Economics can be a pretty broad, complicated and convoluted subject. Economists who work for the same bank or investment firm often have drastically opposite views on the future. Some of this is by design so they have all the bases covered, but there are some very passionate arguments and reasonings for vastly divergent projections. These are concerning the dollar, gold prices, oil prices, inflation, interest rates, commodity prices and the list goes on and on. NOT is stalemated it seems and to keep the conversation going, the impact of economics on NOt is being raised. Sure, all these factors are impacting our share price. But it can't possibly move until something spectacular is revealed. The global economy does not support movement of our junior exploration property as it now exists.

Also, even in improved global conditions, we do not have the knowledge and the facts that support a rapid or stellar rise in share price. There are three impediments. First of all, The chromite deposites at both NOT and FWR appear to be under mountains of waste. I have looked at the assays and rich as the chromite is, there has to be a hundred meters of waste rock removed to get one tonne of material that pays for anything. FWR has a fault that chops off their orebody in places well below surface. Babjak specifically asked the question on how close the deposits were and both companies said "close" however, there is no factual evidence from a drill hole with the exception that NOT's last release said the orebody was "within 30m of surface". This is still two complete mining benches before getting into ore but is a positive statement that open pit is feasible. In my opinion, an orebody that is 100m down (300ft) will not be feasible to mine by open pit methods and therefore adds a cost deficiency when compared to South Africa. To me, this matter is a real drag on our share price and NOTs last release was the first formal addressing of the depth issue.

Secondly, The whole dynamics of competing with South Africa and Xstrata et al. is an unknown as long as our orebodies are unknown entities from an economical persective. There are functioning mines and processors existing that are capable of supplying the world with a resources that just got a lot more abundant. In South Africa they have their challenges but they have their strengths as well. They have PGEs associated with chromite mining, they have infrastructure in place, customers that exist, relationships that are real, open pit mining right at surface in many areas. This is what we have to compete with and the big players can't move until they have hard facts that support a competitive play.

Thirdly, infrastructure costs are largely unknown. Because of the first two points, majors have probably not invested a lot of time and money doing detailed cost projections. I don't dispute majors have been sniffing around, but obviously not to the point of stirring up speculation. The financing of projects in the billions of dollars is probably not going to happen in the short term. Although financing is getting a bit looser, it is still very much constrained.

So, like many here I have my shares locked away, I don't get excited about the minor ups and downs. I've placed my bets and I'm waiting for the cards. We have some good ones so far, but it is early in the game, we are still waiting for the flop.

Mike