Hello all,

Took me a few hours to review the posts on here for the past four days.  I was out of town on Friday but had my cell (portable browser) with me during the day.  I thought news must have broken out as the SP climbed throughout the day and closed strong.

Upon returning to my hotel room, I found a link to the Richmond Club video on the SH site and was inspired.  We are really onto something big here in more ways than one.  But that is stating the obvious.

I first want to say hello to all of my friends on here.  I know some of you have wondered where I have been.  Taking a bit of a break.  Noront has never been just Misfit's or BraveKind's or Bentonstock's or Canseco's board.  Many different people with different handles have taken a turn keeping the NOT faithful updated and hopeful.  There was a poster last November named Don who provided me enough information to keep me from selling when the stock went to .22 cents (from the .185 cents I bought at).  No one knew back then what was coming up at Windfall just like nobody holding shares at .39 cents in August new what was around the corner with James Bay.  That is the fun of investing in junior mining stocks.  You wake up one day and boom, your wallet is bigger (or smaller in many cases).

There were many excellent posts the last days.  LTGOLDBULL posted a good reminder of the other properties on the go at Noront.  A few other pointed the way to the articles of late.  I see the NOT story was picked up by both the Financial Post and Canadian Business Week.  I will talk more about this later.

I just want to say that board's have a personality but also take a lot of work.  I try to contribute as much as I can as I have benefitted from the posts of others in the past on many different stocks.  To find people who are not pure BS pumpers or BS dumpers is a rare thing in stock forums.  The NOT board at SH (until mid August) and recently here are full of great people.  Check out their ratings and you will see who the regulars are.

My thoughts for tonight are on share valuations.  Many of you have seen the fairly wild flucuations in NOT's share price over the past month or so.  Some have commented that the share price drops every time there is good news.  Or that the stock will not go above a certain point at this time, ...

Whatever the case, there are many reasons that I believe NOT's shareprice has been devalued the past year, and most recently the past month.

Last year when the Windfall Lake Bonanza hole news broke, the stock went wild.  A jump from .24 (or so) to 1.07 in the weeks that followed.  What was most surprising was the volume.  With just 55M shares outstanding back then, we were seeing daily volumes in the 10Ms and 20Ms.  This was last December for the newbies.

I remember the bashing that took place during those first few days and weeks.  It was many of the same crew that showed up at Stockhouse the past few weeks.  Sometimes the handles change, but the writing styles do not.  I know many of the paid bashers by their M.O., and some by the handles they keep (BobotheClown, ObObtheClown, ...). 

Why do I say paid?  Nobody in their right mind would spend day after day, month after month bashing a stock and never pumping it.  While there is money to be made shorting stocks, it takes a good amount of money to hedge the hedges that large volume shorters and hedge funds perform.  While some small fries (like Sell) ride the coat tails of the big boys, there are some fundamental items needed to actually drive a price down to allow for later accumulation and weak hand shaking.  This is the ability to sell into bids, place phantom bids and asks, naked short a stock at times, and cross sell when necessary.

Sometimes the hedge funds and naked shorters will kill a stock all the way down.  By kill I mean the share price drops so low that in order to raise money, massive dilution is required causing a sell off and a resultant downward spiral.

In other cases, they want to drive the price down to get into a financing as cheaply as possible.  Retailer investors are not privy to most PPs.  These are offered to the institutional investors like Sprott, IBK, Canaccord, and other professional investors who have some deep pockets.  In Noront's case, the PP last year saw 30M shares issued at .50 cents with a matching warrant at .75.  While this seems cheap today, a few weeks before that offering the stock was trading at .18.

Most companies will try to raise cash following a sharp rise in price.  This allows them to solidify the price at a new level (Noront stayed above .50 cents for most of 2007 until the subprime meltdown) as well as get needed capital.  But it also opens the door to future manipulation.

Where am I going with this?

I believe it is unlikely we will see a true share price for a few months yet.  While this will be a concern to day traders, it should not concern longs who know what the company has over ALL of its properties.

I know for a fact that Noront's shares were naked shorted last December.   And I know for a fact that Noront's shares were naked shorted in September.  The high volume is just an indicator that this activity could be going on.  A check at buyins.net a few weeks after the volume usually tells the story.  The key is not to look for the symbol NOT, but the symbol NOSOF (the American equivalent).

For those who do not know what naked shorting is, do a mytube search for naked shorting and look for a three part investigative series.  The stats show that one out of three trades made in North America "fails to execute" (ie is shorted but not covered).  Illegal yes.  Hard to detect - yes.  Common - yes.

Do a search for Cannaccord, fines, and shorting and you will see that they have paid some money out over the years.  The large US brokers as well.  But out of the billions traded each day, the fines are a slap on the wrist.

Back to Noront...

Many of us have known that this stock was held down the last month.  But the time for holding this down is coming to an end.  I am not saying that it will not dip down again, but I will say that at some point the large investors will want to start protecting their investment.  It is one thing to fleece the retailer investor, and another thing the investment banks.

There are five things needed to make this a dream stock.  This has been the same since last year when Windfall news broke.

The first is good assays.  Windfall and James Bay have had record breaking assays.

The second is tonnage.  This is still to be determined.  A 10M dollar ramp at Windfall is helping to define an estimate this year and into next, and three drill going at Double Eagle will define this in the next few months.  Tonnage is extremely important as small finds do not make a mine.

Even with the first two, there are three other items needed to make a stock go boom.

First, a movement of shares from retail to large funds.  Not all the shares, but a good number that allows the large funds to start to exercise control over the situation and bring in some steady hands.  While money is made on volatility, long term and lasting high share prices are built with big money.  For every retailer that ARU at .15 cents, the large funds bought the stock between $6 and $40 once grades and tonnage were known.

The fourth item is promotion.  A stock must be known before big money comes in.  In the case of Noront, this has just started to happen.  Outside of one wallstreetreporter.net interview last December, the company was really only known by the local mining community in Quebec, and of course IBK, Sprott, and Pinetree.  All Canadian companies.

This time around, IBK is earning their shoe allowance and pounding Bay street getting the word out.  Wall street will likely be next.  This did not happen the last time out in December.

Lastly, a story has to develop and a sense of excitement needs to be sustained.  Drive a stock up too far and down too fast and you will scare everyone away.  Drive it down and keep it down and you might steal the company away if you can buy up all the shares.  But if the grades are good, the tonnage is estimated, the large money is lining up to get in, and the brokers know about it, these brokers like the retailers only make money when they eventuall sell (or our forced to sell) and that means having the stock rise.

While there are many ways to manipulate a stock downward, there are few ways to keep it down when the grades are this good.  I was shocked to see the stock drop like it did after hole 5.  Why?  Those results have not been seen in a very long time, if ever.  Just like the Windfall Hole 100 results.  What the likes of Franz, Benton, and others have been saying about the grades was just stated in the IBK presentation to the Richmond Club last Wednesday.  And it is started to be picked up by the major financial daily rags.  Word is getting out.

Though information on Noront is communicated instantly due to technology, most large companies do not get the message for days and weeks.  The only reason is that unless a company is known (most on the TSX-Venture are not), they do not have a Bay Street following.

Noront now has a Bay Street following.

In closing, I will say that new price support levels will appear in the next few days and weeks.  If the tonnage is there then this stock will skyrocket.  Not just because I want it to.  But because of all the instituational buyers who know value want it to.  The best we can do is hang on for the ride and let the big boys fight it out from here on out.

My only advice at this time is as follows:

1) Sideline watchers:  Get a position in Noront.  We are at a new bottom level.

2) Current shareholders: Buy on dips to average down (or up as the case may be).

3) Noront longs (Pre-mid August):  Hold most and sell a few.  If only to celebrate having seen the stock go from .29 to where it is today in just two months.  1000 shares will buy a vacation, a 52" Sony LCD, 40000 shares of a .10 cent stock, or an ultrafast and ultralight notebook to check stock prices on.  There is something healthy about taking a 1000% profit on a small part of your portfolio.  It keeps greed in check and prepares you for the day(s) when you will sell more at higher prices.

Anyway, time for bed here in Alberta.  Good fortunes for all tomorrow.

Misfit1.