Take-Out From Financial Sense Newshour Podcast

The Financial Sense Newshour podcast is an old goldbug show. Over the years, it's expanded considerably beyond its original hour: this week's show took more than six.

If there's any theme that was present (one that tied into its San Francisco Gold show special), it's that gold is not in a bubble because many juniors aren't moving all that much; some are undervalued given their prospects.

It's a good point. At the climax of the gold bubble, juniors will be priced almost as if they were producers already. Juniors with good exploration results will explode upwards. Although good results do lead to jump-ups already, we're actually far from that stage.

We're also far from the point when gold-exploration stocks capture major mindspace in the investment community. There are no "instant millionaires" from gold-exploration stocks. Capital is still scarce except for so-called elephant deposits.

That bring up another point, although a technical one. Thanks to a tightening of regulations after the Bre-X scandal, there are well-spelled-out procedures used to estimate the size of a deposit. Elephant-style deposits are one million ounces or more. It's quite possible to make a viable mine from a six-figure ounce deposit, but there's next to no interest in that size. Had we been in full-fledged bubble territory, there would be.

There's also talk of takeover activity in the gold-juniors world, where an exploration company with a million- or multimillion-ounce deposit gets bought up by a big producer. M & A activity in this sector is analagous to hedge-fund interest in gold itself.

The ride's far from over.