I can't really comment on Probe. Unfortunately, I feel like I know far too little about the entire Probe situation and geology. I just got back from a month of travelling (South America and Antarctica) and in the couple weeks leading up to the start of the trip, I was pretty tied up with other things. So when Probe started to really climb to a dollar and above, I didn't have time to start doing some proper DD. Of course, it attracted a lot of attention thanks to a penny stock jumping to the multi-dollar range, but the float there is pretty small (under 50m, I think?) so it is perhaps a tiny bit less significant (based on market cap) than people might assume. However, it's position as a potential game-changer is certainly interesting.

I feel like I need to sit down again and figure out the present market cap of each company in the ROF. I know that there are certainly some discrete back-room deals and cooperation happening, but the problem is trying to figure out which possible relationships are more likely.

In terms of Cinema Show's comments about detailed drilling results probably not coming out until after control shifts back over to SPQ (Cliffs), I can only surmise the following thoughts. If Frank is worried about saving $300,000, then that means he is pursuing a prudent business-as-usual strategy, trying to be cost-effective. This, to me, suggests that he's possibly not expecting anything earth-shaking to happen in the medium future. It suggests much more strongly to me that he is not worried about KWG losing control on April 1st for a year. Under the latter, then either something is going to happen shortly that makes the April 1st deadline irrelevant, and saving that $300,000 will have been a good business decision. Ie. maybe a partnership being announced between KWG and a bigger company. OR, alternatively, maybe Frank is looking very long-term, towards April 1st of 2012, at which point I think control swings back from Cliffs to KWG again (I'd have to re-read the partnership). So maybe he knows that either Cliffs will be forced to play their hand before April 2012 because they want to get a mine into operation by 2015, OR he has a partner supporting KWG in the background and knows that the April 1st 2011 timeline is irrelevant.

I really don't know what to place my bets on. I feel that up to the end of September, everyone was worried about pressure of a race between KWG getting info out, and Cliffs "holding off to the last second" and trying to buy them out before significant info was released. But since then, I rather feel that there appears to be no rush about anything. It's hard to interpret anything from a couple of sporadic press releases, other than the fact that there have only BEEN a couple of sporadic releases, but I kind of feel like there is a certain unhurried confidence whereby KWG has a plan and they are executing it at their own speed, with no panic. The NR saying that they were dropping the pursuit of the SPQ dissention process said a lot to me. It said to me, "We think this is petty and unimportant; we don't need to pursue it and we've got other things that we're focused on that are more important." And I don't feel that KWG would have that confident patience if they were totally on their own. Somehow, somewhere in the background, someone is now offering them a position of support in a manner that does not yet legally need to be disclosed to the markets.

But who, and how?

At one point, we were worried that once control of the partnership reverted to SPQ/Cliffs on April 1st, they could outspend us and we'd default on obligations. I feel that if nothing else, there is enough financial buffer in place that this won't be an issue. I don't necessarily mean cash in the bank, I mean access to capital somehow. That takes pressure off.