Hi PhillopThe reason you cannot say "bornite visual in X metres...

Hi Phillop

The reason you cannot say "bornite visual in X metres of core" is twofold.

Firstly, and most importantly, the ASX would be all over that statement because it has now become quantitative and as such you would have to be able to prove that statement to their satisfaction or risk a full retraction (highly damaging to share prices) or possibly face a fine and Directors can get in serious trouble for statements that are deemed to be quantitative but cannot be substantiated at the time. The amount of governance that public companies are subjected to is huge and junior explorers would fit in the most scrutinised bracket without a doubt.

Secondly, the reason assays are done is because the human eye cannot detect everything present. I was recently working on a gold project where there was no visible mineralisation in the host rock and yet is assayed consistently above 12 g/t Au - very good grades. Whilst veins are often easy to visually detect, fine disseminated copper sulphides may be visually undetectable but could still result in grades that are highly economic. It is not hard to get copper grades above 1 - 2% and yet not be able to visually detect the copper mineralisation in the drill core.

As a further comment regarding deceptive behaviour that is a very serious allegation. Directors of public companies are acutely aware of their obligations and the serious trouble (huge fines and even jail terms) for misleading the market. It just is not worth it and I think everyone should be careful making such statements because authorities do troll these forums as well and if they start to see a trend or a certain sentiment they can choose to investigate - that would serve no company well and could cause more share price damage than anything else. I think people need to realise that the Directors are not responsible for how the market reacts and a lot of the time there are people behind the scenes - brokers, major speculators and even large wholesale investors - that are seeking to make short term gains and do not care about the "Mum and Dad" investors. The question that really needs to be asked is who was doing all of the selling during this time? Was it Mum and Dad investors, individual shareholders, wholesale investors, Directors. All I can see from the Top 20 shareholders lists is that it is quite stable and if anything the Directors have actually increased their holdings - that is the real flag in terms of confidence. You can blame Directors and officers for a lot of things but share price fluctuations is not one of them. Shareholders can be like lemmings - they see one go off the cliff (sell down) and they often follow and it becomes a train wreck and then they turnaround and say , "just as well we got out when we did" when in fact, they helped create the run and then they blame it on Directors.