Tursk and Puzzleman,

Thank you both for your comments on gold backwardation, and also for the "handholder" comments.

In researching the backwardation issue, I have found a few commentators who say Fekete and others are getting excited about nothing, but I appreciate the clarification in your post about the time frame being important. The more frequent and, more importantly, the longer in duration these occurrences, the more they would seem to indicate that something is afoot.

From a psychology standpoint, I find what I am going through increasingly interesting: Despite the fact that I am fairly confident that gold/silver and pm stocks will eventually take off and that I know such a move is part of a much bigger matrix of events, I feel the need to overanalyze things on the micro level.

This, I feel, is what leads to the most stress in "sticking to my guns." On days when I can concentrate on the big picture, I feel much better. Thus, a macro-level indicator like gold backwardation helps me hold fast, knowing that things are progressing in the direction we believe them to be, even if, on the micro level, gold and our stocks seem to be stuck in deep mud.

Thanks again,

stone