John_Doe, showing how St. Elias is valued per ounce of gold in the ground relative to its peers is not "a retarded way to look at things." It is a crucial piece of DD that has long been overlooked by this site, due to St. Elias's percieved potential. If the market is valuing gold juniors at a certain price per ounce, you may disagree with it all day long, but I doubt you're going to change market sentiment, no matter how "retarded" that sentiment may be.

I agree with you that financings and the markets revolve around speculation to an enormous degree, but like it or not, speculation goes in both directions. When SLI raised money at 1.80, investors speculated that drilling would show a huge gold deposit. When drill results returned disappointing results, investors speculated that a huge gold deposit did not exist and drove the price down to 16 cents. Niether valuation is necessarily correct, but merely reflects the market's reaction to available information at the time.

Your original question was to provide a calcuation to show why SLI was trading at 16 cents and I gave you one.

To speak to your example above specifically, if your buddy spent your 50,000.00 to explore for gold and didn't find any gold, what happened to your investment? Like any business venture there are risks when investing in hypotheticals, no matter how sound the business model may be.