That's the good news. But there is also increasing volatility to be concerned about. So you need to have a trading strategy ready.

To avoid selling too soon, you need to set a stop loss, which is a Good Til Cancelled order to your broker to sell at the market if the price falls below your number.

Let's say your stock has moved from 50 to 60. You could place a Stop Order at 57, which gives a leeway of 3 points or 5-percent.

Placing an effective stock depends on a number of factors, which include the sector/group/stock volatility, and your personal comfort level and degree of watchfulness over up-to-the-minute prices, among others.

There is plenty of info on the Web about the use of stop losses. I feel that the closer one is to the market, and the more experienced, the less that trading stop orders are needed. But the majority of traders do need them, and should use them.

With respect to the current gyrations of the precious metals, and base metals like copper, I believe that there will be some extreme swings in trades coming soon " but the bull market is not over by a long shot.

However, should $GOLD drop from say $640 to $580, that would be almost a ten percent (10-pct) swing. As the goldminers are more volatile " tending to rise and fall faster " even the good ones could drop twenty percent (20-pct) if the bullion dropped by 10-pct.

Compared to what's transpired in the past twelve months, that's likely not much. But, your objective is to build wealth, not give it back to the market. So a Stop Order can protect your gains.

Another form of protection is to buy a put option, and there is a lot of info on the Web re put and call options, so I will not go into that here.

Finally, you can simply scale out of positions. If you have made 100-pct or more in a stock this past year, why not sell half, and reduce your cost base significantly? At the end of the day, your portfolio objective is always to reduce the cost base of your holdings.

Here is the 12-month price performance for the big gold and silver producers. It is rather spectacular. But these prices could go higher because they are based on the in-situ resource value and the discounted cash value of earnings going forward. So, even if gold and silver bullion prices stall out here, the companies have gained a lot of value in the past quarter that may not be fully valued yet.

On the other hand, remember that what goes around (or up), comes around (or down)!