Like the stock market, Punter suspects his hardy band of loyal followers with cash to spare has dwindled somewhat in the past 12 months.

Despite some wild swings in the stock market in the run up to Christmas, the talk all seems to be of recession.

Not if, or when, but how deep it will be in Europe and the US, and how much that will affect the rest of the world.

So the Punter went into the holiday season looking to see what he can sell before things got worse.

Sadly he is now sitting on such huge losses on his current portfolio that he could not bring himself to cut and run.

He has formally written off his investment in Datamotion Asia Pacific options.

A computer security sales outfit suddenly switching into exploration for rare earths was always going to be risky and, sure enough proved to be a right stinker.

Why did he ever buy the things? Don’t ask, it’s embarrassing.

On a positive note, the Punter still has nearly half his original $50,000 in cash, so he is reasonably well placed to take advantage of any really sharp fall in the market.

He is seriously tempted to buy a stake in Alcyone (AYN), a Queensland silver miner that has started coining it.

In the three months to the end of September it had sales of more than $70 million.

All of that was spent on production and development, but it is aiming for at least 1.5m ounces during the next 12 months.

With silver around $30 an ounce, that should bring in $45m.

At current production costs, about half of that would be gross profit.

It has done a deal with Credit Suisse for advance sales of about 40 per cent of production at current prices, with pre-payments of $3m providing immediate cash.

Yet the shares are only about eight cents each.

That’s partly because there are 1.3 billion AYN shares all waiting to share any profits.

It is also because the company is effectively a phoenix start-up, refurbishing an existing mine.

Formerly known as Macmin, it went into administration, was revamped, and relisted on the ASX under its current name in 2009.

But it is one to buy, perhaps, after the coming weekend’s New Year festivities and hopes have settled down and the reality of 2012 is upon us.

* 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.