Gregory Roberts
Management
Yes, I mean, I think, again, I do point to the rise in spot prices. And I think that is a significant issue. And we've always talked about how volatility is good for us. But when prices tend to rise, and there's uncertainty as to really what's causing it or where it's going, I think that's going to cause a little bit of pullback in demand. And I just think that it's natural. We had a pretty good run-on silver in particular, over the last year plus from about $18, up to about $25. So you also have some people taking profits. And we tend to have a little bit higher buybacks when spot prices are up. So that's going to affect the supply, you also have had a situation where we were very active, forward selling a lot of our Silver Towne and Sunshine product in September and October. And a lot of that product is now coming into the marketplace as we deliver it in January and February. And I think that not everybody in the marketplace, hedges their position like we do. So if you have wholesalers that may be bought product from us back September, October at lower spot prices, they're going to be selling that product back into the marketplace, when they take delivery of it. So I think there's a number of factors that are going into this, but I would say the higher spot prices are good are probably the number one issue. And then with that a little slowing in demand. And again, these are -- these things are very expected by us, we go through these periods all the time. And we believe that operationally, the business is handling it with our liquidity, all of our business, operations, logistics, everything is performing well. But we are in a volatile business. And we've experienced this before, but I do think as I said before the combination of December, slowed down a little bit, rising prices, more product coming into the marketplace in January, I think that has had effect. And throughout January, as I said, the price of gold and silver continued to pretty much head up and then stagnate in a pretty tight range until Friday when we saw a pullback and as in most cases, we did see a pickup in demand from our DTC segment on Friday and over the weekend and this morning, so putting it all together, it's hard for me to say exactly what one factor may be is more important than another. But to me, this is kind of how we operate here, we're used to have volatility. And as we've seen before and we said at all, we say it all the time, in great conditions we are able to have outsized returns, as well as do well when we have more subdued levels. So seems, everything seems pretty standard to me.