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My suggestion is to adopt the "Green Hornet Doctrine" as a mode of operation even in the small declines that are natural to any appreciating market.

Once the shorts have taken their positions, the operation to depress the price starts.

As in the case of RGLD, an article in a major publication clearly attributed to a short seller caused an inappropriate decline in the shares. That tactic may have run its course, leaving only little “wannabe” manipulators making postings that run from slander to pure stupidity on various Internet chat groups.

Another technique quite popular at the moment is for an off the floor third market maker to report an extremely low after close transaction. This is made up of practically no shares, usually in the range of 50 to 100. This is quite popular on Fridays in order to paint a false picture of the day or week's action. The late trade is an attempt to make a stock appear as if it closed significantly lower than actual trading by having the late reported transaction from a third market as the closing transaction. Generally the attempt is to paint a chart as a break down of some sort, maybe a Fibonacci Retracement or Trend Line.

All these tricks are designed to lower the price of your situation below the average of the short position with one defined objective: to PANIC you into selling volume. This creates the opportunity for them to buy back the legal or illegal short position at a significant profit.

If you have a fundamental commitment to and good reasons for owning a certain precious metal or materials situation, having failed to sell some into strength, consider what would happen if the short cannot panic you.

The short for your situation would not be able to produce volume sales at lower prices just before gold turns up. Now who is screwed? The short of your situation is, of course. Assuming the situation has fundamental worth, in all probability it will bolt forward directly through the price of the average short, thereby panicking the short into paying up and up and up to cover.

The risk the short seller takes is infinite in price. All they can possibly gain is the price of the share. The short seller will be easy to panic because of this, even if he depresses the stock but FAILS TO GET THE VOLUME required to make the cover.

If the short cannot panic you into selling emotionally, you will panic the short into covering emotionally, especially when a situation depends on a commodity like gold and silver. This is even more so if you do not have any margin debt to worry about.

If all gold share investors would only STOP USING MARGIN and have a commitments to gold and their companies, then shorts would leave gold and silver for easier pickings.

Be strong and whop the hell out of the short who is trying to whop the hell out of you.