Silver Bells, Gold Tells

While equities continue to slide into Christmas Eve, precious miners are fighting for their place on the totem pole of safe havens. Coming up on an early, 1pm EST close today, the price action in gold and her miners is once again impressive on many fronts. 

First and foremost, gold is actually do what we would expect it to do in times of market turmoil: Functioning as a logical safe haven despite its many naysayers. But the miners are holding up their end of the bargain, too, beyond the yellow metal itself, which has often been a missing ingredient for any recipe involving a sustainable gold rally in recent years. 

At the moment, the GDX, ETF for larger cap, senior gold miners, is back over its 200-period moving average, the yellow line on the first daily chart, below. Names like ABX NEM are performing in ways you would expect given this resurgence. 

But going forward, my thinking is that the junior gold miners could easily catch-up to the leading seniors. The GDXJ, ETF for small cap gold miners, on the second daily chart, have room to move up and reclaim their own 200-day moving average. Hence, a blend of some larger and smaller cap gold miner ideas makes sense. 

Incidentally, seeing the seniors lead a potential first leg higher of a new bull run for gold is fairly typical--The larger market players will build stakes in liquid miners first, and then only become more aggressive as their bull thesis is proven correct.

Eventually, silver and the silver miners may play catch-up, too, but gold bouillon and the large cap gold miners are leading the pack for now.