i spent much of yesterday listening to the presentations at the denver gold conference, particularly the larger gold companies. after a presentation had ended, there would be questions like, "why aren't you making acquistions in this buyer's market?' or "why aren't you taking advantage of this opportunity to buy up juniors at these low valuations?"

the answers i kept hearing were things like, we won't buy a project just to get bigger. if we buy something, it has to be better than everything we already have. it has to be accretive to shareholders. it has to be a good fit with us. we have to be comfortable with the environment. we have to be able to manage the geopolitcal, capex and infrastructure risks.

i am still amazed that there could be even one gold company that thinks every single one of its existing projects is better than fdn. as if fdn won't add shareholder value. when it was over, the only one that really seemed to know what he was doing was the evil emperor himself, tye burt. just our luck. something still stinks to high heaven, but i can't unravel it yet.

on the bright side, one mining exec after another said this is just a correction in the metals and mining shares, and the long term fundamentals for commodities are as bullish as ever.