I have been on the road all day. While I was driving Steve Altmann returned my phone call but I was unable to speak with so I hope to chat tomorrow and I will update the forum with any info he can share to some specific questions I have. However, to reply to the question on the forum, I think two of my points were confused. For starters, I do not think there is anything wrong with granting options to management. I have options in another company, and as far as I am concerned I earned every penny of any profit that I may gain. I also had a couple of option grants in other companies that expired worthless, and I accepted a low pay scale while I was with them partly on the basis of the options grant. So for my poitn of view, options are jsut fine. My direct comment on the topic however was that just gaining options is not the same thing as insider buying, where people put their own cash on the barrel. In the same post I made reference to placements, where it is common for institutions to take down the equity offering at a discount, and then short the stock, to lock in the profit. I think that is counterproductive, and I believe it is also illegal. And again, I did not point this out to just to vent, but to express my opinion that such behaviour is NOT a sign of confidence in a company, but rather just some fund taking advantage of a risk free profit motive. The rising outstanding net short for ECU seems to confirm my suspicion. Just to be clear, again this is not an indictment of ECU or its management. It is what it is, and the big houses will do whatever they can get away with, even though one may argue that such activity is directly harmfull to existing shareholders. So to be perfectly clear, I am a shareholder of ECU, and have been for many years. I am bullish. I have not sold any shares for a while. However I am also realistic and there is a shelf life to any junior for the management to get the momo in the right direction and begin building positive equity for the shareholders. I expect and demand that we see some progress this year. If not, then perhaps I will look elsewhere. I think that is reasonable and hopefully there is no further confusion on my own personal outlook. Have been wrong many times in the past and will be wrong many times in the future. I hope I get it right this time with ECU. cheers! mike