Gold is up sharply again this morning. As one region of the world after another goes critical on the banking crisis, one would expect that gold will attract even more buying interest. In fact, many gold vendors at the retail level in countries around the world are already reporting record gold buying, and some are completely sold out. The price that is quoted for spot gold is generated from futures trading, where paper speculation drives much of the pricing, and large players are net short to a degree that is likely to hold the price down. This cannot continue indefinately and the divergence will likely be resolved to the upside if history serves as any guide.

Investors should be happy then that SMH has been able to acquire a high grade gold prospect to add to the suite of properties in Guyana. As I mentioned earlier, SMH is now focusing its activity in Guyana and has begun to streamline the holdings to reflect that renewed commitment. The Black Banana property has some extremely high grade gold showings that were reported from the very first sampling program and the project was acquired very cheaply. This is exactly the kind of leverage the company needs to afford shareholders the leverage to an upside move in gold.

Additional exploration news was also posted today on the Marudi Mountain project, our flagship in Guyana. Fieldwork has now demonstrated evidence that the gold bearing zone is much larger than was outlined in historic resources, and the presence of wide intervals with strong gold grades hosted near surface will present ideal economic circumstances. So again, the net effect of this news is that the property value has been increased.

We can be happy that in this weak market at least some share price gains have come from this news. I would think 2 years ago the stock would have gone up more than a double but this is a different market. My SMH is not for sale, and I have to believe that most of the other shareholders are not going to part with much stock at these ridiculous prices either. We should be close to the point at which the stock can stage a strong recovery.

In my opinion the biggest limitation on the company right now is the cash in the treasury. A bounce in the share price, along with excellent news and ongoing exploration work, should help David Bending to secure funding to allow the company to go flat out and investigate just how significant the gold resources at our projects may be.

cheers!

Mike Kachanovsky

IR Consultant