In the last two weeks we have once again enjoyed the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (well kinda).

I always look to see if there is a way to take advantage of the swings that inevitably come my way. Today was plan R in my attempt to make lemonade out of lemons.

I have an IRA that contains the bulk of my retirement resource. This year I opened a Roth IRA in anticipation that taxes were going up and aided by this being a very low withdrawl year which implies a low tax rate year. I opened the acccount in June when gold and silver stocks were in the toilet. They have since climed about 60% since I transfered the original tranche to the Roth. More than making up for any potential misjudegment in my tax plans.

Given this current irrational fall in the price of the metals and in ECU, I decided to move another 10k shares from my traditional IRA to my Roth. This gives me a fixed amount of taxes to pay in a low tax year, and gives me a source of tax free funds in years down the line.

This plan could backfire if the metals and ECU get pounded significantly down from here and they stay there for at least 5 years. Somehow I like my chances of that not happening! So I claim a small victory against the very same cartel of government and banker sthat seem intent on making sure that they prevent the average citizen from ever getting ahead.