Out of Our Control, Still in the Trade
Why patience—not action—is the edge in this gold and miners rally
Viktor Frankl survived the unimaginable. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he described how, in the concentration camps, the one thing he could control was his response. He could not dictate the conditions, but he could choose how to endure them.
That lesson sits at the heart of trend following.
Out of Our Control
The hardest part of trading isn’t spotting a breakout or running a scan—it’s what happens once you’re in the trade. Just like Frankl couldn’t change his circumstances, we can’t change the trend.
Every week on Monday’s we cover what is leading. More than anything else, it is…Gold, silver, and miners are trending higher. Silver is outperforming gold. Junior miners are outperforming GDX. And most importantly, GDX itself is outperforming nearly everything else in the equity space.
Our job isn’t to micromanage or to force more trades. Our job is to accept the reality in front of us: a strong uptrend.
Gold miners (HUI Gold Bugs Index) are outpacing gold, and if this trend keeps rolling, they’ve got plenty of room to run. That’s a classic risk on tell, and it says stay long the precious metals trade.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor Frankl
That’s the discipline of trend following. We don’t fight the market. We adapt to it.
The Patience Test
Every trader knows the temptation. When everything looks good, it feels like you should double down—add ten new trades, rotate into whatever is hot, take every setup you see. But that’s not discipline. That’s impulse.
The hardest part is not action. It’s restraint.
Just as Frankl wrote about the gap between stimulus and response, we as traders live in that gap. A rally in gold miners is the stimulus. The response is up to us: chase more, or sit tight and let the trend pay us.
Gold is telling us that this rally has legs or “meaning” and it could continue to outperform the $SPX.
Frankl said meaning came from enduring suffering with dignity. In markets, success comes from enduring time with patience.
Staying in the Trade
Analysis of a trend like gold and miners doesn’t need to focus on finding the “next trade.” It needs to focus on one question: how long can this trend last?
That’s where relative strength comes in. Gold is strong, silver is stronger, miners are strongest. The leaders within miners—the juniors—are leading even more. That’s what tells us where to stay.
When GDX is making new highs while supply of shares is at multi-year lows.
