He may even take the opportunity to dump a few duds if the rally provides the chance to reduce some of his horrific losses.

This week he has, with some reluctance, sold his Tanami Gold (ASX code TAM) at a useful profit.

He was reluctant because the company has had considerable exploration success this year, doubling the resources of its main Central Tanami gold operation to more than two million ounces, and making good discoveries elsewhere.

But the shares have been falling sharply for the past month, probably because TAM needs to raise a lot of money from somewhere soon.

It has used up a $30 million loan, and although it sold about $16m worth of gold in the three months to September, exploration and development resulted in a net $6.3m negative cash flow.

That left it with $5m cash and projected expenditure for the current quarter of $20m. It doesn’t look as though gold sales will cover that.

A share purchase offer seems the most likely, and the Punter will kick himself if this is really generously priced.

It ought to be – the list of recent disastrous offers is long.

Cellmid (CDY), for instance, managed to raise only $480,000, which was $1.2m short of what it wanted.

Eden Energy (EDE) is also trying to sell shares at more than the going market price, and although it is including a free option with every new share, that is not enough to tempt the Punter to pay up.

Nor is he rushing to take up the share offer from Carnegie Wave Energy (CWE), even though the five cents asking price is a whisker below the market at the time of writing, and 48 per cent below the average CWE price over the past 12 months.

The $3000 minimum purchase certainly makes him hesitate.

Shares in the embattled scooter company Vmoto (VMT) crashed after the shareholder revolt was finally defeated, by a relatively small margin, last week (November 29).

The rebels appear to have dumped their shares in despair.

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.