Heard today that Barrick has seriously left the option on the table of writing off the Pascua Lama project. This would be highly bullish for precious metal equities as it would mark the end of the mega projects for the time being at least and provide clear evidence of a shift to shareholder value driven returns. This could mark an important bottom that would certainly make it's way from senior mining companies down to juniors.

The majors need to start the long march back to historic PE's which are normally above 30.