Hey, wassup? Silver and gold. that’s what

It’s kinda puzzling. The Dow is up sharply, which usually has a depressing effect on metals. But gold is up, too. It was  briefly over $1,337 an ounce today. Silver, too. It got over $22 for the first time in a long while before slipping all the way down to $21.99.

Nowhere near the $1800 and $38 of a couple years ago,  but the trend is up not down.

Not only do we at our Maui pawn shop not pretend to understand what moves gold and silver prices, we find stock prices puzzling, too. Especially stocks in pawnshops.

Most of America’s 12,000 or so pawn shops are quite small, but there are a few  big chains.  Big  being relative compared to banks. Even local banks often have assets over a billion dollars. Pawn chains are not that size.

One of the ” big” ones is EZ Pawn, which reported an 8% gain in same-store sales over the holidays. The stock bounced up by 27%. How very nice for them, but hard to understand since “The company’s profit and sales actually fell during the quarter, by 27% and 1%, respectively.”

Profit down 27%, stock up 27%. It must make sense to somebody.

Bring us your old surfboard. We know how to value that.