These indeed are interesting times. As I assume you do, each day I follow as best I can what is going on in the world - both politically and economically - observe the behavior of world equity markets, carefully follow (usually several times each day) the direction of the U.S. and Canadian equity markets - and in particular the price changes in gold, copper and other commodities, and (importantly from my perspective) watch the price fluctuations in the gold and commodity stocks I own. Obviously the price of gold currently is a focal point in my thinking, but even more so is my sense of the market volatility of some of the stocks I hold. I have said more than once in these e-mails:

· I see physical gold in a different light than I see gold stocks - as I assess it the former is nothing more than a ’safe haven’ purchasing power retention asset in both inflationary and deflationary times, while the latter are very price-sensitive to changes in the price of gold;

· I see the rapid rise in gold’s price in the past two weeks to be a direct function of the weakening of the U.S.$ over that period. Gold, like every other asset, is a ‘risk asset’ that currently is being priced in an environment where money market instruments yield virtually nothing. While I think its price may hold at or somewhat below current levels, I think in the longer term gold likely has ‘price upside’ from here. That said, I will not be surprised if the price drops back from current levels in the near term;

· what ‘goes up fast’ often ‘falls fast’. The U.S. equity markets have moved upward very significantly since March 9 of this year. Largely because I so strongly believe in the importance of the U.S. consumer beginning to spend seriously - and don’t believe that will happen any time soon - I will not be surprised if they give back some or all of those gains in the next several months; and,

· rising tides rise all boats, falling tides lower all boats. This was never more obvious to me than in the period September, 2008 - March, 2009 when the price of shares of resource companies I believe have highly valuable ‘assets in the ground’ dropped precipitously as a result of a combination of investor panic, investor cash and margin calls, and continuous financial and general economic ‘bad news’.

Everyone has their own ‘crystal ball’ and their own beliefs in the prospects for U.S. economic recovery, the appropriate pricing of the U.S.$ against other fiat currencies, the prospective price of gold, silver, copper, nickel, etc. Personally I think the U.S. is still ‘lost in the woods’ economically, with no clear route that will get it back on the economic ’super-highway’. I also believe in the ‘fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’ mantra, and I think we may see the tide going out again sometime in the next few months.

All of the foregoing leads me to focus on the liquidity of the shares I hold in the resource companies I currently am invested in, and I recommend you likewise pay careful attention to liquidity in the context of your own holdings. I measure that liquidity primarily by comparing the number of shares I own in each of those companies against the latest average daily trading volume over the most recent (trailing) 3 months. This data is readily available in the Price & Volume Table found on each Company page of StockResearchPortal.com, and soon will be available in several other ‘obvious’ places on our website. Typically I take liquidity in the context of my own investments to mean a shareholding is somewhat illiquid if it may take more than 3 trading days to liquidate it, with the degree of my perceived illiquidity increasing (more than linearly) as the estimated number of trading days to liquidate increases. In this market I suggest you ought to pay careful attention to the length of time, on the balance of probabilities, it will take you to liquidate each of your share investments - perhaps save and except any share positions you hold that you consider to be strategic, and where you are indifferent in the near term to significant price fluctuations in those share positions.

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