Less than two hours ago, Hunt Gold Corp. provided shareholders with a comprehensive update covering a variety of issues.

Regarding its continued drilling at the “Mockingbird” Dandy Mine, the company currently has two holes planned and will update shareholders as additional drilling and exploration plans are finalized. Drilling operations will resume by TonaTec no later than January 10.

The company reported that a substantial amount of core from the first 6 drill holes at the Great West and the Pocahontas Gold Mines has been split. The core has been shipped to an independent assay laboratory located in Tucson, Arizona. The remainder of the core will be split and shipped this week. The independent assay laboratory has designated the Company’s core samples as a priority project, with the first assay results anticipated before the end of the month.

Although Hunt Gold recently increased its Authorized Share Capital to facilitate any possible deals and

Is active trading the real story behind the ETF boom?

Matt goes through Murray's numbers about ETFs and talks about them like they are a boom in index investing (by which I mean not just use of indexed products, but also belief in the index philosophy, which means low-cost-buy-and-hold-asset-allocation-focused investing).  ETFs amounting to 30-40% of equity trading doesn't sound very passive to me. Astonishing, yes. Passive, no.

By the way, OUTSTANDING NSX data feeding Murray. I've been a big fan of Mike Traynor from his Vanguard and then Susquehanna days.  Nice work whoever is putting that together w/ Mike.

In a year of unprecedented volatility (and that is no overstatement), ETFs have begun to take over

In the currency market, the dollar slipped against the euro. Late Wednesday, the euro was trading at $1.3618 vs. $1.3529 on Tuesday.

The buck was undermined by the day’s horrendous job number. The ADP Employment Services report, generally seen as a leading indicator for the official Labor Department data due on Friday, said yesterday that private companies cut 693,000 jobs in December, far more than the 500,000 economists were projecting.

The report paints “a shockingly weak picture of the labor market,” said economists at RDQ Economics. The labor market is on track for the largest quarterly decline since 1945, they added.

In addition, for all of 2008, companies announced a total of 1.2 million job reductions, the most since 2003 and 59% more than in 2007, according to outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.

Analysts now await with trepidation the Friday nonfarm payrolls report, with many predicting a jump in unemployment from 6.7

Gold held in positive territory until the second hour of New York trading on Wednesday, but it nosedived to below $840 by mid-morning, then saw a mild rally back to $850 killed off at the noon hour, after which it was nearly all downhill to a finish at $842.00/oz., down $21.50. Overnight, gold has been flat.

Just after the Comex open, platinum surged to the $1,000 mark for the first time since mid-October, but it failed to hold there, bouncing around during the rest of the trading day and ending at $967/oz., up $6. Overnight, platinum has been pushing higher.

Silver peaked near $11.60 just after New York opened, hit a waterfall decline that beat it back to $10.90 at mid-morning, but then perked up a bit to close at $11.02/oz., down 42 cents. Overnight, silver is trending lower. (Click here for charts)

While platinum managed to finish in the

Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) - Shoppers “Didn’t Have the Time.”

This morning, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) reported that December holiday sales were much less than expected. It comes on the heel of reports that Americans actually cut back holiday spending this year.

Bed Bath & Beyond (Nasdaq: BBBY) reported lower sales as consumers clearly “did not have the time,” or the money. It joined a growing list of retailers who saw sales and income drop this Christmas.

Retail outlets are having great difficulty maintaining their levels of profitability as consumers cut back - massive sales and promotions don’t seem to be doing the trick. And for investors looking to profit, the outlook doesn’t look good.

But that doesn’t mean there weren’t companies with products that didn’t fly off the shelves. Nintendo’s (OTC: NYDOY) Wii consol and Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) products