full year report fy11, page-27

If I were you at this point in time I would rather be paying attention to the external environment under which FML is expected to be operating in the near to medium term than to its internal aspects or strengths and weaknesses.

The leading gold stock in Australia is Newcrest Mining and you should be looking at this stock recent performance because is telling something that has nothing to do with concerns about takeovers or some other distractions.

Inflation in Europe is at 3%, 1% above the comfort zone, but nobody is expecting the ECB to raise rates as that would be a sign of madness. Actually, they are asking for the ECB to bring rates down, that is, to bring the PRICE of money in Europe down.

As somebody said: "at the same time QE2 was fomenting a global commodity bubble and stock-market advances through 2010 and into early 2011, it was also punishing lower-income households with higher food and energy costs, and saddling them [because of that?] with falling home prices “that are likely to drop another 20%.” Crucially, the Fed is “pushing on a string” that, with “the depth and breadth of the financial crisis, the collapse in housing, the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe, Japan’s continuing two-decade-old deflationary depression, the impending hard landing in China, etc. make the monetary policy string much more limp than usual.”

The comment in brackets is mine:- more for food and transport and heating, etc less for housing.

As you know there will be no Q2 to foment another commodity bubble and stock-market advances and that is what scares me as an investor in commodity related stocks.

IMO you should also read today's article about gold in the Financial Times of London http://www.ft.com/home/asia

Cheers

PS. Although I am out of FML my wife is not.