Investors & Friends:

Here's a summary of our investment actions from the past week.

Long Stocks

1) We sold the last half of our position in the Tocqueville Gold Fund (TGLDX) on 1/29 @ $53.25 for a 16.9% gain.

Return calculation = ($53.25 sale price - $45.54 cost basis) / $45.54 cost basis x 100% = 16.9%.

The date we opened the trade was 5/1/08.

Option Strategies - Covered Calls

2) Infinera Corp (Nasdaq: INFN) - We sold Jul $7.50 calls for $0.55.

The Investrio Stock Selector Fund Bull and Bear Market Indicators Report for the week ending February 5, 2010, is attached.

Upcoming earnings calendar for our portfolio holdings

2/23 - Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD)

Upcoming IPOs

Lead Fund Manager
Investrio

Etcetera

1) Many traders make the mistake of trying to turn every trade into a homerun. In reality, homeruns are few and far between - just ask Joe Torre. It's better to keep going for base hits. -- John Carter, President of TradeTheMarkets.com

2) What's more interesting from a trading standpoint is that because the SPX settles within the projected range a bit more often than expected, it suggests that the VIX, and therefore out-of-the-money option prices, overestimate the likelihood of the big price changes. Sure, they happen. We all saw that last year. It suggests, though, that while past performance is certainly no indicator of the future, and the big price moves can happen at any time, the VIX seems to think they happen a little more frequently. That pushes up the value of out-of-the-money options, which pushes up the value of credits for selling out-of-the-money verticals. Maybe that will give you something to think about in 2010. -- thinkMoney, Winter 2010

3) In the torment of the last few years, encompassing both the stock market decline and its emerging recovery, stocks' behavior was dominated by macro-economic, macro-financial and liquidity considerations. This largely explains why both the decline and the recovery were unusually indiscriminate: good or bad quality, expensive or cheap, stocks moved more or less in tandem and stock selection turned out to be less useful to investment performance than usual. In an economic and financial environment that is less-violently volatile and more in the process of normalizing, stock selection should regain its historic preeminence over macro considerations.
-- Francois Sicart, Founder and Chairman of Tocqueville Asset Management

4) Excerpt from interview With Jason Zweig, author of Your Money and Your Brain

The last photo of your brain in the book was of your insula, which is one of the centers of pain and disgust, and it's lighting up when you think about slot machines. Can people change their reactions by reconceiving things, for example thinking that slot machines are bad rather than good?

Yes, I think so. I didn't discuss this a lot in the book, but there is evidence that rehearsal and repetition and continually imagining things can change your emotional response. We all know things like, at least in theory, you can make a toddler stop sucking its thumb by painting something bad-tasting on the baby's thumb. In theory, you can do stuff like that with investing too. You could do it by keeping better records and by involving other people in your actions, so that if you really feel that you are going to keep procrastinating on putting money in your 401(k) and you really know you should, but you just somehow never, the best day to do it is always tomorrow. Then what you do is you get someone else involved and you create social pressure that makes it unpleasant for you not to do the right thing, so you dare your friends and you say, "I am going to finally take the plunge and I am going to increase my contribution in my 401(k). If I don't, then I have got to buy you a case of scotch." Then you know that if you blow it, you not only have to buy your friend an expensive present, but you are going to be humiliated.