I don't believe that the mentioned "African Gold Zimbabwe" is AFG, but the article does demonstrate rapid resurgence of E&P in Zimbabwe:

Mining Giants Plan Massive Diamond Prospecting

The Herald (Harare)

January 22, 2004
Posted to the web January 22, 2004

Harare

MINING giants, De Beers Zimbabwe Prospecting Limited and Circle Three Mining Corporation are proposing a massive diamond prospecting project that will see the two companies prospecting for the mineral in Gweru, Harare, Bulawayo and Kadoma mining districts.

The two mining companies intend to prospect for diamond in areas covering a total of 448 180 hectares.


Another company, African Gold Zimbabwe, has also undertaken to prospect for gold on two areas measuring 120 550 hectares within the Harare and Gweru mining districts.

De Beers Zimbabwe Prospecting Limited, Circle Three Mining Corporation and African Gold Zimbabwe have applied to the Mining Affairs Board for an exclusive prospecting order for 12 areas under the four mining districts.

In the latest issue of the Government gazette, the Mining Affairs Board said De Beers, Circle Three Mining and African Gold Zimbabwe intend to prospect for diamonds and gold over an area of approximately 568 730 hectares from the three areas.

"The applicants intend to prospect for diamond within the areas, which have been reserved against prospecting pending determination of this application.

"Prospecting authority is sought upon registered base mineral blocks within the reservation," read part of the notice.

One of the two diamond prospecting projects to be undertaken by Circle Three Mining measures 65 000 hectares and is bounded by a line commencing on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border approximating five kilometres.

All areas, which have been earmarked for prospecting are within the 15 000 hectares and 65 000 hectares range and are mostly in the traditional mineral bearing areas of the country.

The proposal to prospect for diamond in the country comes at a time when the US$41 million Murowa Diamond Mine has started to operate following the successful relocation of 141 families which were on the mining site.

Mining is one of the sectors which has been depressed over the last five years but some of the players in the industry have said investors should look at non-traditional minerals.

An example that is often given is that of platinum, which is fast becoming the world's most lucrative mineral.

The mining of diamond in Zimbabwe is also fast gaining pace and it is expected that some of the mining projects would create a lot of employment.

Relevant Links

Southern Africa
Mining
Zimbabwe

http://https://www.t1ps.com/default.asp

Thanks sue

We need to see very positive drilling and the gold if found has to be economically viable. then the shares will take off. The price will not move up greatly even when the last land tenement is announced. As drilling and pre-feasability reports takes time, the shares are more like a dedium to long term investment. Just in time when the US elections take place and when the USD may start gaining ground agains XUA. Sue, would be good to state the fundamentals here cos the momentum and specualtion has faded.

Something good happening very soon.

Price closing at 9.0-10.5 pence, up 12.0% today. Very heavy big buying reported in the afternoon. All of them appeared in the sell column.

Gold futures rise over 4% for the week
Silver caps trading with fresh rally; shares up 2% on week

By Myra P. Saefong, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 4:46 PM ET March 19, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Gold futures closed higher Friday, logging a five-session winning streak and ending the week with a gain of more than 4 percent.

Ongoing concerns over inflation and terrorism, as well as expectations for continued weakness in the U.S. dollar, sparked the rally in the precious metal.

Gold for April delivery closed at $412.70 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up $1.40 on the session. The contract closed higher every day this week, tacking on a total of $17.10.

April gold saw a brief pullback during Friday's session to touch the $409 mark, but it turned higher and managed to end at a fresh, one-month high.

"It would take a mighty bold bear to go out on a limb and short this gold market," said Kevin Kerr, editor of newsletter Kwest Market Edge. "It could be a very costly and painful conviction to live by."

Gold has been soaring, playing in part off inflation fears that seemed to be confirmed by a higher-than-expected reading on U.S. inflation at the wholesale level, he said.

The nation's producer prices rose 0.6 percent in January as energy prices jumped 4.7 percent, the Labor Department said on Thursday. See Economic Report.

"The real question is: Did economists really expect that number to be lower or was that just wishful thinking?" said Kerr.

"Energy prices are a big driver, but commodities prices in general have been blasting off," he said. "The picture is getting even darker on the inflation front as everything from copper to cocoa is on a surge."

Dollar debate

The dollar, back on the defensive, has repeatedly been used as the reason for gold's latest move higher. Market participants don't expect that excuse to be worn out soon.

The bruised greenback got at least a short-term break on Friday, rising from one-month yen lows as intervention speculation continued to dominate foreign-exchange trading. See Currencies Report.

"The Japanese are spending hand over fist, $190 billion in yen in 2003 and another $95 billion in yen in the first two months of this year, intervening in order to prop up the dollar," said Kerr. "Now they are having second thoughts and pulling back."

"This spells trouble for the dollar, and more weakness may be the push gold prices need to breach my critical $425 level," he said.

Silver, copper end higher

Also on Nymex, May silver rose 9.8 cents to close at $7.563 per ounce after a $7.72 intraday high, while May copper rose 0.7 cent to end at $1.378 per pound.

For the week, silver futures rose 7 percent and copper futures advanced 5 percent.

Silver prices haven't traded at levels above $7.50 since 1988, according to Todd Hultman, president of Dailyfutures.com.

"Fundamentally, silver is difficult to assess because as much as 75 percent of silver production is a byproduct of mining gold, copper, lead and zinc," he said.

But "technically, silver futures prices broke above a 16-year downtrend last year, signaling the end of two rough decades for silver producers," he said. "Silver has found new life, thanks to increased Asian demand and the weak U.S. dollar."

And as long as the Federal Reserve keeps the federal funds rate low, "silver prices should continue to work higher," he said.

Meanwhile, the copper market is being "driven by technical buyers as skittish shorts hold back," said Grady Garrett, chief trading strategist at EnergyTrendAlert.com, a commodity information provider. "Copper is also picking up some support from the general bull markets we are seeing all around the commodity trading world," he said.

On the supply end, copper supplies were down 1,532 short tons at 226,640 short tons as of late Thursday, according to Nymex. Silver stocks were down 13,563 troy ounces at 122.2 million troy ounces.

Gold inventories stood at 3.57 million troy ounces, down 5,829 troy ounces from the previous session.

In other metals trading, June palladium fell $1.95 an ounce to $280. The April contract for sister metal platinum fell to $892.50 an ounce, down $6.20.

Mining indexes end mixed

Metals mining shares closed on a mixed note Friday after rising over the prior three sessions.

Looking ahead, however, "inflation-fearing investors will be ... quick to seek the greener pastures of the gold and mining stock markets," said Brien Lundin, editor of investment publication Gold Newsletter.

Tracking the sector as a whole, Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index ($XAU: news, chart, profile) closed at 101.43, up 0.3 percent for the session, while the Amex Gold Bugs Index (HUI: news, chart, profile) fell less than 0.1 percent to close at 228.52. The two indexes are up nearly 3 percent from their week-ago close.

The CBOE Gold Index ($GOX: news, chart, profile) declined 0.2 percent to close at 86.86 -- up 2.1 percent for the week.

Leading the declines in the sector, shares of Agnico-Eagle Mines (AEM: news, chart, profile) lost 57 cents, or 3.9 percent, to end at $14.06.

Late Thursday, the Canadian miner said the staff of the Ontario Securities Commission is mulling whether it should start proceedings against the company and some members of management. The proceedings would be related to the "timing and content" of Agnico-Eagle's disclosure following a rock fall at the LaRonde mine in Quebec in early 2003.

Myra P. Saefong is a reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com in San Francisco.

There was sudden burst in buying volume after lunchtime. Lines of 100K buys going through. IMHO, this is an excellent sign that more good news is coming very soon and the rises should continue with another rise expected on Monday.
The price has crossed the ten day moving average which will provide a further boost.

MACD signals are turning and we should soon see the blue line above the green line which will be very positive.

Some investors go for the gold
IHT Saturday, March 20, 2004
World of Investing

One of my heroes is the late Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, who challenged the conventional wisdom that the world was getting overpopulated and would soon run out of food and other critical resources.
.
The best evidence of increasing demand and diminishing supply is, of course, higher prices. So, to prove his point, Simon in 1980 made a famous bet with Paul Ehrlich, who had been predicting catastrophic shortages.
.
Ehrlich, a biologist at Stanford University, could pick any five metals he liked. If the inflation-adjusted price of the metals in 1990 was higher than in 1980, then Ehrlich would win. Each of the metals - copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten - fell in price, by an average of about 40 percent.
.
"Simon's central point," wrote the columnist Ben Wattenberg in 1998, "was that natural resources are not finite in any serious way; they are created by the intellect of man, an always renewable resource."
.
In other words, human intelligence, with the right economic incentives, can find ways to get more oil out of the ground or substitute plastic for metal or use less copper, or none at all, to transmit telecommunications signals.
.
Partly because of Simon's influence, I have always been reluctant to buy stocks in the natural-resource, precious-metals or materials sectors. My motto is: "Don't invest in things. Invest in brains."
.
Yet there is one reason to invest in things that I can recommend without reservation. Things - or commodities, as they are also known - have very little correlation with stocks or bonds.
.
A recent brochure from Morgan Stanley made the point in a compelling way. The investment bank charted the performance of six asset classes - Nasdaq stocks, European stocks, large-capitalization U.S. stocks, corporate bonds, Treasury bills and managed futures - from 1980 to 2002. None of the six "has consistently outperformed all other types of investments," Morgan Stanley wrote.
.
The brochure was designed to persuade investors to spread their investments over several Morgan Stanley funds, to smooth out market cycles and "achieve greater returns."
.
I don't know about the latter, but I do know that by spreading your assets across several categories that don't move up and down together, you'll moderate the ups and downs of your portfolio's value.
.
Right now, there is a separate case for investing in commodities: They're going up in price. The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has doubled since the end of 1999, and the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index has risen about three-quarters since mid-2001.
.
There are three reasons for these increases.
.
First, the dollar has fallen lately, which means that it requires more dollars to buy a commodity with constant value. Second, supplies have been tight because businesses cut back on expansion during a worldwide recession and are still reluctant to invest heavily in getting things out of the ground or turning them into products.
.
Finally, demand is rising, especially as China booms, gathering raw materials from around the globe to feed its people and its industries.
.
China, as Charles Allmon writes in his well-respected Growth Stock Outlook newsletter, "consumes more copper than any other nation, and they're growing as a formidable oil guzzler."
.
In the long term, according to Allmon, "China's demands on raw material and commodities could change the price equation drastically."
.
There are a number of ways to invest in commodities, depending on your net worth and your stomach for risk.
.
Managed futures look like mutual funds: pools of commodity futures overseen by managers who buy and sell contracts. They are typically limited partnerships with restrictions on who can invest - you need a high, or at least midlevel, net worth - and on when you can take your money out.
.
Managed futures are sold through brokerage firms, and the commissions are high - 4 percent a year is not unusual. Initial investments can be lofty, and, because trading is often frenetic, you can run up big tax liabilities in a good year. Be sure you understand what you are getting into.
.
Commodities futures contracts,which are promises to buy or sell a certain amount of stuff on a specific date - say, 1,000 barrels of light sweet crude oil in June 2005 - are an extremely risky business. Investors typically use tremendous leverage, putting up small amounts of cash to "control" large positions. If you have a "long" position and prices rise, you can make a lot of money in a short time; but if prices fall, you can get wiped out - and then some. This is an investment where you can lose more than you put up. Your liability is unlimited, and nine of 10 commodity speculators (let's not call them investors) lose money. My advice: Stay away.
.
Mutual funds exist that specialize not in commodities themselves but in companies that profit from the extraction and production of them. One of the best-known is T. Rowe Price New Era. For the 10 years through Feb. 29, New Era returned an annual average of 11 percent, or about four-tenths of a percentage point less than the S&P 500.
.
More important, however, its correlation to the stock market has been very, very loose - which is what you want in a portfolio. In 2000, when the S&P fell 9 percent, New Era rose 20 percent; in 1997, when the S&P rose 33 percent, New Era rose just 11 percent. Currently, 60 percent of its assets are in oil and gas stocks, including large holdings in Devon Energy, an Oklahoma-based exploration and production company, and Total, the integrated French oil giant.
.
New Era's second-largest holding, after Devon, is Newmont Mining, which has reserves of gold totaling 87 million ounces. Newmont also produces silver, copper and zinc. Precious metals like gold and silver are considered good stand-ins for commodities as a whole, and investors see them as a store of value in dangerous times. While you can buy the real thing in bars and coins, the paper version is more convenient.
.
One of the best precious-metals mutual funds is First Eagle Gold, co-managed by the talented Jean-Marie Eveillard and rated five-star by Morningstar, has more than tripled over the past three years, but its long-term record is more modest: an average of 7 percent a year since 1994.
.
Vanguard Precious Metals may be a wiser choice, with no load and annual expenses of only 0.6 percent. Although it has lagged First Eagle lately, the fund has returned an annual average of 22 percent over the past five years and 5 percent over the past 10. Top holdings include Cia. Minas de Buenaventura, a Peruvian company with shares that trade on the NYSE, and Placer Dome, based in Canada.
.
In the end, I still believe in betting on brains. But in an era of stock volatility, terrorism, a falling dollar and a rising China, it is not unreasonable to make at least a small side bet on things.
.
James K. Glassman's e-mail address is jglassman@aei.org.

< < Back to Start of Article World of Investing

One of my heroes is the late Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, who challenged the conventional wisdom that the world was getting overpopulated and would soon run out of food and other critical resources.
.
The best evidence of increasing demand and diminishing supply is, of course, higher prices. So, to prove his point, Simon in 1980 made a famous bet with Paul Ehrlich, who had been predicting catastrophic shortages.
.
Ehrlich, a biologist at Stanford University, could pick any five metals he liked. If the inflation-adjusted price of the metals in 1990 was higher than in 1980, then Ehrlich would win. Each of the metals - copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten - fell in price, by an average of about 40 percent.
.
"Simon's central point," wrote the columnist Ben Wattenberg in 1998, "was that natural resources are not finite in any serious way; they are created by the intellect of man, an always renewable resource."
.
In other words, human intelligence, with the right economic incentives, can find ways to get more oil out of the ground or substitute plastic for metal or use less copper, or none at all, to transmit telecommunications signals.
.
Partly because of Simon's influence, I have always been reluctant to buy stocks in the natural-resource, precious-metals or materials sectors. My motto is: "Don't invest in things. Invest in brains."
.
Yet there is one reason to invest in things that I can recommend without reservation. Things - or commodities, as they are also known - have very little correlation with stocks or bonds.
.
A recent brochure from Morgan Stanley made the point in a compelling way. The investment bank charted the performance of six asset classes - Nasdaq stocks, European stocks, large-capitalization U.S. stocks, corporate bonds, Treasury bills and managed futures - from 1980 to 2002. None of the six "has consistently outperformed all other types of investments," Morgan Stanley wrote.
.
The brochure was designed to persuade investors to spread their investments over several Morgan Stanley funds, to smooth out market cycles and "achieve greater returns."
.
I don't know about the latter, but I do know that by spreading your assets across several categories that don't move up and down together, you'll moderate the ups and downs of your portfolio's value.
.
Right now, there is a separate case for investing in commodities: They're going up in price. The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has doubled since the end of 1999, and the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index has risen about three-quarters since mid-2001.
.
There are three reasons for these increases.
.
First, the dollar has fallen lately, which means that it requires more dollars to buy a commodity with constant value. Second, supplies have been tight because businesses cut back on expansion during a worldwide recession and are still reluctant to invest heavily in getting things out of the ground or turning them into products.
.
Finally, demand is rising, especially as China booms, gathering raw materials from around the globe to feed its people and its industries.
.
China, as Charles Allmon writes in his well-respected Growth Stock Outlook newsletter, "consumes more copper than any other nation, and they're growing as a formidable oil guzzler."
.
In the long term, according to Allmon, "China's demands on raw material and commodities could change the price equation drastically."
.
There are a number of ways to invest in commodities, depending on your net worth and your stomach for risk.
.
Managed futures look like mutual funds: pools of commodity futures overseen by managers who buy and sell contracts. They are typically limited partnerships with restrictions on who can invest - you need a high, or at least midlevel, net worth - and on when you can take your money out.
.
Managed futures are sold through brokerage firms, and the commissions are high - 4 percent a year is not unusual. Initial investments can be lofty, and, because trading is often frenetic, you can run up big tax liabilities in a good year. Be sure you understand what you are getting into.
.
Commodities futures contracts,which are promises to buy or sell a certain amount of stuff on a specific date - say, 1,000 barrels of light sweet crude oil in June 2005 - are an extremely risky business. Investors typically use tremendous leverage, putting up small amounts of cash to "control" large positions. If you have a "long" position and prices rise, you can make a lot of money in a short time; but if prices fall, you can get wiped out - and then some. This is an investment where you can lose more than you put up. Your liability is unlimited, and nine of 10 commodity speculators (let's not call them investors) lose money. My advice: Stay away.
.
Mutual funds exist that specialize not in commodities themselves but in companies that profit from the extraction and production of them. One of the best-known is T. Rowe Price New Era. For the 10 years through Feb. 29, New Era returned an annual average of 11 percent, or about four-tenths of a percentage point less than the S&P 500.
.
More important, however, its correlation to the stock market has been very, very loose - which is what you want in a portfolio. In 2000, when the S&P fell 9 percent, New Era rose 20 percent; in 1997, when the S&P rose 33 percent, New Era rose just 11 percent. Currently, 60 percent of its assets are in oil and gas stocks, including large holdings in Devon Energy, an Oklahoma-based exploration and production company, and Total, the integrated French oil giant.
.
New Era's second-largest holding, after Devon, is Newmont Mining, which has reserves of gold totaling 87 million ounces. Newmont also produces silver, copper and zinc. Precious metals like gold and silver are considered good stand-ins for commodities as a whole, and investors see them as a store of value in dangerous times. While you can buy the real thing in bars and coins, the paper version is more convenient.
.
One of the best precious-metals mutual funds is First Eagle Gold, co-managed by the talented Jean-Marie Eveillard and rated five-star by Morningstar, has more than tripled over the past three years, but its long-term record is more modest: an average of 7 percent a year since 1994.
.
Vanguard Precious Metals may be a wiser choice, with no load and annual expenses of only 0.6 percent. Although it has lagged First Eagle lately, the fund has returned an annual average of 22 percent over the past five years and 5 percent over the past 10. Top holdings include Cia. Minas de Buenaventura, a Peruvian company with shares that trade on the NYSE, and Placer Dome, based in Canada.
.
In the end, I still believe in betting on brains. But in an era of stock volatility, terrorism, a falling dollar and a rising China, it is not unreasonable to make at least a small side bet on things.
.
James K. Glassman's e-mail address is jglassman@aei.org. World of Investing

One of my heroes is the late Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, who challenged the conventional wisdom that the world was getting overpopulated and would soon run out of food and other critical resources.
.
The best evidence of increasing demand and diminishing supply is, of course, higher prices. So, to prove his point, Simon in 1980 made a famous bet with Paul Ehrlich, who had been predicting catastrophic shortages.
.
Ehrlich, a biologist at Stanford University, could pick any five metals he liked. If the inflation-adjusted price of the metals in 1990 was higher than in 1980, then Ehrlich would win. Each of the metals - copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten - fell in price, by an average of about 40 percent.
.
"Simon's central point," wrote the columnist Ben Wattenberg in 1998, "was that natural resources are not finite in any serious way; they are created by the intellect of man, an always renewable resource."
.
In other words, human intelligence, with the right economic incentives, can find ways to get more oil out of the ground or substitute plastic for metal or use less copper, or none at all, to transmit telecommunications signals.
.
Partly because of Simon's influence, I have always been reluctant to buy stocks in the natural-resource, precious-metals or materials sectors. My motto is: "Don't invest in things. Invest in brains."
.
Yet there is one reason to invest in things that I can recommend without reservation. Things - or commodities, as they are also known - have very little correlation with stocks or bonds.
.
A recent brochure from Morgan Stanley made the point in a compelling way. The investment bank charted the performance of six asset classes - Nasdaq stocks, European stocks, large-capitalization U.S. stocks, corporate bonds, Treasury bills and managed futures - from 1980 to 2002. None of the six "has consistently outperformed all other types of investments," Morgan Stanley wrote.
.
The brochure was designed to persuade investors to spread their investments over several Morgan Stanley funds, to smooth out market cycles and "achieve greater returns."
.
I don't know about the latter, but I do know that by spreading your assets across several categories that don't move up and down together, you'll moderate the ups and downs of your portfolio's value.
.
Right now, there is a separate case for investing in commodities: They're going up in price. The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has doubled since the end of 1999, and the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index has risen about three-quarters since mid-2001.
.
There are three reasons for these increases.
.
First, the dollar has fallen lately, which means that it requires more dollars to buy a commodity with constant value. Second, supplies have been tight because businesses cut back on expansion during a worldwide recession and are still reluctant to invest heavily in getting things out of the ground or turning them into products.
.
Finally, demand is rising, especially as China booms, gathering raw materials from around the globe to feed its people and its industries.
.
China, as Charles Allmon writes in his well-respected Growth Stock Outlook newsletter, "consumes more copper than any other nation, and they're growing as a formidable oil guzzler."
.
In the long term, according to Allmon, "China's demands on raw material and commodities could change the price equation drastically."
.
There are a number of ways to invest in commodities, depending on your net worth and your stomach for risk.
.
Managed futures look like mutual funds: pools of commodity futures overseen by managers who buy and sell contracts. They are typically limited partnerships with restrictions on who can invest - you need a high, or at least midlevel, net worth - and on when you can take your money out.
.
Managed futures are sold through brokerage firms, and the commissions are high - 4 percent a year is not unusual. Initial investments can be lofty, and, because trading is often frenetic, you can run up big tax liabilities in a good year. Be sure you understand what you are getting into.
.
Commodities futures contracts,which are promises to buy or sell a certain amount of stuff on a specific date - say, 1,000 barrels of light sweet crude oil in June 2005 - are an extremely risky business. Investors typically use tremendous leverage, putting up small amounts of cash to "control" large positions. If you have a "long" position and prices rise, you can make a lot of money in a short time; but if prices fall, you can get wiped out - and then some. This is an investment where you can lose more than you put up. Your liability is unlimited, and nine of 10 commodity speculators (let's not call them investors) lose money. My advice: Stay away.
.
Mutual funds exist that specialize not in commodities themselves but in companies that profit from the extraction and production of them. One of the best-known is T. Rowe Price New Era. For the 10 years through Feb. 29, New Era returned an annual average of 11 percent, or about four-tenths of a percentage point less than the S&P 500.
.
More important, however, its correlation to the stock market has been very, very loose - which is what you want in a portfolio. In 2000, when the S&P fell 9 percent, New Era rose 20 percent; in 1997, when the S&P rose 33 percent, New Era rose just 11 percent. Currently, 60 percent of its assets are in oil and gas stocks, including large holdings in Devon Energy, an Oklahoma-based exploration and production company, and Total, the integrated French oil giant.
.
New Era's second-largest holding, after Devon, is Newmont Mining, which has reserves of gold totaling 87 million ounces. Newmont also produces silver, copper and zinc. Precious metals like gold and silver are considered good stand-ins for commodities as a whole, and investors see them as a store of value in dangerous times. While you can buy the real thing in bars and coins, the paper version is more convenient.
.
One of the best precious-metals mutual funds is First Eagle Gold, co-managed by the talented Jean-Marie Eveillard and rated five-star by Morningstar, has more than tripled over the past three years, but its long-term record is more modest: an average of 7 percent a year since 1994.
.
Vanguard Precious Metals may be a wiser choice, with no load and annual expenses of only 0.6 percent. Although it has lagged First Eagle lately, the fund has returned an annual average of 22 percent over the past five years and 5 percent over the past 10. Top holdings include Cia. Minas de Buenaventura, a Peruvian company with shares that trade on the NYSE, and Placer Dome, based in Canada.
.
In the end, I still believe in betting on brains. But in an era of stock volatility, terrorism, a falling dollar and a rising China, it is not unreasonable to make at least a small side bet on things.
.
James K. Glassman's e-mail address is jglassman@aei.org. World of Investing

One of my heroes is the late Julian Simon, an economist at the University of Maryland, who challenged the conventional wisdom that the world was getting overpopulated and would soon run out of food and other critical resources.
.
The best evidence of increasing demand and diminishing supply is, of course, higher prices. So, to prove his point, Simon in 1980 made a famous bet with Paul Ehrlich, who had been predicting catastrophic shortages.
.
Ehrlich, a biologist at Stanford University, could pick any five metals he liked. If the inflation-adjusted price of the metals in 1990 was higher than in 1980, then Ehrlich would win. Each of the metals - copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten - fell in price, by an average of about 40 percent.
.
"Simon's central point," wrote the columnist Ben Wattenberg in 1998, "was that natural resources are not finite in any serious way; they are created by the intellect of man, an always renewable resource."
.
In other words, human intelligence, with the right economic incentives, can find ways to get more oil out of the ground or substitute plastic for metal or use less copper, or none at all, to transmit telecommunications signals.
.
Partly because of Simon's influence, I have always been reluctant to buy stocks in the natural-resource, precious-metals or materials sectors. My motto is: "Don't invest in things. Invest in brains."
.
Yet there is one reason to invest in things that I can recommend without reservation. Things - or commodities, as they are also known - have very little correlation with stocks or bonds.
.
A recent brochure from Morgan Stanley made the point in a compelling way. The investment bank charted the performance of six asset classes - Nasdaq stocks, European stocks, large-capitalization U.S. stocks, corporate bonds, Treasury bills and managed futures - from 1980 to 2002. None of the six "has consistently outperformed all other types of investments," Morgan Stanley wrote

Indicators are turning positive now, Investtech analysis tonight confirms this:

Neutral (Short term) - Mar 19, 2004
Has risen 425% since the bottom on 4 Nov 2003 at 1.75. Has broken the ceiling of the falling trend, which indicates a slower initial falling rate. The stock is approaching the support at p 8.00, which may give a positive reaction. High risk.

Upgraded from Negative candidate to Neutral.

Neutral (Medium term) - Mar 19, 2004
Has risen 1369% since the bottom on 7 Apr 2003 at 0.63. Has broken through the floor of a rising trend channel. This indicates a slower rising rate at first, or the start of a more horizontal development. The stock has support at p 2.00 and resistance at p 15.00. High risk.

Positive Candidate (Long term) - Mar 19, 2004
Has risen 1369% since the bottom on 7 Apr 2003 at 0.63. Has broken the floor of the rising trend, which indicates a weaker initial rising rate. The stock has support at p 3.00. High risk.

Upgraded from Neutral to Positive.

Are we ready for a correction?
March 19, 2004
When the gold price peaked in 1996, attendance at the Prospectors and Developers Conference in Toronto set a new record. That record was broken this year when more than ten thousand people showed up at the Toronto Convention Centre. Is that a sign of the top?

Gold stocks are certainly not cheap. Just this week I had a meeting with a fellow who had been bar-tending for the past few years but decided it was time to get back into the exploration business -- now that things are heating up again. I met several people in Toronto with similar stories. They were around in the early Nineties, couldn’t make it during the tough years, but now they’re back.

Many old projects that didn’t quite make it during the last cycle have been dusted off, renamed, and repackaged into new companies. Investors are eager to invest and any company that can mention the words gold, silver, copper, uranium or nickel and ‘project’ in the same sentence qualifies.

A few weeks ago I made the point in my newsletter that recent financings have become rather extreme. Looking at the amount of money being raised in comparison to the quality of the projects, and the terms of the financings that are available, it appears investors are no longer concerned with the return of their capital, never mind a return on their capital. All they care about is not missing the next hot deal.

These are all signs that we have to be more cautious. I don’t know if Warren Buffet actually said this or not, but he is credited with saying investors should be brave when others are scared and scared when other are brave. Well, most investors in the market today seem very brave. If you feel like sending me an email explaining just what a sissy I am, or chastising me for not having any “faith” in the gold bull market, then you’re one of the brave I am talking about.

I believe gold is money, and its price is a function of its role as money. I also believe that we are likely to see gold trade over a thousand dollars an ounce before too long (see previous columns). But I also think the market is getting ahead of itself judging by the quality of the deals I am seeing and the prices they command.

So what, you may say. So what if the gold stocks appear expensive. If the gold price doubles from its current level then all these stocks are dirt cheap at their current prices, and they are all likely to increase ten-fold from where they are now. Perhaps, but not necessarily.

If you look at last week’s chart you’ll notice that the actual gold price in constant 1990 dollars is currently above the theoretical gold price. That indicates gold is currently overpriced (if we compensate for the US dollar’s exchange rate since 1990). It also means that for gold to increase significantly from here the US dollar must devalue.

Ultimately the United States has to balance its trade account. That means the currencies of China, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Korea and Europe -- the United States’ largest trading partners -- are the ones against which the dollar is most likely to weaken the most. That’s not to say the dollar will not decline against currencies such as the South African rand or the Australian dollar. It is very likely that the dollar will be weak across the board.

As the dollar weakens, almost everything the United States imports will cost more in dollars. Metals, oil, uranium and gold will increase in dollar terms because their prices are set on international markets and not on domestic markets. The prices of these commodities, and of gold, are therefore a function of exchange rates.

If the gold price in other currencies does not increase nearly as much as it does in US dollars, then gold mining and exploration stocks may well be over-extended since most of the companies operate internationally, outside the US.

The best place to be invested for leverage to the gold bull market, which is really just a dollar bear market, is the good ol’ US of A. The problem is finding quality companies at reasonable prices to invest in. I have identified a few (that I own and regularly discuss in my newsletter) but, given that most junior exploration companies (predominantly what I invest in) are quite expensive at the moment I have been looking for alternative places to put capital.

Since the world is not going to use less energy in the future I am quite interested in that sector. I already own a few uranium exploration companies, but that market is both small and has become expensive; it seems like every investment banker I meet wants to do a uranium deal. That notwithstanding, uranium may actually be one of the better commodity plays, especially given Cameco’s (world’s larges uranium producer) predictions about the uranium market.

There is a real push in the United States to find alternative energy sources, especially renewable forms of energy. One kind in particular seems very attractive: geothermal power generation. I have devoted almost a decade to understanding mineral exploration; geothermal development is similar to mineral exploration in many respects. Even the potential rewards of proving up a viable geothermal project are comparable to finding an economic mineral deposit.

There is a small Canadian company developing a geothermal project close to the mining operations in north-central Nevada. The project is close to infrastructure, the mines need power, Nevada has many existing geothermal power plants – so we are dealing with proven technology – and there is a demand for renewable energy.

I will discuss this company in today’s email to subscribers. If you’re interested in finding out what I personally invest in go to www.paulvaneeden.com and subscribe.

Paul van Eeden



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Paul van Eeden works primarily to find investments for his own portfolio and shares his investment ideas with subscribers to his weekly investment publication. For more information please visit his website (www.paulvaneeden.com) or contact his publisher at (800) 528-0559 or (602) 252-4477.

This article expresses the opinion and views of Paul van Eeden. While every attempt is made to ensure the accuracy of information presented, nothing can be guaranteed. Paul van Eeden does not accept responsibility for any errors or omissions.

2004 All rights reserved. No part of this website may be copied or distributed without Paul van Eeden's written permission.

http://www.kitco.com/weekly/paulvaneeden/mar192004.html

This Table is not wholly accurate, because some of the resources are guesstimates, but it should serve the purpose:

Mine Resource in Oz. (Au)
Inez 200,000
Konongo 860,000
Akrokeri 1,000,000?
Ahanta 1,400,000
A.N.Other? And reputedly the largest? 2,000,000?
Total 5,460,000?


With conservative estimates in excess of 5,000,000 ounces at $400 per oz, our little tiddler of a company has over $2,000,000,000 of gold potentially to mine.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFX) - Airline stocks lost ground this week after United
pushed back its plans to exit bankruptcy and Delta warned it will lose more than
expected.
The Amex Airline Index fell nearly 8 percent over the week. Delta Air Line's
announcement late last week that it expects to lose $400 million in the current
quarter, up from prior projections of $300 million to $350 million soured many
on the stock. It lost 15.6 percent for the week.
In the middle of the week United Airlines delayed expectations for its
emergence from bankruptcy protection from the end of June to later in the
summer.
Chip stocks also had a bad time despite positive comments on the sector from
several analysts. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Indexlost nearly 5 percent
this week. Upgrades on the sector didn't register with investors, who sent down
chip stocks along with the overall market. A restatement from Lattice
Semiconductor on Thursday also hurt the sector.
The Amex Networking Index tumbled 4 percent over the week, with 3Com one of
the most notable decliners after it reported a wider third-quarter loss and
declining revenue on Thursday.
Investors looking for a safe haven investment in the down market turned to gold
stocks. Gold futures rallied all five days as people concerned about inflation,
terrorism and the weak dollar pumped up precious metals. The Philadelphia Gold
& Silver Index rose 2.9 percent this week, the CBOE Gold Index gained 2.1
percent and the Amex Gold Bugs Index climbed 2.8 percent.
This story was supplied by CBSMarketWatch. For further information see
www.cbsmarketwatch.com.

Thanks Sue....... Positive drilling results and feasibility studies will do the job for AFG. Lets hope this are carried out asap.

Even more good news Xmortal, we have some press mention today which should help the price rise even more next week.


AFG had a brief mention in todays Express's Market Report.It said:
"African Gold struck it 1p richer at 9 3/4p on rumours of a positive announcement"

Nice one Sue, lets hope the rumour takes the shares higher up on Monday!! Thanks

Yahoo finance (http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/tech/a/afg.l.html) 20/03/04
Short Term Commentary
Watch out for price rallies over 9.39 , since can be interesting levels to enter short in the market.

HI sue I have found http:https://www.tips.com/default.asp, once You are there wich of the 100 Investment links do you choose?!?