In this week's interview over at The Gold Report we get the views of metalhead Brien Lundin on the market, gold, silver and the ways to play via several junior miners. However, in the puff-piece report Lundin somehow forgot to mention his previous hot pick ATW Gold (ATW.v). Strangely, he's been very quiet on the stock for about five months. Ever since the scam was revealed and the frontrunning insider sales noted by the world, Lundin seems to want to forget all about his previous über-bullish calls on the stock that include (courtesy blog ATWGold):
- July, 2009 (ATW.v $0.72): ATW Gold Corp. (TSX.V:ATW) Lundin says it is one recommended from the outset. It has entered gold production now and he doesn’t think that its value in the market is recognized yet.
- August, 2009 (ATW.v $0.59): Buy ATW Gold Corp. The newsletter editor tells his readers that ATW remains a stong, up-and-coming gold producer that “stands to benefit greatly from the gold bull market still to come.”
- September, 2009 (ATW.v $0.56): Refresh buy of ATW Gold Corp. Lundin says the company is a growing gold producer and it remains a buy.
For the record, that last call was just a few days before ATW revealed it wasn't a growing gold producer, but in fact a rapidly shrinking gold non-producer. Those three calls also came at the same time as the rounds of heavy illegal, frontrunning insider stock sales made by ATW.v directors Harris, Norman and Bowering that weren't revealed to the market until well after the fact.
As it happens, I'm quite certain that Lundin wasn't in on the scam and wasn't trying to rip anybody off. He was just stupid. So the question you need to ask is whether you trust the present and future stock picks of a guy that's so easily fooled by a junior promo scam and patently dishonest management. Another question to ask is whether Lundin is better served by his attempts to ignore a bad call until people stop bugging him about it. Y'know, it kinda occurs to me that maybe perhaps maybe it'd be better for him to be a man, stand up, say "I got it wrong" and apologize. Nobody's perfect, so why fake it Brien?