The McNutt barometer

``The options were exercised and either sold in a private transaction to minimize impact in the market, or continue to be held``

As mentioned yesterday, not everyone in the group sold their shares after exercising their options. It looks like at least one person held unto their exercised shares (at least for now). Who that person is could provide a hint on how senior management truly feels about the direction of Lamaque.

We know that Peggy sold her 200K exercised shares at $.63 on April 19th. As also mentioned, that sale had zero impact on her (and Ross`) 22.8M Century share position.

We`ll have to monitor SEDI over the next few days to see if McNutt sold his exercised shares also. He exercised the options on April 18th. I don`t know how much time they are given before they have to file their insider transactions, but I vaguely remember something like 10 days (I`m really not sure though). Peggy exercised her options on the 18th, sold privately on the 19th and filed on SEDI on the 28th.

If McNutt soon sells his newly exercised Century shares then it`s no big deal. It wouldn`t mean anything. He only had 75,000 Century shares prior to this recent exercise (although he still has about 700,000 options remaining). On the other hand, if McNutt suddenly starts accumulating shares (even through exercise of options) then this is likely a significant development. To be honest, even though McNutt is a senior manager at Century, he is the last person on earth I ever figured would accumulate Century shares. I say this simply because I have never seen anything like it from him since I`ve been an investor at Century (even though he is a VP Ops guy). You know, everyone has their own personal reasons not to purchase company shares - it could simply be that he doesn`t (didn`t) believe in making market investments. It`s really none of my business.

However, we should monitor if he keeps these 200,000 shares or if he sells them in the near-future. His exercise price was $.40. It means that he dished out $80,000 out of his own pocket. That`s a lot of personal cash to suddenly dish out for someone with (75,000) virtually no Century shares since the inception of the company (about 7 years ago).

McNutt is the VP Ops at San Juan, but he is probably helping out at Lamaque right now also while they search for a permanent Lamaque VP Ops. Either way, he should be in the know as a member of the senior management team.

I will post if I see him sell over the next couple of days.