Hi Edgy!

No matter how big a selling block may be, or how determined a group of shorts are, if the buying is sustained then there is nothing that can hold a stock back. We are seeing more evidence of that today. It seemed like ECU was dead in the water a few months ago in the high 40-cent range, and any little blip to 50 cents was crushed later in the session. This went on for a week or two and discouraged some longs. Even with the great news that has been coming out ECU was still very sluggish, moving only a few cents higher on trading volumes of several million per day. I would guess that we have seen over 10 million shares traded in the month of April, a huge volume for this company, and perhaps now we have finally chewed through all of the cheap paper that is available. There seems to be very strong buying support still, yet the blocks of stock on the offer are definately thinning out.

Despite the manipulation of the metals, seasonal weakness approaching, and a sector that is still way out of favour, I think ECU is going to surprise many people and just continue to recover in the months ahead, as driven by strong fundamentals and solid operational results. As investors that are intensely interested in the success of this company we tend to over-react to the day-to-day trading and that may have caused many people to lose faith, but I do think we still have some catch-up on the fundamental strength ahead that could carry ECU much higher.

cheers!

mike