Well, folks, I was quite disappointed by their production report. That's not what I had counted upon. I don't think that management was doing anything wrong -- it is just an amazing streak of bad luck with this company. I'll try to find out what "other" mining areas that wanted to use to supplement throughput until the San Mateo ramp is completed.

Besides the unexpected problems with the gold grade, the simple takeaway from the report is that 850 tpd throughput has been delayed for another 6 months, to 1Q2014. That's not the end of the world, as in a reasonable investment world investors should think now that by the end of 2013, when the ramp is completed, Golden Minerals will be able to ramp up throughput from 850 tpd to 1150 tpd in 2014, thus steadily increasing their profit margin (and hopefully reaching the production of 3.5M - 4M oz of AgEq at the cost of $7/oz, as they had planned before). Thus, in one year, everyone will be pricing in a great next year and thus the stock price should be much higher than it is now. However, we also know that having disappointed investors so many times, no one will believe AUMN until they will announce that the completion of the ramp is imminent in 4Q2013. Thus, until that point, if gold and silver stay at the current level, I would expect AUMN to be at the mercy of computer algorithms. On the other hand, if silver starts moving up strongly, then I would expect people to start taking a deeper look at the miners, and at that point investors may recognize that Golden Minerals is performing an activity now (building the San Mateo ramp) that is clearly increasing the value of their mine (and thus the value of the company), and once that ramp is completed, the path will be cleared to a quick throughput rampup.