There are signs that Venture has bottomed for now, although the March-April downtrend has yet to be broken. Volume is improving on up days, the daily MACD has generated a buy signal, and RSI has moved over 30 from a very oversold 20. Last week's low was between the Oct panic low and the Dec tax loss low. This is an area of strong support (it's also near the July 2010 low) and represents the neckline area of a large head & shoulders pattern. As long as the neckline holds, the head & shoulders pattern is not in play. I've felt this area would hold because it would mean a failed head & shoulders or a compete disaster – neither event seems likely. Furthermore, Shanghai, which often runs parallel to Venture, appears to be in a bottoming pattern, although that is still unconfirmed. I've moved to neutral/slightly bullish on the juniors. Despite that, I won't be buying until liquidity improves – I still have leftover no-bid Santa stocks.

Gold stocks are slightly ahead of Venture - not quite as oversold and just starting to break the downtrend. Gold stocks appear to have been in a bottoming process for about 3 weeks, and seem to have turned the corner. Monday's breakdown looks more like capitulation than the start of a new leg down. Next week should be important for gold stocks – perhaps a quick test of the lows, then hopefully the start of an uptrend.

As usual, I was a tad early in my belief that gold stocks (and juniors in general) had bottomed. Bottom-fishing is a tough job, but someone has to do it – well, actually no one has to do it, I just can't resist sometimes, lol. There's something extremely satisfying on those rare times when I do happen to catch the precise low, sort of like winning a lottery (with similar odds). In order to keep my bottom-fishing explorations from being too costly, my first foray is always to sell slightly out-of-the-money puts rather than buy the stock outright. This provides 2 margins of error on the downside - the value of the premium, and the difference between the current & strike price.