Skier59 said:

you decided to put money into Ventana instead of GNH?

You have me somewhat confused. You talk about how you don't like investing in stocks that get too ahead of themselves, however is not Ventana an example of one?

Feb.2009 50 cents Nov. 2009 $12.

I don't know enough about VEN's long-term history. All I know is that a fundamental analyst I follow and trust said VEN's fair value is more like $13. And that day, of the long list of his stocks that I follow, VEN hadn't yet made that large a move. BTW, VEN is transitioning from being a junior to a midsize miner, so you should expect its stock to skyrocket. Also, Feb 2009 was in the middle of the crash, when many valuable golds were trading at a small percent of their cash on hand, VEN included!

For the record, I got in at $8.40, then 3 days later it spiked so I sold at $9.80. (I don't get greedy - someone gives me a $12k win for 3 days work, I take it and go home.) It's over $10 now, but I'm content to have gotten a large chunk of that advance, and if either gold or the broader market hits a rough patch in the next month I should be able to get back into VEN around $9.80 again.

So yes, you could say that I sold at $9.80 when I figured it got ahead of itself, because I think it'll be back to $9.80 or less in a few weeks. :-)

And btw - I didn't put money into Ventana instead of GNH. I actually increased my GNH from 25% to 40% in the same period. Actually, what I did was I dumped CMM and SVL because I was tired of watching those dogs going nowhere while good gold & silver miners were advancing. Then I took all that formerly dead money and spread it among 5-10 golds and silvers that hadn't made their upmoves yet. As each stock made its pop, I took profits and moved to another stock that had settled back.

That small experiment in diversification taught me that diversification is good. You're not counting on one stock to give you a warm feeling when you diversify, you get wins every few days in yet another stock. You sell at a profit and move on to your next win.

I'm cool with people sitting in a position patiently. I wish I could be that way. If I'd done that, my cost base for GNH would be 22 cents instead of 61. Obviously I wish that were so. :-) But I'm horribly impatient, and profitable trading requires that you recognize your own faults and trade based on them. So me, I need to spread my investments around, take profits quickly and move to the next play.