Yes, Bill, we need more speculation, for sure....remember sitting around the broker's a few decades ago drinking coffee (this I miss about SI--no free coffee) listening to the gossip? It's the same game, right, just speeded up with electronics....too bad Strathcona can't drill and assay and publish by suppertime....maybe the old rules still apply, like 1. Don't put more than 10% in any one stock. 2. Don't put more than 20% in any one industry. 3. Don't put more at risk than you can afford to lose. 4. Don't believe a word of anything, it's all just a game.... Here's Ted Turner's contribution---
The gold find that wasn't
Tests show that Canadian firm's claim
of massive deposit was wrong
March 26: 1997: 3:48 p.m. ET
Bre-X stock
plummets -
March 21, 1997
Bre-X
TORONTO (Reuter) -- A Canadian exploration
company's claim to have made the biggest gold find
this century was cast into more doubt on Wednesday
when its mining partner, Freeport-McMoRan
Copper & Gold Inc., said tests of the Indonesian
deposit showed insignificant amounts of the precious
metal.
Calgary, Alberta-based Bre-X Minerals Ltd.
admitted that its earlier estimations of the deposit on
the Busang gold property, deep in the jungles of
Borneo, may have been wrong.
David Walsh, the chief executive of Bre-X who
has made millions from the discovery and now lives
in the Bahamas, said in a statement that there is a
"strong possibility" that deposits on the project in
East Kalimantan, Indonesia "have been overstated
because of invalid samples and assaying of those
samples."
Bre-X had issued confirmed estimates that the
Busang deposit held at least 71 million ounces of
gold, worth about $20 billion at current gold prices.
At that level Busang would be the most significant
gold find since the discovery of the Witwatersrand
gold fields in South Africa the late 1800s.
Company fficials had even asserted that Busang
deposit could contain as much as 200 million ounces.
But Bre-X shares sank last week after an
Indonesian newspaper report quoted unnamed
sources as saying New Orleans-based Freeport,
which holds 15 per cent of the Busang deposit, had
doubts about the size and viability of the deposit.
The rumors were fanned to a fever pitch by the
mysterious death -- billed as a suicide -- of Bre-X's
chief geologist, Michael de Guzman, who fell to his
death from a helicopter en route to the Busang site
last Wednesday.
Bre-X said De Guzman was depressed because
he was suffering from a serious illness.
The company's board had assured shareholders
as late as Monday that it had "absolute confidence in
the integrity and accuracy of assay results and
resource calculations."
Traders now are wondering who or what to
believe.
"I've concluded the only person who could ever
make a movie out of this is Alfred Hitchcock," Rick
Cohen, an analyst with Goepel Shields, said last
week. "It's become so bizarre that people have lost
any tolerance for staying in."
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PS--I have a little BSR and stand to lose, in the worst-case scenario, almost a half of one percent of portfolio. I am devastated....
PSS--I too am curious about SI, although without the imagination to come up with a conspiracy theory....willing to hear those of others, though....
Mucho ojo---marcos |
