Today was a great day for gold stocks and particularly the majors. Barrick, Newmont, Goldcorp. Kinross and Agnico all up between 7 and 10%. With continued increases in the gold price we should see greater price increases in the majors.

The US stock market ( dow type stocks) in my opinion has been way over priced for a long time. The political situation is a mess with no direction in sight. The housing market is a long way from any kind of a recovery and in a lot of places the hard housing times are still on the way( Hawaii for example). My glass ball tells me that oil and gold are going up for some time to come...( I guess we all feel that way or we wouldn't be here).

Barrick ( as much as I do not care for how they operate) added about 4Bill$ to their market cap today. In the USA the only gold stocks that the average US citizen know ( or most stockbrokers for that matter) are Barrick , Newmont and a few others. So that is where their money goes when they want out of "regular" stocks and into the gold area. As this increased wealth is accumulated in the increased prices of Barrick and Newmont etc. they will become more aggressive in their pursuit of smaller gold companies to acquire.

It is my belief that we ARU stockholders will get shares of the purchasing company when ARU is bought out . Maybe some cash but I would not be surprised with an all stock buyout offer. I've said it before and still feel that Barrick or Newmont will start throwing shares at us when the bidding starts.

We all know that Barrick still has 9.5 Million ounces hedged ( even if they try their hardest to disguise it) but Newmont has taken care of their hedges. Someday Barrick will pay but they have decided to defer their problem until after 2010. Newmont on the other hand has just come into money by selling their royalty business to Franco Nevada and has said they are looking to get bigger.

Anglo Ashanti (who supposedly has hit a big gold find in Columbia) is also planning to get rid of its hedged position ( which is 11 or 12 Million ounces). They have also said they want to sell off their "smaller" non core assets and concentrate on larger mines. They will supposedly say what their intentions are in Feb 2008.

It is my feeling that one of these three are going to start the "takeover ball" rolling as soon as they have a handle on what the Ecuadorian government is going to do in the mining area.