Good Morning ElPrimero (and all posters here):

I know what you mean when you talk about that trapped feeling, a subjective, cage-like sensation. This life experience has been truly enlightening, especially when one contemplates that the writing was truly on the wall in retrospect. When a crack in the cage door opens, the fight-or-flight response grabs one by the graphics and tempts fate with a crucial choice. Experience, knowledge, wisdom and analysis battle with emotion all the way into the trap, a trap that has been set up by counterintuitive forces. The big question numbs the mind: is it safer in the cage? Staying the course has required a tenaciousness that defies both one's sensibilities and the majority consensus. Being unanimous in the singular is rewarded with a tin foil hat and being paraded around the town square, the target of derisiveness and rotten tomatoes. Principles and personal conviction can exact a very heavy toll on a man. Staying the course against all odds requires true courage and has its own rewards. Kipling always said it best:

"Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,

And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true."

Soon we find our "cage" expanding exponentially, becoming an attractive "safe haven" for first a few... and then many... and then the majority, all trampling one another for a chance to be initiated into the tin foil hat fraternity. There is truly nothing like safety in numbers. Staying the course, in the your cage of choice, has been most precocious indeed.

As for technicals versus fundamentals....I am still confused. Clive Maund gives us an excellent overview. That head and shoulders bottom was reflected in a few JPM stocks that are taking off right now. One was at $2.86, down from $28 at the time of the "July massacre" that "the boys" dropped on us all. Today it is taking out its large shorters and flying to over $9 and heading up fast from a head and shoulders bottom...towards $28 and higher. I expect a take out offer will come up with $30 before the summer, maybe earlier as momentum exagerates. Harkens back to the good old Barrick take out of Arequipa in 1996 for over $30/share. That stock had been around $2 nine months earlier and only had a potential 7 million ounces of gold...no bankable feasibility study either....and gold around $400.

However when it comes to ECU, I am a fundamentalist. I don't think charting will forecast it as I expect the fundamentals to overwhelm all opposing, counterintuitive forces. ECU has been put in the market town square by the Sheriff of Nottingham who has beaten the snot out of the rabble, and kept it yoked there for quite some time. When will it be freed, no yoke? Well, I think the Sheriff has been pushing his luck with bad Robin Hood jokes for far too long, while Robin Hood has been planning his attack. We all know what happened to the evil Sheriff.