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The Direxion Daily Junior Gold Miners Bull 3X ETF (JNUG) suffered serious capacity issues and ended up halting unit issuance. In several posts last week, and in this week's column, this blogger advised investors to leave this one for the cowboy traders. Here's an excerpt from the ETF Focus column:

A deflated balloon. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The leveraged Direxion ETF is having its own capacity issues. On April 13, the day after MVIS announced its intent to change the index, the ETF suspended unit creation. The suspension, according to its press release, “was due to the limited availability of certain investments or financial instruments used to provide requisite exposure to the MVIS” index. In other words, Direxion has a supply problem getting more shares in either the Junior ETF or the securities themselves.

The leveraged ETF momentarily traded like a closed-end fund—at a premium to its net asset value. Then, last week, Direxion announced that it will resume unit issuance on Monday. But there’s some risk. In March 2012, the

exchange-traded note (TVIX) plunged, and the premium evaporated, when

resumed unit issuance after a weeks-long pause.

After JNUG fell 7% yesterday, I received a note from a respectful reader that he was sticking to his gold miners. This was an opportunity to pick them up on the cheap, right?