Comments from Money & Markets

....The Easy Gold Has Already Been Found

Global spending for the exploration of nonferrous metals (gold, silver, and other non-iron metals) hit $10.9 billion last year — up from just $5.2 billion in 1997 and $1.9 billion in 2002.

However, the share of money spent on gold exploration is FALLING, down 42%, its lowest piece of the exploration pie since 1989. Last year was also the eighth year in a row that gold had accounted for less than half of global exploration budgets.

Why is that happening, with gold over $800 an ounce? Because the easy gold has been found, that's why. Many new deposits are smaller and lower-grade, and not worth investigating after the initial find.

Look at Gold Fields, Africa's second-largest producer of gold. It just cut the minimum output it demands before investing in new mines by 60%! Gold Fields will now consider deposits as small as two million ounces that yield about 200,000 ounces a year, compared with its previous requirement of five-million-ounce deposits yielding 500,000 ounces.

This is great news for small-cap miners that weren't quite big enough to be swallowed up by the big boys. And it's also bullish for prices. Heck, even when prospectors do find gold, it can take seven to ten years to bring a new mine on line.

This gap is your window of opportunity — to buy the best mining stocks with the biggest piles of gold to feed the world's nearly insatiable hunger for the yellow metal......