Clarification post for everyone

Since I've apparently gotten a load of new readers, or at least people who've looked at me once and rolled their eyes, and since I've probably annoyed all the newsletter analysts of the world, here's a clarification post for everyone:

1. I am not you. I am not even like you.

I am not an analyst. Nor a geologist. I'm an electrical design technologist with a degree in philosophy who studies post-modern theory in his spare time.

I conduct no due diligence, I'm a lazy investor, I hang out on Stockhouse, and I even have recently become arrogant enough to feel that fundamental analysis of mining stocks (while certainly providing important support for thinking a stock's price is undervalued) is trumped by chart analysis - in that I don't care how undervalued a stock is if it's never going to go up.

There are a few people whose opinions I value. Read the blog and it should be obvious who. But I realize even they are probably just struggling along in a mist, with some vague concept of what the topology is around them, but without any magical formula that always gives good results.

I'm also just some guy at a computer terminal. So I don't think I'm better than you. Except I seem to be able to figure out stuff successfully sometimes despite not having an advanced background, despite being lazy, despite not really taking things seriously. I'm old enough to recognize my faults and understand there's nothing I can do about them anymore.

2. This blog is for me.

1 year ago to this day, or so, Otto Rock suggested I start a blog, cos he liked my writing style. (That should explain a lot in itself.) I didn't want to. I eventually thought it would be nice to just start one for myself - where I can talk to myself, discuss with myself other people's opinions, and try to figure out where the market's going from here.

This blog is for me to "keep my seven thoughts together", as grandma used to say. Be certain that there are other people in the world who also think bad thoughts - I just put them in a blog.

This blog is public so that, if you are one of those people who enjoys seeing other people's thinking in action, you can sit and watch. It's not public for me to provide a service to anyone. I have no service to provide, see (1) above. And none of my thoughts come with any warranty whatsoever. In fact, you might have noticed I always change them, because I keep finding out that they're wrong.

I follow some other people's assertions. I try to take other people's observations and assemble them together with duct-tape and carpet-tacks, to make my own narrative. And I keep changing it as data comes in.

3. I do this for fun.

Otto likes my blog cos I have a sense of humour he likes, or so it seems. That should say something in itself - he might find I come up with a good idea once in awhile, or maybe GT thinks I come up with good counter-arguments - but mostly it's that I'm the nasty humour guy.

I'm not taking any of this stuff seriously - in fact I can't. How the hell do you take this stuff seriously? Really, I don't even take my own life savings seriously - that should be obvious to you, cos if I did take it seriously I'd be buying SPY and AAPL, not stupid explorecos! What am I, nuts?

This includes (in case you'd been wondering) my "senior gold miners suck" and "JP Morgan and the Joos" memes. I'm also not really a neo-Nazi, a survivalist, or a conspiracy theorist. Except I also am. But not seriously.

Pay attention to the big disclaimer at the top of my blog. In the words of anarchist Bob Black (hero of mine), "you may wonder if I'm joking, or serious? I'm joking and serious."

4. None of this matters.

This is meant to tell you that I'm not venting anger towards anyone with this blog. It's a waste of time, and frankly nobody on the internet is important enough for that.

Here's a story: my sister died in the fall. (You might have wondered why posting was light for several months.) I was the one member of the family who was left trying to get her buried. Other family members pulled a bunch of shit, such that it took me several weeks just to get her cremated, then a few months to get her remains put somewhere.

My time was horribly wasted by these bozos. They were causing all sorts of unrest in the family. This sort of crap wouldn't have happened years ago when my dad was alive - he wasn't a cruel or mean person, but he had no patience and a nasty temper and if anyone had tried this with him would have smacked every one of us into line (even people who weren't involved) and told us to shut up and do as we're told. I respect him for that.

So, what did I do? I asserted my position as patriarch. Family obviously needed one. I told everyone that the offending members of the family were cut out. They are no longer family. Nobody is allowed to speak to them, or of them. And anyone who has a problem with me can fight me to take control of the family. I'm shit serious here.

It's a bit complicated because one of the people being cut out is the son of my dead sister. And I had to put her (very small) estate in order for him (he's up in Nunavut on a contract so he couldn't come down and do the work himself).

But still. That's what I do now. I don't bother picking fights on the internet. OK? I got enough of that 2 decades ago hanging out on talk.politics.libertarian and alt.society.anarchy. Now I just cut the person off. No person on this internet is going to be as nasty a fight as the one I just spent months going through with my own family.

So if I'm talking to you, referring to you, or saying things about you, it's because I like you, or at least respect you. OK?

At the same time, when I put the boots to the CEOs of mining companies whose performance has stank, I do it because they are CEOs, they are paid to be gods among men, and nowhere in Engineering should you be allowed to get paid a fortune and screw things up. And anyone who thinks CEOs shouldn't be criticized for poor share performance is an idiot, since they are directly responsible for every aspect of their company by definition. Seriously: why do guys like Black and Ganoza successfully make an utter bloody fortune pulling gold or silver out of the ground and see their share prices go up? Luck? Is that it? Are they luckier than the guys at AEM or K?

5. I am (am not) a nice person.

I come from a town full of steelworkers, and grew up in a steelworkers' neighbourhood. That was the middle class. OK? I come from a nasty world. I grew up nasty. Ever read Call of the Wild? Lord of the Flies? Okay, that's where I grew up.

But I am also a nice person. I am happy to hear other opinions. And I'm not ever trying to pick a fight with you - because where I come from that sort of thing gets you beaten up.

But I do tease, and if I do, it only means I like you. It's a north English/Irish/Scottish thing, look it up, Malcolm Gladwell touches on it.

6. No fucking smiley faces.

I refuse to use smiley faces. That causes most of my trouble, I know.