Mining Minerals & Metals Share Discussion Threads

[haydock] 18/11/2008 09:25

Posted by Chip on CEY:
Another rumour about the Chinese central bank buying gold!

[share_shark] 18/11/2008 08:32

"Aim, the junior market in London, has been losing business and value.......etc".

Worth a read and might explain why so many Aim stocks have lost so much ground as well as everything else !.

[1waving] 17/11/2008 20:46

haydock,
the late Julius Baring's investment approach to the mining sector was to invest at or below 10% of in situ value, hold to 40% and then sell, taking no prisoners.

In short the asset value is key or in situ value as per Julius Baring's approach.

Glencar is a long way away from a realistic asset value along with many gold juniors -- The one thing that I'm noting is I'd rather be in the gold juniors now rather than gold. The juniors have taken a real beating, gold hasn't -- there is more to come from gold juniors with quality assets such as Glencar.

Remember juniors in particular are a leveraged play on gold, which is added to when they are also adding resource ounces..

[haydock] 17/11/2008 20:15

"You've got to find the right asset to buy. There's been a massive erosion of share prices so in theory they are not as bad value as they were," Bristow said."

This amounts to a tacit admission that you can forget the share price its the asset that is the thing that determines the price.

It's already the case in the oil M&A which is ahead & on paralell lines to some extent.

[serpicouk] 14/11/2008 21:21

I'm familiar with X-ray Fluorescence detectors and they're useful bits of kit to gauge metal content in solids. Bench top ones have been around a very long time and I suspect are widely used by mining companies to take an early look at a sample before sending off for accurate fire-assay at an independent lab.

As with all scientific kit, miniaturisation has led to the advent of portable XRF units which would allow for rapid 'real-time' assays in the field (at point of extraction from the drill hole - post micronise the rock first I guess).

Useful - but its no tricorder! =)

Might have a word with a thermo rep and find out what they run in at.

[haydock] 14/11/2008 18:08

Copied from Yilyak on The really useful gold thread:
Just to keep you amused for the weekend.
The great and the good of capitalism and free markets held a requiem dinner for the global financial system at a secret hideaway this week. As the waiter decanted a fresh bottle of 1985 Chateau Margaux, the blame game began.

"I blame the central banks," growled the bond trader, stabbing the air with a forkful of raw steak. "If Alan Greenspan hadn't kept interest rates so low at the start of this decade, we wouldn't be in this mess. Talk about refilling the punch bowl when the party guests are already as drunk as skunks!"

"We told you we were not in the business of identifying bubbles, let alone trying to puncture them," replied the central banker, nibbling at a lettuce leaf. "We warned you that credit spreads, emerging-market yields and volatility in stocks and bonds were all too low, and that you were under-pricing risk."

The central banker took a sip from his refilled wine glass. "Can you imagine the outcry if we had tried to halt the explosion in home ownership? I think you'll find that the true villains are the mortgage lenders; if they hadn't trashed their standards with self-certified and liar loans, the crisis in the housing market would have remained self-contained."

"That's not fair," said the mortgage originator. "We weren't on a level playing field. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were using their implicit government guarantee to distort competition in home loans. We were forced to take on more subprime borrowers just to stay in the game; if it hadn't been for all those clever derivatives products, we would never have been able to recycle all that toxic waste and keep the pyramid scheme afloat."

"Ah, the derivatives bogeyman," chuckled the structured- finance specialist. "Listen, derivatives don't kill markets. Markets kill markets. Everything we did was designed to promote efficiency by allowing investors to disaggregate their risks. I can show you the bills from my lawyers to prove that every product we invented was legitimate."

"All we did was offer advice on the best method of structuring securitization transactions," the capital-markets lawyer said. "There would never have been a market for the racier collateralized-debt obligations if the rating companies had done proper due diligence, instead of slapping AAA ratings on anything and everything that offered to pay them a fee."

"You can hardly expect the finest minds in finance to come and work for us when they can earn gazillion-dollar bonuses doing the same work for an investment bank," said the credit-rating assessor. "We relied on the computer models that the banks helped us build, and those models turned out to be, shall we say, less than perfect. Besides, everything was fine until the money- markets froze. The problem wasn't over-optimistic ratings, it was an over-reliance on wholesale markets to fund leverage."

The waiter cleared away the dinner plates. The diners all declined dessert -- "Humble pie? No, thanks." -- agreeing instead that a couple of bottles of 1982 Chateau d'Yquem would round off the evening nicely.

"I'd never even heard of Structured Investment Vehicles until they started to blow up," said the central banker. "We believed the banks when they said their business model was based on originate-to-distribute; how were we to know that once the music stopped, they were still on the hook for trillions of dollars of liabilities they'd slipped off the balance sheets?"

"Look, domestic savings rates just weren't high enough to provide the kind of leverage we needed to juice our returns to match those of our peers," said the commercial banker. "We had to rely on money-market funds, rather than our deposit base. And the money markets wouldn't have frozen if it hadn't been for those ridiculous mark-to-market rules forcing all of us to prematurely disclose that we owned huge piles of securities that were rotting, before prices had any chance to recover."

"We gave you plenty of leeway to play fast and loose with the truth so that you could stay solvent," said the regulator. "Besides, you were just doing your job of maximizing returns to shareholders. If those greedy investors hadn't forced you to take on more risk, our rules on capital would have been more than adequate to keep the banking system solvent."

"How on Earth was I supposed to fund the retirements of thousands of ex-employees when returns were collapsing simultaneously in every market?" asked the pension-fund manager. "Of course we wanted the banks to work their capital harder. We were in the same boat, trying to move money into new arenas to make a buck or three. We bought derivatives, commodities, we even held our noses and gave money to the hedge funds. That didn't turn out to be such a good idea."

"Hey, we warned you there would be times like this," said the hedge-fund manager. "If you want years when we deliver 50 percent, 60 percent returns, you have to expect periods when we will lose 20 or 25 percent of your money. You won't see us lining up with our begging bowls at the government bailout window."

The waiter coughed, proffering a slim leather folder containing the reckoning for the evening's entertainment.

"You are a taxpayer, I take it?" asked the investment banker. The waiter nodded. "In which case, we were rather hoping you would foot the bill."

[haydock] 14/11/2008 17:45

Sounds amazing & in common use 1400.
Howver I am sure that the board are abreast of these gismos:

Here is another that belongs to Diagnos of Canada which APF have invested in.

[stenick] 14/11/2008 16:11

Glencar has got to get one of these.....

[stenick] 14/11/2008 16:03

I would think when they have core samples they could use this.It would quickly show any presense of Gold therefore where to drill again.

[share_shark] 14/11/2008 15:59

Lols guys/gals. I have to confess.

The article had me rolling on the floor with laughter but you know in all seriousness we should not laugh. There MIGHT be something in it !.

[stenick] 14/11/2008 15:55

In there brochure it actually shows someone pointing at the ground to get toxic material levels, amazing.Someone tell Hugh quick.

[1waving] 14/11/2008 15:50

Forget any drilling, just point the analyser and when it bleeps get the shovel going ----- saves a lot of exploration.

[deka1] 14/11/2008 15:48

do away with all that drilling then, should be able to prove up a resourse in a fortnight, excellent

[share_shark] 14/11/2008 15:48

Stenick. LOLS.
THAT is exactly what I thought but it is not as simple as that as I am sure some of the more knowledgeable posters here will enlighten us, if they are kind enough to ?.

[stenick] 14/11/2008 15:43

Looks a good bit of kit.You just stand in a field and point it at the ground and it will tell you how much gold is there?

[share_shark] 14/11/2008 15:39

It does too. I Waving.

[share_shark] 14/11/2008 15:38

Stenick. Thanks for that.Silly me.

[1waving] 14/11/2008 15:38

Portable hand held element analyser sounds much more polite !!

[stenick] 14/11/2008 15:34

SS just Google it

[haydock] 14/11/2008 11:05

Reality check, but interesting anyway: