All in my opinion, please do your own dd. Not investment advice.

As I'm sure you have gathered from reading my random babblings for the last two years or so, I'm not a big proponent of the manipulation theories, not when it comes to ARU, Gold or any other stock anyway. Rather I believe they are "traded", and as someone who trades, I understand quite well the importance of a timely sell when accumulating and likewise the odd buy when getting out. I understand there are boys on the desks making money a dime at a time working the spread...etc, etc, etc.

Mispriced stocks is how I make money, I mean how much cash could we make if the market was 100% efficient? So while I'm sure there is some truth to the findings of the likes of GATA and have no doubts that our share price is man handled from time to time, I find it more useful to embrace and prosper on these moves then to let it negatively consume me.

On that note I'v got two things tonight.

Gold had to be sold off today in order to "tell" the market the FED had done right. Never in history has the US dollar gone up on the tails of a 3/4 point cut. I see Gold is rebounding this evening but at 8am I fully suspect them to try to bring it down again. This, for me anyway, makes for one hell of a measure of our present reletive strength. If they can't bring her down 10% for it's long over due correction to the $900 level, I fully suspect we see a further parabolic move upwards to the $1250 level in short order. This imo is the most likely outcome and a $975 hold should mark it.

On the other hand, if they can make it correct, I suspect we go range bound for a month or two until frustration manifests itself into calls for further rate cuts in the face of continued weakness in US economic data.

More specifically to our own ARU. Piling up two 50,000share sell orders like we witnessed from yesterday through today, is done to accumulate. You put up the wall and pick off shares all day as people realize the stock isn't going anywhere. I respect it. I'd rather have the guy behind those trades riding shot gun with me then the sucker selling him the shares. Remember one thing though, you can only pull these types of moves off if the stock is not strong in the first place. Ecuadors politics and our managements ill-timed sells have left us weak. Either of them (Ecuador or our managemnt) smartens up and I'm sure we're seeing new all time highs over the past couple of weeks. The fact that they continue to fark around leaves us sitting at the mercy of those that know how to make a buck.

The point I'm trying to make is that I see a lot of really smart guys here bumping their heads on this manipulator/conspiracy wall. If you've picked up the patterns...make money off of it. You can't beat them so join them. Or sit back and wait, because although the market isn't 100% efficient, it does eventually find its way to fair value given time. We all know that we aren't anywhere near fair value when it comes to ARU or the price of gold so I'm patient.

Best regards,

Buck