HT Good to know that you are still around - I have been...

HT

Good to know that you are still around - I have been wondering where you had got to.

I am still holding SBM shares. I think that for obvious reasons the upside from here for SBM will be much slower. However I still prefer it to EVN, NST. MLX has potential but its management seems to have taken leave of their senses. RRL could be interesting at a bit lower price - if they find more higher grade gold near their mills then it would become an outstanding buy, given their almost 10mtpa milling capacity and current low ore grade operations.

I was not expecting Gwalia to become such a low cost operation or increase its gold extraction. This has come about due to operational improvements plus that the average milling grade has gone up from 8g/t to around 9.5g/t (increases ounces produced and lowers average cost). The market woke up much sooner than I expected to SBM, and as you probably have read on hotcopper MacBank is backing then now when they where dumping SBM in late 2014.

If you like a bit of a gamble of challenging situations then have a look at BDR, MML and RSG - they are probably safe enough for now at the current gold price but could get into trouble at lower prices. These companies have a lot of upside if they can overcome their issues. I have a bit in each of them, but there is a degree of discomfort in holding them, unlike SBM.

Overall Oz-based goldies are to be preferred.

Thanks for your views on AJX - I will have a look. A couple of other interesting ones recently to come on the scene are BLK and DCN, a bit spec since they are not yet producers and given the history of some of BLK's former operations.

It looks as if my call on SBM was too conservative, and congrats on your superior analysis.

Lets hope the POG has not got too much further to drop - I fear that with global goldie AISC now being around USD900 (world gold council reported), the POG could trend down there for a while, given that the weaker 2015 monsoon dampened gold demand in India and Venezuela may dump around 360 tonnes of gold over about 12 months (has been dumping for a while).

Best of luck with your investments.

loki