Man oh man, I’ve been using completely the wrong strategy. Clearly, since last Summer when the rare earth element mining (or let’s be honest, “exploring for”) stocks started taking off like gangbusters whenever the Chinese flexed their muscles, the newsletter copywriters started wetting their pants in excitement.

And what I should have done was look around for all the rare earth companies that hadn’t gone crazy yet, and bought ’em all up — after all, it’s only a matter of time before one of the great newsletter punditocracy climbs on board that last “undiscovered” rare earths stock and sends it into the stratosphere by aggressively hyping it to the biggest mailing list he can find … right?

Well, that certainly would have worked last Fall — when we were all gaga over Greenland and the two rare earths dream companies there back in October, I also mentioned a few of the other rare earth stocks (OK, pretty much all of them that I could think of offhand). One of those with a high proportion of heavy rare earths (the most valuable variety right now) was Stans Energy, and whaddya know but it looks like Byron King, he with the massive Agora mailing lists to promote to, started hyping it yesterday in yet another video “presentation.” From the lows to the highs yesterday it was up about 30%, which seems to be par for the course in major league rare earth teaser-land. Heck, we’ve finally even seen Robert Hsu’s favorite rare earth company prosper since the Fall (that’s China Rare Earth Holdings, I wrote about them almost a year ago), and they’re really just a refiner, not even a super-sexy potential miner — though they do have the advantage of being in China, which still (and will for a long time) does almost all of the globe’s rare earths mining and refining. Of course, since they’re in China they can’t brag about being the strategic player that will break the China monopoly … but I think we all know that if it’s actual money you’re trying to make, it’s probably better to be a monopoly than to try to break one.

So … you’ve probably seen Byron King’s new teaser video, yes? Unfortunately, it’s one of those sneaky ones that doesn’t give you the handy-dandy text version when you try to exit … so plenty of time wasted, ...