Full article: http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-whats-new?oid=164772&sn=Detail

and don't forget to treat yourselves to a nice dram of something!

"Conclusion

It’s very clear that over the last decade gold has been a very good investment, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, but there is one asset class that will do even better then bullion, a lot better.

As mentioned previously, producers are not able to replace their reserves because there’s a lack of discovery, few large high grade deposits are being discovered and most of those that have been discovered aren’t owned by producers …

“Today, the major producers and their majority-owned subsidiaries hold 39 percent of the reserves and resources in the 99 significant discoveries made in the past 15 years.” Metals Economics Group (MEG)

Only 39 percent, so who owns the other 61 percent, who actually owns the worlds future gold supply?

A Junior exploration company’s place in the food chain is to acquire and explore properties. Their job is to make the discoveries that the mid-tiers and majors takeover and turn into mines. Junior exploration companies own the majority of the world’s future gold mines.

But the bottom line is, new exploration, despite a record amount of money being thrown at it, is not keeping up with reserve depletion. Juniors are not getting enough funding to do the necessary exploration to keep up - from June 2011 to June 2012 funding for juniors has dropped by $9bn.

It’s time to be a stock picker, you need to find the quality management teams with money in the treasury, the ability to raise more and having the advanced projects that are well along the development path towards a mine. A mine that is going to be a long life, lowest quartile all-in cost producer. These companies are the world’s future gold producers and of course most will be in the sights of mid-tier and major producers for takeover candidates as reserve replacement targets."