As you can see, my recommended stocks have been up from 5 pct to over 20 pct each, with an average gain of 9.6 pct.

Here are the nine goldminer charts using Hourly data, which clearly shows that I picked the absolute cycle bottom, and that my ballsy headline article worked out as provided to you.

If readers use the same techniques that I explained yesterday for the Oil stocks, you will be able to improve your trading performance as well.

I hope you recognize that the equity market is not a random walk event. Otherwise I could never write tomorrow's headlines today.

When you get in a position of doing the same, you'll see just how empowering the right approach to trading can be. But you will have to blot out all the nonsense you have been trained to believe, and all the noise and spin you get by the minute when you watch TV and read 99 pct of market commentary.

Trading, like blogging, is personal. You need to be driven emotionally and intellectually to succeed at it. If you passively follow other people, they will pick your pockets to the extent you permit it.

P.S. In the 5 trading hours following my publishing of the notes above, until the close today, these goldminer stocks were up an additional 2.0 pct on average.

So I re-calculated the results, over nine trading sessions.

You may recall that it was Mike from Colorado who was worried that his gold and silver stocks were doing so poorly in the past month. Mike just wrote to say: " Bill-
I have learned by trading Silver over the past few months that it is a very brutal and unforgiving business. Below are today's returns alone (CDE/SSRI ~ 10%! ). I am curious by your trader vs. investor remarks, do you recommend stop losses on stocks? I have been of the mantra 'buy and hold', but after being down 30% on PAAS since Mar 05 (now recovering a bit), I am wondering if stop losses are a better way to go then 'buy and hold' aka 'buy and lose sleep when you are down 30% in 3 mos!'

Glad you aren't leaving the bloging... your 'column' is awesome. /Mike"

Mike, trading stops are often purposefully taken out by whip-sawing Gnomes who want you to miss the up-move. I get a lot of criticism from traders who tell me I have no "Plan" if I don't use stops. Actually I do have a plan. I set mental stops (which differ from one sector and group and individual stock to the next), and when they get exceeded, I start to bear down further in my analysis. I am looking for cause-and-effect. Too often a brief move is just a fake-out, and I don't want to be faked out.

The point is, you have to try to make better entry points; take gradual positions until you reach a comfort level; and focus more when the market is going against you. If you can understand why the market is going against you, and you then believe you made a mistake, then exercise your prerogative to exit the trade at a loss. It happens a lot of the time. I just try to keep it from happening more than 20 pct of the time.

But in your case I think there is also another issue: you have to understand what time horizon makes you most comfortable. With a young family, and PhD studies, and a side business, you have a lot on your plate to be trading as less than on a Intra-Year Trading basis, (i.e., 18 to 250 trading sessions). In fact you might want to look at tactics that are best suited to Extra-Year Trading, i.e., a time horizon of >250 trading sessions. In that case, and in your circumstances, I think (on average) a 14-pct stop might be considered reasonable.

Finally, you appear to be hung up on silver, which also happens to be a Bill Fleckenstein bias. ;-) Bill is a terrific trader who also writes frequently about his pet subject, silver. It might make sense for you to read him a lot. As for me, I did say I'd write an article on silver, but, just so you know my bias, I think of silver as more of an industrial metal (including fashion jewellery), and so when there is no extreme inflation, and consumers are basically tapped out, and digital photography doesn't use silver, yada yada, then just maybe silver is not the place to be at this point, compared to gold (other than maybe trading on an Intra-Month Trader basis, i.e., <18 trading session time horizon).

Now recent trading action has indicated to me that maybe there is a lessening of the high correlation between gold and USD and an increase in correlation between gold and certain economic data. So, maybe silver is becoming more attractive. I did say I'd have a look at it for my readers, and I will.