Investors went shopping for more well-known names on the big board, while the more speculative equities flatlined during Wednesday trading on the Canadian Markets.

Despite what you read from the financial newsletter industry, there aren’t many secrets left in the mining sector.

On Wednesday, neither gold nor silver showed any sort of direction…but they generally drifted lower before the Comex open. Of course the dollar rally didn’t help…but then again, oil was up to almost $124/barrel, so that should have made a difference but it didn’t.

On Tuesday, neither gold nor silver did much of anything. Volume again was extremely light, and it doesn’t take a lot of buying or selling to move the prices around. The price of both metals is still miles away from any moving average that would be of interest to the black box tech funds.

It used to be that gold stocks outperformed the rise in the gold price by roughly a factor of three. But then energy prices went up, and the lights went out in South Africa.