A Drop of ‘Bear Market Proportions’ Are Very High For Mining Stocks– Eric Coffin

Eric Coffin editor of the famed newsletter, Hard Rock Advisories (HRA) says he is still partially on the fence when it comes to the market’s major direction. He recently said, ‘I think the odds of a drop of bear market proportions is very high right now, I’m just not sure how fast it will happen,’ he said in his recent newsletter. Speaking to Kitco News on Thursday, he said there are two or three ways it can play out. ‘The market came back to the August lows – I don’t think we are out of the woods, the S&P would need to get above 2000 for me to actually relax,’ he said. Coffin warned, ‘One danger I see dead ahead is we are just about to start Q3 earning season -- I’d like to think that traders realize that we are going to have a sequential drop in earnings. I suspect that is not going to go over very well. The odds for something to go wrong are very high,’ he said. Coffin also touched on Glencore’s troubles and whether it could become the Lehman Brothers of mining. Coffin said that if copper falls below $2 a pound things will get tough. ‘The production pipeline would basically vaporize – you would see large copper miners do partial production cuts,’ he said, adding, ‘I have been bearish on copper for a year and a half, ironically, copper might be the first to turn because copper miners historically, have been the smartest group when it came to cutting production when they had to.’ Kitco News, October 1, 2015.