Mining stocks are truly two distinct groups: majors and juniors. For the juniors, there are really three fates. The most common is failure, which leaves a hole in everyone's pocket, including that of the banks and investors. The second fate occurs when a junior has enough success to justify a major paying a decent premium to gobble it up, leading to decent returns all around. In the third and most rare fate, a junior finds a large deposit of a mineral that the market wants a lot of; it is a magical combination of the right deposit at the right time. When this happens, juniors can return more in a few days than a major will return in years.
