I have not posted on agoracom for quite sometime now. With the recent awakening with many junior companies in canada, my portfolio of old stocks have started to move in the right direction. I have a question if someone can answer please. What is the current status of the UBR or HPQ interest in the Golden Hope gold deposit? I'am unable to find any recent information or updates for that matter. Also in terms of HPQ some questions.

1. Why is there so much excitement on inadequate lab scale results?

2. How many early stage lab scale positive results make it to commercialization?

3. PYR is a twenty five million dollar market cap company or otherwise referred to as a microcap. Why is there so much excitement with a partner of this magnitude?

Last question.

If I'm reading correctly HPQ is two maybe three years away from building a pilot plant according to the press release. How can we be sure that a pilot plant is possible when lab scale results seem to be inadequate. I appreciate any insight that you all may have to these questions as the video posted on this site does not address them.

Thanks.

WARNING:Just going to put this here.

Avoid this man at all costs and do your own homework about this man and ensure he is not within a continent's distance of any business you are doing. I and a number of people (shareholders) are watching him closely. He has made his business for a very long time destroying business and peoples lives.

Canadian Supreme Court:

Mr. Takefman and Mr. Bier were friends until financial dealings between the two began to erode their friendship. Mr. Takefman’s expressed his displeasure with his former friend and his spouse by way of an email campaign which lasted approximately one year. Those emails, sent to the Biers and as well as their friends and acquaintances, communicated details and allegations pertaining to the Biers’ intimate, private and professional lives as well as to their financial affairs. The Biers’ began to experience physical and psychological symptoms allegedly provoked by the stress caused by the constant barrage of emails. They complained to police that Mr. Takefman was harassing them. Mr. Takefman was charged with criminal harassment but was later acquitted.

Following his acquittal, Mr. Takefman began separate actions against Mr. and Mrs. Bier seeking roughly $390, 000.00 in damages from each of them, alleging that the Biers’ had made a false and abusive complaint to the police which resulted in the criminal harassment charge brought against him. For their part, Mr. and Mrs. Bier sought a permanent injunction against Mr. Takefman in order to prevent him from continuing his email campaign against them.

Link: http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/info/sum-som-eng.aspx?cas=35037

Eric Sprott recently answered a number of questions on the minds of gold and silver investors, and we hope you’ll find his insights valuable.

1. How did we miss the top of the market, in 2011? Why wasn’t someone ‘pounding the table’ to sell precious metals and precious metals equities?

Eric Sprott: With the benefit of hindsight, anyone can say that we all should have been selling in ’11. But we stayed in because the facts at the time seemed indicative of more growth, not a peak and subsequent decline.
Back then, it was suggested that the Fed might exit QE 2. Some might have interpreted this as a reason to sell gold, much as suggestions of ‘tapering’ recently were interpreted in that way. They launched QE 3 instead, which we expected to be bullish for gold.
So they did not exit QE; they added more stimulus instead. In addition, the Chinese entered the market, buying at least 1,000 tons more in 2012 than in 2011. Despite these facts, gold has continued to founder.
Disregarding China and Russia, since that gold is consumed domestically before entering the global market, the yearly mine supply is roughly 2,100 tons of gold. It surprises me how China can enter the market and buy 50% of available mine supply, or an additional 25% of the total supply, and yet the price of gold declines.
Where is the supply of gold coming from? I have publicly claimed that I believe gold ETFs are seeing their physical holdings go to China. In my view, this is where the 700 tons of physical gold that were redeemed during the first six months of ’13 ended up.
Meanwhile, the world’s largest consumer of physical gold – India – has been stifled. Government has imposed some very draconian measures to stop people from buying imported gold, and this has worked. Officially reported gold import numbers declined very severely, and premiums jumped for domestic gold sales.
So despite this bear market for gold, I view people who are willing to sell gold here as extremely short-sighted. For now, the Chinese demand for gold is (I believe) being supplied by gold draining out of ETFs, and the fact that Indians cannot get their hands on the stuff legally. How much longer can this current situation hold?
All of these factors stopped me from telling investors to sell gold and other precious metals in 2011.
Add to this the fact that QE keeps increasing and that ‘tapering’ has been thrown out by the Fed. There is a very solid case for continuing to own gold and other precious metals equities right now.
2. What will it take for precious metals and precious metals equities to turn around?
It has to be the precious metals prices themselves. The stocks are probably 99% correlated to the price of the underlying metals being produced or explored for, and they typically go up two or three times faster than the precious metals prices.
Going forward, I believe we will begin to view the levels we saw this summer – with the lowest low on June 28 – as the bottom for the price of gold. For the stocks, it will all be about metals prices.
3. How much of your portfolio is devoted to precious metals stocks and bullion?
Between shares in mining companies and physical bullion, I have at least 80% of my total portfolio invested in gold and silver. This is similar to the amount in the public accounts I run such as the mutual funds. I have been happy to remain there. It was a wonderful trade since 2000, and, of course, an awful trade since the 2011 peak.
Breaking it down further, the amount of bullion that I hold has been going down – to probably 15 percent of my total portfolio right now. It was as high as 35 or 40 percent.
This year, I am selling bullion to buy stocks because the leverage is so much higher in the equities than in the physical bullion. We decided to move into stocks, and we have participated in a number of private placements in the past 3 or 4 months in companies that are highly leveraged to the price of the metals going up.
I am putting my money down on the price of gold going up, and seeing a quantum increase in the precious metals equities.

Bowmore Signs a Letter of Intent to Acquire Up to 70% of the Beauce Gold Property in Southern Quebec, Canada

A Plant? The sheer absurdity. Whether or not I'm a plant by whomever is neither here,or there. These infantile suggestions of a "plant" will be disregarded. Obviously brought up by that individual trying to keep alive this feeble insurrection.

If only Mr. Takefman would "plant" himself somewhere..anywhere but here. Instead he prefer's to run peoples livelyhood's to ruin.

Let's not continue to let ourselves be fleeced by this man any longer all while we endure the current market. We have a "tick" in our midst that necessitates removal. We need the board to conduct its work without further distraction. At the same time I do believe takefman has the right to say or do as he pleases as a shareholder. However, not at shareholder expense. Outrageous!

I. Have a preference to remain on the side of business at all times, especially in these types of circumstances. Nevertheless, Mr.Takefman's character is impossible to ignore.

Ironically it is that very thing I believe has made him a very wealthy man. Predatory tactics, and unsavoury manipulations. All at the expense of others. Fortunate for us he has also failed in the use of these instruments for all of us to see. Just a few google clicks away. I have provided a link and a few exerpts below.

http://lawinquebec.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/takefman-bier/

FINRA approval was granted on September 3, 2008 – and “from this moment on, Earl (Takefman) would bombard Elliot with letters and emails from sunrise to midnight,” wrote the judge. He criticized Elliot Bier repeatedly, and began writing to his wife Dawna, a partner in a large employment agency in Montreal that does business throughout Canada and the United States. “The tone of Earl’s emails to Dawna became increasingly aggressive,” and “all the while, he continued to write to Elliot separately, reporting on the unfavourable com­ments made by their common friends,” said Judge Marcotte.

And This!

It is a story about a friendship that turned so sour that Justice Marcotte ordered Earl Takefman, formerly chief executive officer of a number of public companies, to pay Montreal lawyer Elliot Bier and his wife $20,000 each in moral damages, $25,000 each in punitive damages and nearly $42,000 in extra-judicial fees incurred by the couple in the proceedings, together with legal interest. What’s more, Takefman has been ordered to cease and desist from communicating to the Biers or to third parties directly or indirectly in writing, including electronic commu­nications such as emails and text messages, any details on the private life, the assets and property of Elliot and Dawna Bier and their financial situation, save and except to his legal counsel and staff.

These are the typical characteristics of an emotional extortionist and racketeer. We have had enough of your ravings.

We must continnue to have faith in the returning good sense of our shareholders and directors, and it's continuing handling of this company. That is, operating a sound financial structure in a very challenging market.