Wednesday’s on-line Q&A session was quite a bit longer than usual, but it allowed me to field queries in real time from more than a dozen subscribers. Tradable issues that received coverage intraday included the mini-S&P and mini-Nasdaq contracts, as well orange juice futures, General Motors, the Housing Sector Index, Imperial Oil, Clifton Mining, July Wheat, the Health Sector Index, Silver Standard Resources, Panera Bread, July Coffee, Novagold Resources, and Golden Star Resources. A pretty exotic mix, as you can see.

One issue that I overlooked was Coeur d’Alene, where we took some profits during the day. You may recall that we bought the stock a few days ago at 2.70, a hidden-pivot support that I’d advertised as a possible swing low. So far, the pivot has held up pretty well, since CDE made a bottom at exactly 2.70 and has since rallied to 3.00. For aficionados of promotional hype, that works out to an annualized gain of…let’s see now…3,600% (!!!!!) . I advised some profit-taking at 2.88, then at 2.99, which has left us with a long position half the size of our initial stake, and a cost basis of 2.47.

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I mention all of this because the trade has conformed almost perfectly to our strategic ideal of staking out long positions in a shaky mining sector with little or no risk. My initial stop-loss below the 2.70 bid was 2.59 – somewhat wider than usual --- but the goal was to initiate a position at a low that had the potential to mark a bottom of at least short-term importance. Of course, despite the earlier profit-taking, there is still risk in the position because we continue to hold CDE shares. But by now we’ve lowered the position’s cost basis sufficiently to cushion ourselves against a very nasty downdraft in the mining sector. And if CDE should simply move higher we’ll be able to reap a nice profit at any point along the way.