Soaring over hump day

11:06 am (Hawaii) Nasdaq up 1.1% today. S&P 500 up 0.9% and Dow up 0.65%. My Metals List is 72% green and still active after hours. XG with a huge 12.6% move out of the blue. I hate it when my favorite metal stocks move without me. Gold and silver plays moved well. GPL (3.04, +8.9%), AGQ 173.29 (+7.3%), EXK 8.89 (+6.2%), UCO 48.06 (+5.1%), SVM 10.50 (+4.8%), AG 17.73 (+4.5%). Just a lot of miners on the big-plus size, but is this based on a dead-cat bounce or fundamentals? Does it matter.

Not really. For silver fanatics, best that the sector rallies modestly each day than with huge swoops higher, lest the CME Mafia bust all kneecaps again. With margin requirements as is, plus the fear of CME built into the collective big brain of retail and hedgies, I'm not expecting a crazy fast move by metals.

AAPL up 1.2% to 340.09. It was below 331 yesterday and Karen Finerman on Fast Money said she bought in. I still love AAPL. It's the one stock I have a crush on. But volume today was relatively light, so I'm not in. Yet.

Made a late-day trade in AGQ (after waking up). In at 172.33, out at 171.66. Naturally, AGQ rode higher and got back to 173.50 or so after hours. I don't regret cutting the trade with a tiny loss. There will be more opportunities.

Update 11:35 am (Hawaii) XG is up more than 9% after hours, but there is no news anywhere. The news that did affect the stock was out Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, end-of-Q1 holdings showed that hedgie Eric Sprott allocated a new stake in XG, among other miners.

Sprott can say Spot Silver is going to $100/oz and convince most people that he's bullish as ever, but you can't fault the guy for playing the market. He sold a chunk of PSLV shares recently to acquire more physical, or that's what he said publicly. I believe him. I'd do the same.

Gold is going to run, probably not bigbig, but it's overdue, and demand is not waning among central banks globally. Even with a delay in QE3, gold will be more stable than most plays (other than cash). Kick start QE3 and silver will vroom up again, with gold in the sidecar churning higher, as well. That's my guess.

But what made XG move from 9.46 (today's close) to 10.36 after hours? News of approval for a mine development at Cerro Moro was positive, but that news was out yesterday (Tuesday).

Sprott: New stake in XG (May 16 2011)

Marketwire: Extorre receives approval for Cerro Moro (May 17 2011)

Update 12:56 pm (Hawaii) The afterhours price of XG has been fixed and is now back to 9.46. Glad that was straightened out!