There are three stages in a junior company’s development. The most upside (and by far the greatest risk) comes from buying a junior resource company when they are exploring and make an initial discovery. Great drill assay results can send our juniors share price skyrocketing. The reverse can also be true. Junior resource explorers, the truly green field exploration plays, are the riskiest plays by far. If they strike out on assay results it could be goodbye to a share price rise for a very long time – till they find another project to go to work on. If you’re buying into this kind of play make sure the company has another fallback project in its portfolio. Juniors in the post discovery, resource definition stage have all ready found something, the share price has settled back after the initial discovery (never chase a company whose share price has already exploded, the share price has had its run, for now the moneys been made. I try and enter after the excitement has died down and the share price has settled back) and the company is going in to see what they have and hopefully produce a 43-101 compliant resource estimate and build upon it. The risk has been greatly reduced, the waiting time for a discovery non-existent and the reward very nice considering the much lower amount of risk. The advanced stage, those with a 43-101 compliant resource and are in the scoping study, pre-feas, feasibility studies. Because these companies are further along the development path a lot of the guesswork about grade, size, costs and metallurgy have been taken out of the equation for us. They have done sufficient work to give investors a certain level of confidence that their project will successfully move towards being a mine. For those further down the development path towards a mine, the company’s who have been successful and have built a 43-101 compliant resource estimate you have: Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) or scoping studies are done to examine potential mining scenarios and economic parameters – A PEA or scoping study is an important milestone for a mineral project, it’s the first step in a company’s  economic and technical examination of a proposed mine Preliminary feasibility studies or pre-feasibility studies are more detailed than PEA’s and are used to determine whether or not to proceed with a detailed feasibility study. They are also used as a reality check to determine areas within the project that require more attention Feasibility studies will determine definitively whether or not to proceed with the project. A feasibility study or bankable feasibility provides budget figures for the project and will be the basis for raising capital to build the mine Remember all these different stage studies are only yes/no decisions on whether to move to the next stage. NONE of them mean you are going mining, there’s no mine till every stage is completed, permits approved and the necessary financing has been arranged..