Ann: PMI outlines drilling planned in Ghana , page-25

Disco Stu

Not a problem, and no need to apologise. I can understand people getting jittery when things do not go their way and the market is generally crappy.

It all depends on how you want to look at PRU. PRU was $2.87 in early March and is now only 2.41, a drop of 16%, about half the fall PVM has experienced over the same period. On the other hand PRU was $4.04 in September 2011 and at its current price of $2.41 it has dropped 40.3%!! In September 2011 PVM was only around 55 cents and it is now 85 cents, a rise of 54.5%. Yes I know that PVM has come up with some excellent drilling results and proved up a large resource/reserve. But PRU has commissioned a major plant and is on its way to producing 240k ounces pa with another 200k ounce pa mine to be developed soon in the Ivory Coast (production end 2013).

My take is still that goldies are going to struggle in the next few months, but I could be wrong and pisces could be right that the market will take off. I have been battered many times in the last 5 years by the market, so this time I sold some of my shares early, including PVM (at my entry price) so that I could sleep better and have some cash in case I was right.

The share prices of non-income producing companies are inherently more volatile so we need to compare like with like, and PVM can not be compared with PRU. What made PRU's share price rise recently was a very good quarterly report on their existing operations in Ghana. Unfortunately until Ghana resolves what its tax rate on goldies is going to be the goldies operating there will remain under some additional pressure, including PRU, PVM and EVR.

Lets see what the next few days bring - Europe is up and perhaps when our market re-opens on Thursday our goldies will recover a bit. I expect a lot of people are taking a break from the market during this week, and this is making our shares weaker.

loki