onions very gently in a casserole pan, and the pork separately in a frying pan till it was brown. I then tipped the pork into the casserole and added the flour and cooked until it was absorbed by the oil and other juices - still on low heat. I then added the wines, the stock and the prunes and raised the heat until the the liquid was boiling and then added the juniper berries. I then put the casserole with a lid on  into an oven at 180 degrees and cooked for two hours. This reduced the liquid to a wonderful black sauce. I reheated in time to eat and added abit of water because the sauce was a bit too thick.