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Gold/Mining/Energy : Tusk Energy (TKE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Syncrude who wrote (408)	5/7/1998 9:05:00 PM
From: grayhairs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1207

Hi Patrick, "It is a truth very certain that when it is not in our power to determine what is true we ought to follow what is most probable." - Descartes Your posts #402 and #408 express what appear to be a "rather strong opinion" that the Strachan Play is speculative. Now my dictionary, "The New Lexicon Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language - Canadian Edition", defines: invest (vt.) - to put (money) to a use expected to yield a profit or income, and, speculate (vi.) - to consider possibilities and probabilities, it is idle to speculate about what might have happened \|\| to undertake commercial transactions involving serious risk for the sake of possible large winnings, esp. to buy and sell in the hope of profiting from fluctuating prices, sometimes in an antisocial way. NOW, IF TODAY I AM OF THE OPINION that I am INVESTED in TKE, then given the above definitions, and your opposing opinion, it should be most obvious that we must have strongly differing perceptions of the "risk" still left in the Strachan play. But, since we have different backgrounds, different education, different work experiences, different investment experiences, different biases, different information (and different scouting reports!) that is not too surprising. The quantitative assessment of probabilities (i.e. risk analysis) of capital investment decisions in petroleum exploration projects is (as you may know?) complex and a partially SUBJECTIVE problem. There are no simplistic formulas we can use to ensure unanimity in all requisite subjective probability estimates. And we absolutely must continually monitor and ensure that all of our subjective assessments of risk are maintained current! For your information Patrick, you may wish to review the second paragraph of my post #238, dated April 27, 1998 (2:41 p.m. ET) on the Dalton thread. Back then, I too definitely considered "new" positions in TKE to be SPECULATIVE. However, by May 5 that all changed as a consequence of my updated subjective assessment of the residual risk in the Strachan play! I am currently of the opinion that new positions in TKE are now INVESTMENTS!!!! "We must be trained in the technique of weighing alternative risks. We must face the grim fact that we cannot eliminate risk. The problem, therefore, is to be able to evaluate risks, to identify a reasonable risk, and to adopt it with courage, and care, and hope." - Warren Weaver Later, grayhairs