After steadily rising for the last two months, the major North American gold mining stocks have reached a critical juncture. The benchmark PHLX Gold/Silver Index (XAU) has recovered nearly all of its losses from the September-October decline, but a subdued gold market and competition from the soaring equity market threaten to halt the gold stock rally in its tracks. As I’ll explain in this report, however, the weight of technical and fundamental evidence still favors a bullish intermediate-term (3-6 month) posture on the precious metals mining sector. Moreover, the leading miners will likely continue feeding