Fait Accompli
Contributed Opinion

1. Green Bridge is a billboard sponsor of Streetwise Reports and pays SWR a monthly sponsorship fee between US$3,000 and US$6,000.
2. As of the date of this article, officers, contractors, shareholders, and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Green Bridge, Fitzroy Minerals, and Grafton Resources.
3. Michael Ballanger: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own securities of:  Green Bridge, Fitzroy Minerals, and Grafton Resources. My company has a financial relationship with: None. My company has purchased stocks mentioned in this article for my management clients: None. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector.
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Michael Ballanger Disclosures

This letter makes no guarantee or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. Nothing contained herein is intended or shall be deemed to be investment advice, implied or otherwise. This letter represents my views and replicates trades that I am making but nothing more than that. Always consult your registered advisor to assist you with your investments. I accept no liability for any loss arising from the use of the data contained on this letter. Options and junior mining stocks contain a high level of risk that may result in the loss of part or all invested capital and therefore are suitable for experienced and professional investors and traders only. One should be familiar with the risks involved in junior mining and options trading and we recommend consulting a financial adviser if you feel you do not understand the risks involved.

Well, there you have it.

No sooner had the pundits sounded the death knell for U.S. equities on Thursday afternoon than the Wall Street "conspiriati" sprang into full response mode, taking the venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average to record highs above 50,000 for the first time in history. Mind you, the DJIA got nothing in the form of "company" in its move to record high ground as the S&P 500 remains 1% and the NASDAQ 100 remains 4.33% below their respective highs.

Portfolio managers the world over are now moving from the "dark side" of "Mag Seven obsession" to the heavenly side of "portfolio diversification," led by a massive move into the "consumer staples." Consumer staples stocks refer to publicly traded companies that produce or sell essential goods—products that consumers need and continue to buy regardless of economic conditions. Because demand for these items remains stable even during recessions, these stocks are often called "consumer defensive" investments.

Constructed around the theory that the American (and global) economy is gearing down into a slow growth / no growth morass of weakening employment trends and a more sobering expectation of the impact of the "AI" data farm buildout, portfolio managers have decided to take profits on their multi-year, multi-bagger technology issues and move capital to the "boring" side of the ledger. Back in the day, if a portfolio manager ever needed to enter the queue of the unemployed, they diverted client assets from "growth" to "value" on the assumption that they could be viewed as "prudently conservative" but as horn-rimmed glasses and pointy-toed shoes were solidly back in vogue, the only active managers that counted were the ones that took on "rockstar" personas. These limo-renting, Metallica-loving superstars of past eras refused to even utter the word "defense" in discussing market strategy. It was "buy any and all dips with maximum leverage and absence of stop losses" and just like the weeks and months preceding October 1987 and March 2001 and September 2008, that strategy worked well "until it didn't" and when markets imploded after unprecedented runs back then, then and only then could the value managers be allowed to come out of the back rooms, remove their fake noses and moustaches, and actually speak with clients. Being down less than 20% after those crashes earned one a badge of honour and the undying gratitude of the one client stupid enough to go with "value" over "growth."

The S&P 500 was down five of the prior six sessions prior to Friday's pre-Super Bowl extravaganza, but regardless of the aggressive selling and shorting earlier in the week, the "flow geeks" report that institutional cash is still at historic lows and positioning is bullishly crowded. Nevertheless, the DJIA looks "just fine" from a technical perspective…

After all the gnashing and gnarling of teeth last weekend, gold put in a stellar performance by spitting directly into the faces of the bears, holding firm above the 50-dma despite knifing down through it at the January month-end to its intraday low of around $4,400. Gold went out for the week, 12.82% above that low, and registered a 5% recovery for the week.

Considering the wails and shrieks of protest through the Twitterverse and in podcasts the world over, I thought that the greatest claims of "MANIPILATION!" and "BANKSTER INTERFERENCE!" came from the kiddies that only just discovered the precious metals sandbox and the triple-leverage ETFs serving as newfound toys for the taking. Both gold and silver were ripe for a fall as both went into vertical overdrive for most of the month of January. As it stands, the gold correction last month is closer to the October correction than anything vaguely resembling a top, but the same is not necessarily the case for silver.

Silver survived a test of the 100-dma during the overnight session on Friday and actually recovered to close above the 50-dma at $77.98, which was encouraging. However, it spent three solid weeks in the $80-121 range reining in an entire army of new, fuzzy-cheeked longs looking to join Michael Oliver in the quest for "$500 silver by summer!!" which means that there are oodles upon oodles of trapped longs looking — PRAYING — for any kind of rally so as to minimize the egregious losses they are now carrying. For this reason (as well as a few others), silver is going to need to get going in order to join gold in the resumption of the bull market. If silver falters and the gold-to-silver ratio begins to move higher again, then the health of the precious metals bull market is going to be called into question. The jury is out.

Copper had a rough week and seemed to coincide with the shifting narrative regarding global growth. If portfolio managers were reallocating assets into the more defensive consumer staples sector, then it stands to reason that economically sensitive commodities like copper would come under pressure. I would beg to refute that argument as the electrical grids in China and in North America are in need of upgrades regardless of the outlook for global growth. The other story floating around was that the software developers who were getting clobbered all week were suffering from the growing concern that the "AI buildout" may not be as economically stimulative as previously thought. I refute that as well. Those data farms are going to get built, and copper is going to be used, especially if these hyperscalers are being forced to secure their own power stations, which will require copper.

As long as copper holds the 50-dma at $5.66, the bull market will remain in place, although a short, sharp probe to the 100-dma at $5.28 would be nerve-wracking but a solid buying opportunity. I am completely conflicted because while I own a number of copper juniors (Fitzroy Minerals Inc. (FTZ:TSX.V; FTZFF:OTCQB), Grafton Resources Inc. (GFT:CSE; PMSXF:OTC), Green Bridge Metals Corp. (GRBM:CSE; GBMCF:OTC; J48:FWB)), I am praying for an opportunity to replace my beloved Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX:NYSE), which for years was a core holding until the Grasberg Mine "mud rush" spooked me out of it. A pullback in copper to the 100-dma would no doubt bring on weakness in the senior copper names, so therein lies the conflict.

The TSX Venture Exchange was on a tear for most of the month of January, but it seems like the silver slam at month-end put a sudden end to the fun and frolic that accompanied the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference earlier in the month. Since the 35% crash in silver, the TSXV has been tracking silver perfectly as if every junior explorer and developer were silver-centric issuers. With gold at a hair under $5,000 per ounce, silver at $78, and copper at $5.88, the cash flow generation by producers is going to be verging upon the obscene this quarter, which means the M&A cycle should soon be firing up. If the juniors stay depressed for very much longer, the bargains will begin to disappear as the mid-tier and senior producers pull out their chequebooks.

One junior explorer that I own and like a great deal is Green Bridge Metals Corp. (CA$0.32/US$0.23), which is currently drilling their Titac Property that lies within the Duluth Mining District in northeastern Minnesota. Four Cu–Ni–Ti- V properties provide district-scale exploration opportunity over a 100 km strike length within 8,460 hectares, which provide opportunities for high-grade massive sulphide and disseminated styles of Cu-Ni ±PGEs mineralization. I like the fact that these properties are geologically "de-risked" to a large degree and are situated proximate to the important Glencore-Teck Twin Metals Project. which has caught the eye of the White House deemed critical in the permitting process.

As we all await the arrival of rational minds to one of the most geologically prospective regions in the entire continental United States, GRBM/GBMCF is drilling out the Titac in an attempt to expand the inferred titanium resource, a mineral deemed "critical" by the lawmakers in Washington. Any movement on the political side, and this company gets rerated higher in a New York nanosecond.

I am off to the sunny island of Curacao for a couple of weeks in order to break up the month of February and to escape the coldest Canadian winter I can recall in decades. Windchill was minus 38 last evening, so I intend to stay fairly warm and very quiet while I celebrate my birthday and Valentine's Day, all while exploring this lovely Dutch protectorate.

There will be email alerts but no weekly missive until month-end unless, of course, I get bored with collecting shells, avoiding sunburns, and exploring the lovely beaches famous throughout the Caribbean. Of course, by Day Four, I will get bored and probably default back to the keyboards unless I am persuaded by a large and very menacing rolling pin to refrain.