RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: taking another look As to Curvature's comment on PM companies making money:
I do imagine there are producers making good money on legacy projects. I wonder to what extent there are pure plays in such profitable projects. I suspect most companies with such mines are large companies that have a lot of poorly-performing operations alongsided their cash cows.
And I wonder how durable the cash cows are. Some commenter at Vancouver conference was taking about how, for example, gold miners in places like South Africa are increasingly expecting to be paid on par with those working in the first world. And of course we all know that more and more the low-hanging fruit in precious metals is getting mined out, as evidence by those graphs showing the steady deterioration of average grade of gold and silver mined.
You mention Silver Wheaton and yes, I must say I wish I had been in those streamer stocks. Tremendous business- they make profits that are largely predicated on the cost of production at the time they made their deals, and thus they are relatively immune to the massive increases in production cost over the last decade.