I started buying ECU at 20 cents, and I think the lowest price I ever paid was 18 cents or so, maybe 3 years ago.  If anyone had asked me back then if I would be happy to see ECU at $1.75 around now, I would have taken that deal in a flash.

Back then I was still working full time and I think my entire net worth was about $100K.  Back then silver was selling for around $6-7 an ounce.  Back then ECU was a low volume mining company that still had to prove it could make money on the resources at hand, and there were a couple of outstanding lawsuits pending.

Today things are pretty damn good in comparison, but the same crowd of losers is still bashing away on other forums, and most investors are pissed off.  Silver above $18!  Over 200,000 ounces of Siver EQ on record!  100% ownership of Velardena plus a few other properties added to the pie!  Institutional reccomendations on file with bullish projections!  I have since gone on to make a million dollars on my own PF, and retired from my full time job over 2 years ago.  But I find it amazing that the sentiment level overall is so weak given all the positive things that I would not have dared to wish for just a few years ago.

The main problem is that people are still thinking with a focus on the short term.  The secondary problem is that the entire sector has been hit in the mouth for 2 years, and people who are bullish have been losing money.  Like or not, that is the reality and such things will take a toll.

I take comfort from a number of points.  First off, the news for ECU is good and getting better.  The stock is still selling off on all news, good or bad.  But that sort of thing is just part of the price of admission for the entire sector.  When things are bad they overshoot to really bad.  When things are good, they tend to go to manic.  We have now gone the full extreme from exceptional good news to a situation where people are lining up at ledges to jump off tall buildings.

I could care less about the charts for ECU, since I believe the entire sector is a manipulated fraud and what is happening in the trading is not reflective of the real potential.  But in terms of the entire market, one chart that bears watching is the fact that the gold juniors vs. the gold price, and it is now priced at an extreme low not seen since Bre-X.  That means the shares of juniors have never been cheaper relative to gold.  That represents an ultimate buying opp that will transcend the piss-poor sentiment of today.

I think ECU is at the very extreme end of the bunge cord right now and the snap back will be as awesome as the ride down has been discouraging.  There has been no indication that the flow of good news is slowing.  THere is every sign that profitable operations are set to resume, the metals have begun to bounce, and the market is set to recover.  From one week to the next its hard to call this move, but anyone that believes things can continue to compress and drift lower is naive to the extreme.  I am willing to bet 200,000 ounces of silver that the bottom is close at hand.

Copper set an all-time high close today. Oil set an all-time high today.  Gold is just a few percent below an all-time high and put in an impressive rebound this morning.  The commodities are telling us that there is a ways to go in this bull market.  The financials are telling us things are going to get worse for everything else.  And ECU is in the middle, ignoring all the good news and caught in the downdraft for all the bad news.  I think that situation is close to reversing.

I have been pretty much fully invested all the way through this, but I managed to buy a couple thousand more shares of ECU this week @ $1.76 and it may or may not be the low, but I think I will be making money at this level.

cheers!

mike

Voluntary disclosure:  ECU is one of the largest positions in my personal PF, and the company has paid for an advertisement on my website.