Good points Jerry, although I think it's much more severe than that. Even companies with 43-101 compliant measured and indicated resources are in the dumper. Also, at the risk of sounding "nit picky", a "proven" resource requires a feasibility study which is years away for SGX.

The junior industry went through a "retooling" in 1997 after Bre-X. New regulations on how exploration companies reported news and resources were set up and it took until 2003-2005 before money started moving back to juniors in earnest.

Junior exploration companies are driven by speculation and up until a year ago speculation was very high, Now many have fled the market and many, like us, are holding a near empty bag.

This is not limited to juniors ... it is market wide. I heard an interesting statisitic yesterday. Of the thousands of mutual funds covered by Morningstar.com, not a single one has a positive return year to date. In light of things, this may not be a surprise but illustrates the extremity of the situation.

So much for efficient markets ... Louis Bachelier the french mathametician whose hypothesis proposed that all asset values were based on known information. A corollery to that migt be that when there is a lot of unknown information, markets become inneficient. Markets right now are anything but efficient because well... there are too many unkowns, and markets just hates uncertainty.

what will happen to the auto industry?

What the hell is going on in Ottawa? (ok this is a local and not a global issue)

When will credit markets clean themselves up?... banks are starting to lend to each other but corporations who have debt maturing are still scrambling to restructure it.

Why is the US dollar holding strong when, trillions of dollars are being pumped into the system? ... common sense says it should go down and gold should go up

Why are commodity prices down to levels they haven't seen a long time? they shouldn't be this low, demand hasn't changed and in fact it's increasing. BRIC countries have the largest combined GDP of any other economy ... the demand for resources will not go away.

The answer, FEAR, PANIC and the flight to cash. Markets hate uncertainty and until there is more markets will wallow, and exploration companies will be the last to recover. As long as there's fear and panic, nothing acts like it's supposed to.

Look at the Blue chips. Only 5 companies in the S&P 500 are green this year. Many are trading well below book value. There are way too many low risk bargains out there, with cash on the sidelines waiting to jump in.

So what will it take for Juniors to shine again? well, Gold poducers will help. Once they start rising then companies that are past the pre-feasibility stage will go up (not Sage). For exploration companies like the ones in the BG area, it will take much longer. More than likely it will take until a majority of those 60% you talk about Jerry have already disappeared. The mom and pop speculators are gone and they're not coming back for a long time. Some may still be around but not by choice. The industry needs to consolidate.

The ones most likely to survive are those whose management has real money invested, not just founders shares at half a cent. When managers have personal money at stake, they tend to work harder to make things work. Fortunately for us Sage is one of those, but there are no guarantees. Unfortunately for us we will be sitting with a stock worth pennies for some time to come. IMO, the juniors (explorers) over the next few years will be more like they were in the late 90's and early 00's. They do nothing until they are either bought out or produce a bankable feasibility study and then shoot to the moon. The hard part is picking the right one's and then having the patience to wait.

As for the question why gold is not going through the roof? the answer is the same, UNCERTAINTY.

Until the credit market is unwound and new regulations put in place to protect it in the future, the fate of the auto industry is more certain, commodities prices find an equilibrium, and people realise that this trillions of dollars dumped into world markets is actually creating inflation, gold will sit in flux like everything else.

Anyone who tells you they know what's going to happen is guessing and really has no idea ...and this is why everyone is sitting on cash, Money Market investments are higher on a relative basis than they ever have been, Sovereign wealth funds are sitting on trillions of cash waiting to find some decent bargains. Even the smart mutual fund managers are sitting on 30-40% cash

Will gold be $1,000 by Christmas? I doubt it. The several Trillions of dollars that have been pumped into the global money supply over the next few years say that in time it will be much higher. The only way to avoid this IMO is to devalue currency, which might just happen as well ... like I said ... uncertainty