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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Mining Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: russwinter who wrote (585)	2/10/2001 8:21:23 PM
From: W PAUL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4051

I don't understand why you are suddenly so down on Harmony. I appreciate it is not the type of low cost gold stock you want to own. But has it not been for some time a company highly leveraged to the price of gold with a strategy of buying up what others can't make a go of by reducing costs - which they seem to be doing reasonably successfully. What they have now done is admittedly to dig themselves in deeper with 12 months of disaster insurance at the price that Swanpoel is on record as having thought would be retested. Won't this all come down to your timing scenarios ? Your own favourite (number 3) will reap Harmony a bonanza;the other two will be tricky if they last a long time but is the Harmony of a couple of months ago any worse off now unless a very low price lasts for 12 months plus ? Was Harmony's recent drop particularly worse than others ? It appeared to cause negative sentiment in the market generally but isn't this more indicative of continued bearishness prior to a "solution" which itself increases the likelihood of their hedging headlines being intially misunderstood. Nothing is very sane at the moment as the price of your favoured stocks shows. Please put me right if I have missed something vital. I don't want any profits from your favoured stocks, which I also hold, to be washed out by my Harmony holding. But it seems to me that if Harmony is to fail the agony of the gold market will last longer than the timescales you are putting forward. ( But the more I ponder on your own strategy the more I wonder whether you would not actually benefit,relatively, from a sustained low price. With only low cost producers left they would at least get the financial recognition they deserve -even at this low price -and it doesn't need to be the larger strictly gold producers who would take most advantage of this for they by definition would also be badly hurt whereas the Rio Tinto's of this world - who are clearly watching - would clear up, all the more so with their continuing strong stock. But when your scenarios come about (as opposed to a sustained low price) within a portfolio of different gold stocks the surviving highly leveraged companies will not unreasonably make the greatest returns having suffered a previous greater risk ? We are back to Harmony again.)

To: russwinter who wrote (585)	2/10/2001 10:52:33 PM
From: goldsheet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4051

<1. "the dwindles" where we linger around at 260-265, might take until year end to gradually eliminate the marginal production> Basically the scenario I proposed the other day. I really think we could slowly and painfully grind along the bottom for even over a year. Hedging has allowed many firms to play the game a lot longer than they should have - many should have given up by now. On stocks: Don't think FN will get all of Goldfields, maybe pieces FN/Great Basin makes sense, but everyone expects it. Glamis/Metallica/Viceroy ? might make sense ? Miramar/Hope Bay is another possible big high grade deposit My bottom line is the industry is too fragmented, we need big mergers like Homestake/Normandy or Barrick/Placer Dome. We really need a huge merger of two firms that no one expects and shocks everyone - Barrick/Newmont almost happened over a decade ago.