Sure bet?

Coming into this week, silver seemed like a good place to be. By that I mean SLV, the ETF. Then I learned that SLV is great for a daytrade, but horrible as a buy-and-hold for any time period because there really is no proof that there is actual physical silver in the vaults of JP Morgan and Comex to back the paper. Chances of Comex defaulting on paper silver ... who knows? Worth the risk? Never. I made a decent profit on a weekend-hold trade and ran for cover. (Watching a potentially large profit via silver futures get whittled down — purely manipulated by JPM? — before Tuesday's open was too crazy for me.)

I also learned how cloaks-and-daggers that whole world is. All good-guys-vs-bad-guys, conspiracy theorists and evil doers. Could be true. Probably not so extreme in reality. It all just feels too much like Dendreon (DNDN) a few years back, when uber- and hyper-bulls and unproven products faced deadlines and highly questionable FDA decisions cost longs half their DNDN value ... only to win five-fold a year later. The numbers supporting the longs' argument are undeniable ... but the twisting daggers of Big Brother via corporate parternships, i.e. naked shorting — unbeatable for peons like me. I don't want to deal with any of that kaka ever again. Too much drama.

So SLV is scratched off. SLW, on the other hand, still a possibility. The metal itself in physical form just doesn't lie. And SLW, like myself, has built-in advantages in play. (Mine is that I refuse to lose money more than ever, even at the cost of missing some opportunities.)

SLW 5-year weekly

SLW vs. SLV, Gold/Silver, 6-month daily

Or is this a bubble in silver? 

source: Bullion Spot Price

Then there's oil. It's going up whether we like it or not. Our dependence as a nation on importing the crude stuff is well documented. That's why Cramer was quite timely with his Bakken Shale recommendations today. How poignant was he? Each of his four recs have boosted in past half-hour since. Here's a quick look at the four.

Note the after-hours boost to each after Cramer's recommendation/pump/boost/et al.

NOG (Northern Oil & Gas)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 31.70 (31.99 after hours)
float: 45.66M
revenue: 42.6M
quarterly earnings growth: -37.8%
total cash: 39.5M
total debt: 400k
trailing p/e: 149.53
forward p/e: 29.91

HAL (Haliburton)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 47.03 (47.49 after hours)
float: 910.7M
revenue: 17.97B
quarterly earnings growth: n/a
total cash: 2.05B
total debt: 3.82B
trailing p/e: 23.35
forward p/e: 13.55

NBR (Nabors Industries)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 28.34 (28.90 after hours)
float: 273.4M
revenue: 4.17B
quarterly earnings growth: n/a
total cash: 801.19M
total debt: 4.44B
trailing p/e: 85.62
forward p/e: 12.38

CRR (CARBO Ceramics)
Closing price, Feb. 25, 2011: 119.57 (121.05 after hours)
float: 16.16M
revenue: 473M
quarterly earnings growth: 65.3%
total cash: 46.6M
total debt: 0
trailing p/e: 35.17
forward p/e: 21.66

Source: Yahoo Finance

Of the four, the most interesting is CRR because of 1) tiny float, 2) no debt, 3) moderate P/E. Doesn't mean the stock will continue to rocket. But it's definitely appealing. I'll do homework this weekend as time allows.

Back to precious metals for a sec. Here's a cool video I just came across. If you're a silver or gold afficianado, this video won't help you. But for the rest of us, it's good stuff.