Hi Major et al. I would include myself as one of those who are "waiting in the wings". Have been burned quite badly by the overall mining share disaster and have been hoping that AUM will provide some offsetting profit some day soon. The "some day" horizon continues to recede as it has done for several years now. I find it difficult to think that the GATA folks have had ulterior motives all these years and that they did not truly believe that the bankers and others have corrupted the investment world in general, and the precious metals markets in particular.

I see today that Tom Hayes, formerly of UBS and Citigroup, has been sentenced to 14 years for manipulating LIBOR. He says that his activities were always transparent to anyone who cared to oversee them and that he naively wrote everything down because what he was doing "fell within a permissible range". I believe it was a GATA representative that I read a few months ago who named executives at JPMorgan and other banks as being criminals who should be in jail. Personally I can't understand how those banks can pay tens of billions in "penalties" or some other euphamism for "fines" when no one has been charged with a crime.

Having been retired for many years now I am most concerned about my own children and theirs. Government debts, zero interest rates, manipulation, criminal behaviour in business and government are all reasons to be very concerned for our future. Analyzing a company and investing in it based on one's assessment of its future have pretty much gone out the window.

So there is really no alternative for someone like me but to stay invested in companies that appear to be well managed, in industries that should stay solvent, in the hope that the financial world will somehow survive all of this. Which brings me back to AUM. As gwr has pointed out, the market cap of this stock is equivalent to the approximate value of one of its major processing plants. If you look at it that way you are getting all of its other assets for nothing. No complex examination of reserves, management, money in the bank, precious metals prices required. Doesn't make sense, does it?