I had the opportunity to chat with an old college friend. We touch base every few years. In college he was a P-Chem major and worked his first few years as a research chemist. Then he somehow signed up with the devil going to work for Merrill Lynch. Since he moved on but is still in the belly of the beast.

So over dinner he asked if I still invested in mining stocks. I answered yes of course. He asked why I didn't get stopped out in the rout. I told him my stops were mental because I didn't trust brokerages. He had a cheshire cat grin, so I asked him what was so funny.

In his opinion this last month there was an effort to get some stocks to move higher and get people to move their stop loss figures up. Then the hit would occur and some "parties" would buy at the sale prices anticipating that prices would be rising soon in the pm mining sector. He specifically mentioned SSRI, one of my biggest holdings. He spouted some inter-day numbers and closing numbers and mentioned the typical stop loss % used.

I opened the daily and weekly charts this am and sure enough he was right on with his numbers and feel I can believe his view of the last few weeks action at least in SSRI. I asked him exactly how they "hit" the stock prices. He wouldn't answer directly but he asked; do I think the markets are free of influence?

Just an interesting story, and sober reminder to me of the nature of the game we are playing.