The unfortunate situation for junior mining companies in general and exploration companies in particular is that it's virtually impossible to raise money right now.

I never owned NOT but have been looking at it lately as the price is so , well, attractive ... at least on the surface. back in 2007, when I knew very little about miners, I owned companies that had some success but never the success of the ring of fire .... $7 a share would have been my biggest dream, alas that is long past. Almost always, an explorer that makes a discovery shoots to the moon and is either bought out at a premium (pre-2008) or falls back to earth as it begins the process of building a mine itself. After financing and further dillution, the stock begins to recover and grow quickly only before the mine begins operation and ramps up production.

The other dilemma in the world is what direction will commodity prices go. The common speak of gold bugs is that money printing and demand from china and other developing countries will creat inflation, drive mineral prices higher (especial gold) in the coming years. I actually think the opposite is true and we could see commodity prices cut in half before things improve.

First, when the US Fed prints over $1 trillion a year you'd expect exactly what the gold bugs are saying but it isn't happening. The US barely eaking out 2% inflation and more recently that has dropped to 1%. So what gives?

In the absense of central bank money printing (US, Europe, Japan etc) we have deflation. With $42 trillion of private debt in the US (not to mention government debt, corporate debt, underfunded city and state pensions blah blah blah) $1 trillion a year of money printing is a drop in the bucket. Couple that with the aging population which will be spending less and paying down debt, you have downward pressure on GDP and money supply.

I also read this week that nearly half of houses that foreclosed in the US during the bubble are still occupied by the previous owners who are living for free on the banks nut. So much for a housing recovery in the US. It's easy tp say housing is recovering when most of the resale inventory is locked up on a banks balance sheet.

So at this point money printing seems to be only propping up bank balance sheets and preventing the dreaded D-word. My belief is that money printing can only stem deflation in the short term but eventually no amount of money printing will stop the need for a general deleveraging and possibly a wholesale write off of personal debt.

This action would actually strengthen the US dollar (because a write off of debt would decrease money supply and make it more scarce) and commodity prices (which are priced in USD ) would drop.

China will not be the saviour, at least not for a while. they have problems of their own, a housing bubble forming, massive consumer and government debt, huge amounts of infrastructure spending in givernment owned companies. They say they will move more into cities .... but many of these cities already exist and sit empty. What will all the unskilled farmers, most of whom do nothing more than grow for their own sustinence, do in a city? Another issue that will rear it's ugly head is the fallout of the 1 child policy. China's population is aging fast.

So, china may be the commodity saviour eventually but it won't happen soon and may might not happen for another 8-10 years. For that reason I sold most of my junior explorers a while ago. I still own one and it is self-fincancing through a pilot production plant so raising money isn't an issue.

NOT has a good deposit with over 400 million lbs of nickel proven and probable and about half again inferred. With all the other metals in the deposit it will be a low cost nickel producer after credits. They have lots of cash, and a "bought in" investor in resource capital so NOT will weather the investment drought. I wouldn't be surprised though to see a final share structure that is 2.5 to 3 times larger when a mine finally reaches production. It could be higher if the investment environment doesn't improve and management may decide to sit on it until the environment does improve.

Be prepared to wait.