Here is the Difference Between a Winner and a Loser

When things go well in life or in competitive events, it is quite easy to be upbeat and maintain a sound approach in your attitude and technique. It is, of course, usually when things go poorly that you start to see the difference between winners and losers. Case in point--Have you ever seen a football game where one team had a winning record coming into the game, the other team a losing record? After watching the first quarter of the game or so, you note the score is tied and both teams appear to be evenly-match in terms of talent and intensity. You may wonder--Why does one of these teams have a losing record, with their talent and they appear to be the same as the team with the winning record? Typically, you then see adversity hit. A few turnovers, penalties, botched plays, injuries, or other unfortunate events may even happen to both teams. But the winning team keeps playing the game; Stays upbeat anyway. It does not take out its frustration on each other, getting foolish penalties and compounded its mistakes. Their coaches make astute adjustments and they find ways to win. The losing team puts its collective head down, mopes, and starts bickering with each other. They declare that the world is unfair to them. As you might imagine, the mistakes start rolling in, as do silly penalties. And then you look up at the scoreboard in the fourth quarter and the score is 38-14, after being tied for much of the first half. You wonder, what happened? They seemed to be evenly-match. What happened was that you saw the difference between a winner and a loser. I bring this up because what we saw in the precious metals and miners' space yesterday may have been a small glimpse of the gold bugs changing their mindset from moping losers, who could hold nary a bounce for a good while, into gold bugs who now can regroup from Monday's sharp sell-off, following the rally late-last week. Are gold bugs officially out of the woods as losers, and now newly-minted winners? The answer is they are taking small steps, but have not officially arrived. Gold is flattish as we speak, but miners are in the green. Keep an eye on the gold ETF, seen below on the 30-minute chart, to see if it clears $113 to the upside later today or this week. If it does, I suspect we see a further change in character/mindset in the metals and miners complex. I also raise this issue as the junior gold miners are outperforming again this morning, usually a sign of risk appetite in the space. Metals and miners, overall, remain mired in vicious bear markets. However, sentiment is quite negative and the GDX ETF is back to its 2008 crash lows, with some signs in recent sessions of finding interested buyers down here. _________________________________________________