Sadly, it has been a year in which most investors’ accounts, including the Punter’s, have ended in a sea as red as Santa’s costume.

Yet a star or two is rising.

Hot Rock (ASX code HRL), which shone last week, rose higher.

On Wednesday last week they hit seven cents a share.

That makes HRL’s share purchase plan at the end of October, offering shares at 2.5c each, one of the bargains of the year.

The Punter scrambled to grab a rare profit, but was a bit slow – there was a storm of profit – when the shares resumed trading after their temporary suspension, and the Punter only managed to sell at 54c.

He had hoped the former gold miner/would-be gold miner Australian Mines (AUZ) would twinkle, now that it has received the first instalment of $2.5 million from its recent $7.5m sale of its Mt Martin gold mine in Western Australia and is thus assured of enough cash to explore its “highly prospective” tenements in Nigeria until 2014.

Alas, opting for potentially higher grades of gold with potentially higher political risk is apparently not such a sparkling idea. One for the “sell” watchlist.

A bright star is Dolomatrix (DMX).

This is a toxic waste disposal expert which the Punter has looked at more than once in the past but sadly never bought.

Its shares soared 38 per cent to 35c on Thursday last week after an agreed cash bid from Tox Free Solutions (TOX).

The Punter could have picked up DMX shares in August for about 17c.

The deal seems to make a lot of sense for both parties, although it’s subject to the usual caveats, and will probably take a month or two to complete.

Tox Free is no penny dreadful, and would not normally be on the Punter’s radar, but if the stock market as a whole goes through the floor, TOX will be pretty high on his watchlist.

The Punter has no financial qualifications and no links to the financial services industry. He owns shares in a number of companies featured in this column.