The old saying goes:

"If two people know, it's not a secret."

Word of an offer could leak out at the party's making the offer end.

I believe the company, SLI, knows we have a mineable property, Tesoro. Right now we know that just by extracting the high grade vein material, (and there are 9+ km of veins at the surface we know about) Tesoro has the makings of a small to medium size economically viable gold mine. That alone accounts for a significantly large proportion of the company's $225 mil market cap. The market may be attributing 1 to 2 million oz of gold at $100/oz in the ground on the Tesoro play alone. The rest of our properties as they sit now may only be valued at $25 to $125 mil combined. The trenching and initial 10,000m drill program will be enough to roughly estimate if Tesoro will be a medium, large or elephant huge mine. To come up with more precise measured, indicated and inferred numbers will require a much more extensive drill program. I think that the quietness (in terms of market activity) that currently envelopes SLI is on account of that the company will finish the stated trench and drill program before it decides which way to go next.

A while back, Silverback posed a question regarding our SP and activity. To quote for context:

"Knowing all this to be all but proven (we just need one hole), I wonder why the share price is only at $2.15? Why have only 19,800 shares traded today? Why is it only up 2 pennies or 0.9% when the POG has hit $1600/oz ? How come there is essentially no institutional holding in this company? You'd think the Sprotts of the world would be buying as much as possible even on the open market. Why aren't the Newmonts, the Barricks, the Agnico's etc falling all over themselves to buy this puppy at even $30/share? Surely they can do the calculations too."

Firstly, a reminder that at last November's AGM we enacted a Shareholder Rights Plan. This would make a hostile take-over move at an early stage counter productive.

Secondly, we have not yet hung up a For Sale sign.

So as I stated above the market has probably quite correctly valued SLI based on the best guess of the gold that may lay at Tesoro. If this round of exploration (trench and drills) points to significantly more gold then our SP will reflect that.

Management has clearly indicated what will be done at Tesoro in the 43-101. This outlined program will be completed prior to further decisions being made. The work is currently in progress. I would expect results of the work to begin trickling in, in August and stretching into the fall.

By AGM time a decision will need to be made. Hang out a For Sale sign as is. Carry on exploration to nail down a 43-101 compliant resource estimate. Partner up. Or a host of other options.

Personally, I'm inclined to side with management and wait and see what the results of the work that is in progress tells us. It is based on that, I'll be making my long range plans.