Letitfly,

That is exactly my feeling. Those mine development cycle charts that we've all seen are very typical, where there is explosive price rises during the exploration stage followed by a down turn during mine development and then rising again as the mine comes on line and starts generating revenue.

For my money, I'm interested in the first stage and the last stage but not willing to sit through that middle stage and since I get out before that stage kicks in, the producers and emerging mines that I buy are bought soley on their merit at that time and not on the fact that I previously held them.

Having said that, I'll surely be buying Baja Mining again, which will go into production in about a year. I had been in that play for several years watching the price rise from less than 40 cents to over 2 dollars. However, I pulled out as they started building the mine. I'll be back in soon since they're highly undervalued and will be pulling in income within a year. I believe we'll see one more stab down on the DOW within the next few weeks which would take mines like this with it and that will be our bottom for the year, making it safe and opportunistic to start scooping up plays like this.

In fact, I think a lot of funds are waiting for this next spike down as their signal to start buying again. It would be a confirmation of a chart pattern that 80% of previous bear markets have taken and with the current stimulus, rate cuts and further stimulus packages promised; an election year and all that... well I'm confident we'll see the market bouncing back for the next 3 quarters of the year before plunging into armageddon in lat 2009 or early 2010.

Oh my... I think I've gone off on a bit of a tangent.