Speaking of other boards I happened to visit one that I rarely frequent and found this insightful message which I thought was worthy of consideration.

"Thank you for your informative post on the past history of ECU. It would indeed be devastating to see a stock defended from the heights to the depths during the past. And I'm sure many people that have been burned during this period will indeed feel anger at the company and those who defend it. As I understand it, during the Great Financial Crisis when Lehmans disappeared, the PM market as a whole was devastated including many many juniors which sank to the bottom of the deep ocean. Weak junior miners have indeed faced great dilution and reverse stock splits with some losing over 90% of their value. And it does show that Day-trading can be a good strategy for stocks. I have no problems with people flipping stocks playing swing trading. What I have problems with is when the person who does these quick flips insists that other people should only look at a stock on the short side. If someone follows the advice to short and their stock ends up in the hands of the shorting advocate who then sells it for a quick profit, I think it's morally wrong.
Looking through the ECU press releases for the past years, the story I see is as follows:
ECU has struggled for many years indeed. The story seems to be that they are looking for the motherlode which supplies the rich but thin veins of silver. The recent news release about new mineralization at depth at Santa Juana seems to support their geological model.
I was looking at the charts of ECU and it looks like that start of the recent steep rise was at the beginning of November. The question on my mind was whether this was only due to the tremendous rise of silver and gold in the meantime. But the charts for silver and gold seem to have risen earlier than the recent ascent of ECU. So the question is why.
ECU received a notice of arbitration from Golden Tag in June 2009 and when any junior miner is in the midst of legal disputes, there is uncertainty which stops any large investors from seriously looking at the company. The arbitration was concluded around late September 2010 but still the stock didn't move much in October. So again, why?
If you look at the ECU press release on Sept 23, 2010, I quote:
Golden Tag also requested that in consideration for all the alleged breaches of the JV Agreement, ECU be condemned to pay over twenty one million dollars (US$21,000,000) in damages. The Arbitration Panel determined that ECU Silver improperly removed material from the old stockpiles on the San Diego Property and awarded Golden Tag a payment of approximately sixty thousand five hundred and sixty five dollars (US$60,565) for the material removed from the stockpiles, but did not award damages.
Golden Tag has the option to requisition a second stage of the arbitration hearing if it wishes to attempt to prove that it suffered damages, however, the Arbitration Panel has advised Golden Tag that proving and quantifying damages caused by ECU Silver, if any, would be difficult and probably a highly speculative exercise.
If you look at the GOG press release on Sept 27, 2010, I quote:
"A second stage of arbitration to deal with the issue of damages may proceed as GOG has now been successful in proving fault by ECU. GOG has the right to elect to proceed with the second stage hearing by notification to the arbitration panel within 30 days of the Award. "
So from the above, I would think that major investors still worried about Golden Tag requisitioning a second stage of arbitration hearing to seek US$21M in damages. No matter how highly speculative an exercise this might be, there is still a chance that ECU might face huge damages if GOG follows up on this exercise. BUT after 30 days has passed of the award from the first stage and after a few more days of seeing if there is any news release about a second stage of arbitration, it seemed the coast was clear. So the legal disputes were now quantifiable and the resulting arbitration relatively handleable from an investor's perspective. Not saying that ECU was a white lamb in this matter, but for an investor, the matter of the legal dispute is finally over.
So the big volume buying of ECU in early November seems to be either big money investing because the coast is clear and the company is interesting to them or because big shorts betting on the success of GOG's case had to cover.
Notice that silver bottomed around Nov 2008 and has been strong since. But ECU has been meandering all through Nov 2008 to Nov 2010. That's a long period to catch up on based on the rise of silver alone.
From further glancing of ECU's press releases, it seems ECU has slowly but steadily made progress through the years. It doesn't mean it has been or will be an easy journey but ECU seems to have an interesting story which may do well in this PM market