RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Does anyone seriously believe these projects will be mined?It depends where you live to an extent, and different people will have a different experience. My experience is property values, rents, food, medicine, consumer products of all kinds, professional services, and asset values like the stock market, are all double what they were 10 years ago, and quadruple 20 years ago. This is 7% annaully. This may be localized, and it's only 5% more broadly. Commodities once again are at a cyclical (secular?) low, but 4x what they were in the 90s commodity recession. Labour is not up as much, arguably due to industry concentration widening inequality. Certain manufactured goods are cheaper, due to foreign imports in a globalizing economy, e.g., from China but also less developed markets. Electronics have deflated due to technological advancement. But the general inflation just follows the money supply which has expanded enormously. It is underreported by the government for optics, to make GDP numbers look better, wage gains look real, reduce CPI-linked public benefits, and for a variety of other reasons. Aggregate inflation is a controversial subject and not really important here. It is true that as gold prices rise and fall sharply over the short term, input costs do not follow. However, in long bull markets, there is more mining activity which drives up labour costs. Taxes go up as governments want to capture more of the profits. Earnings do increase (or losses decrease) in a bull, but over a long period in which the gold price rises with inflation, along with all other goods, projects do not become any more economic, and mines are no more profitable in real terms. Mining costs have risen immensely in 20 years as gold has gone from 250 to 1300. Not 5x, but significantly. The reason profits are not up is that although costs per tonne or per hour of labour are not up as much as the gold price, grades are falling, as you correctly point out, so the amount of labour and diesel and plant capital, etc., required to produce an ounce is say double, while costs are 2.5x, over 20 years, so costs per ounce are up 5x with the price, therefore the industry is no more profitable on the whole. So you are correct that lower grades are economic now due to price compensating more than unit costs. There have also been some efficiency gains due to technology. Computer modelling, better geophysics, automation, heap leaching, but with limited effect recently. So while it is true that a 2 gram deposit is as good as a 4 gram deposit used to be, it is a 2 gram deposit of certain characteristics. The cheapest ounces in the ground will be the ones which are of economic characteristics so poor that it will be decades before they are mined, at minimum, so in time value of money, they are worth almost nothing, except for exploration value, which may be nil if it has been drilled thoroughly. There are a handful of companies which have large, sub-economic deposits, with no hope of being mined any time soon. This is one such. The majority of companies have projects which are marginal at best. Only a few juniors have projects likely to be built within say a decade. Even these may not be good investments. In this case, if gold prices went to 1500 or even 1700, all costs held equal, these projects would not cash flow enough for a good ROI. They probably would trade up with speculation, but so would all gold stocks to varying degrees. If gold prices don't rise, they projects will collect dust. If they rise very sharply, it is possible that one of them could be built, but would probably go bust in the bear market. As a trade, the optionality theory says that the most ounces per market cap will go up the most. Because a mine should be valued for all its future cash flows, over many years over a full cycle or more of pricing, and you cannot start a mine when prices rise and shut it when they fall, due to ramp-up time, political issues, technical issues and costs, and unpredictability of pricing, this is irrational. The doomsday scenario of central banks going haywaire, hyperinflation, bankrupt governments, soaring interest rates, collapsing economy, and imploding banking system, is just a narrative used for peddling moose pasture like this. The promoters have been saying this for years, and never tire of it, but it is a fantasy. The big macro shock which helps gold temporarily will come at some point, but no one can forecast it reliably. It is a mug's game. Profits in the sector from investing are made by identifying good deposits early, or when they're out of favour, or from trading, by timing the irrational swings. But mostly it is made by the promoters and the industry people who swallow the vast majority of profits in the long run, and then some, from the hopeful dreamers.