Flat-out, I don't hold Van Eck at the same trust level as Merrill Lynch, Barclay's Bank, State Street Bank or Standard & Poor's, which are the managers of most ETF's. That's not to say that Van Eck isn't a trustworthy financial services company or that I wouldn't deal with them. They are and I would.

But, it's just to say I need a few more degrees of separation between the vested interests of the manager of a pool of stocks and Van Eck, which makes a living (as it were) holding those stocks in its mutual funds and accounts.

You see, I've been around too long in this business to not spot a potential problem with conflict of interest, as marginal as it might seem to be. But I cannot dismiss the fact that the GDM ETF will be holding hundreds of millions of Mom & Pop's money, perhaps billions.

And, Van Eck, the manager of the ETF has a vested interest in promoting them. They are sell-side; clearly identified as being promoters and sellers of funds, especially gold.

As surprising as this might come to many of you, I am not a gold bug. I understand it. I've been underground in gold and silver mines across Canada. I know the players very well. But there are times when business cycles and economics deem gold a bad deal.

There are also times that gold and silver will hit a short-term hurdle, like today when gold is down -$6.00, or about -0.4 pct (had been down -$13.00) and silver down -$0.14, or about -1.0 pct (had been down -$0.54). As you know, I forecasted some weakness today in my WIR on Saturday. I did it objectively, but would the manager of gold mutual funds been so objective?

I don't know how the conflict could blow up, but that's typically how these things work out. So I'm disappointed that GDM is going to be managed by Van Eck, and not by S&P Corp or one of the huge banks for which gold is almost an inconsequential play in the big picture.

As to the timing, I'm also disappointed that GDM didn't come out in mid-March when Patricia Donnelly, AMEX Director of Issuer Services told me it was expected. There's been a lot of water under the GDM bridge since then.

Having said all this, I'll be trading GDM. I'll be trading it more than any other U.S. listed stock or ETF.

And I'll be watching for any funny business too.

Here's the data on GDM from the AMEX.com website. I expect the issue will come out any day. And btw, during PDAC 2006 (March 5-8) I personally went around the exhibit floor meeting the senior executives or reps of all (or most all) of these GDM component companies, telling them what Pat Donnelly had told me. None of them were aware of it.

But I told them that GDM was going to add several more small producers and if their company was to be included they had to expect higher share prices in the near term. Some of them have zoomed. For how much longer after GDM hits the Street, and the enthusiasm wears thin, I don't know.

*** a w.i. symbol after a ticker symbol simply means 'when issued' and that means it's likely to be issued within days or weeks.

p.s., btw, in recent weeks, many of the smaller gold and especially silver companies were knocked down, and readers were querying me. I said it had a lot to do with Venezuela and Bolivia and potentially Peru, but there were companies in the group being sold off that didn't own a mine or resource property in those countries. So I wasn't happy not knowing.

Could it have been some mutual funds selling them down so that the GDM manager could buy them in advance for this ETF? Maybe somebody with more time than me could check to see if there is any correlation between those pullbacks and the smaller companies on the GDM list?

Are you starting to get the feeling I don't trust the system?