Hi @Bear77

I like watching the MoM guys. But I don't understand why they always criticise ARU. Today (I think it was Trav) said the ARU will never be built! He says that even with Govt commiting publically $800 plus million. I don't trust everyting they say. They have lots of mates still in the banking/investment banking world. And i think they have lots of conflicts they don't declare.

They are even flat out wrong (as i have previously stated on the ARU straws).

I think they provide a good daily round up of all the big mining issues of the day. But i don't trust them... Just my opinion.

Fair call @Parko5 - they're not really big fans of rare earth oxides, so they likely don't put as much effort into research into that sector as they do into gold miners for example, and I agree that not everything they say, and their own personal opinions, are always on the money, especially with areas that they don't have a personal interest in or view positively. I know that Trav is very anti-Lynas which has a lot to do with his Kalgoorlie roots, and how Lynas had signed a deal with the Kalgoorlie-Boulder council to give them access to a water source that had previously been used to irrigate parks and verges and so forth in Kal, and that's why all of their parks and verges now have dead grass and weeds there, because they haven't been watered for over a year. He was even angrier that Lynas were using all of Kal's irrigation water - which to my mind is the council's fault primarily for agreeing to it - and then giving back a couple of thousand dollars to local clubs and stuff and saying they were supporting the local Kalgoorlie-Boulder communities. And also how they all but halted construction of their new REO cracking plant near Kal when they got the extension granted for their Malaysian plant. Lots of reasons, but it's personal opinion and I reckon it clouds his judgement against all things Rare Earths.

I don't take everything the say as gospel, but they do raise some interesting points often enough, and they are right more often than wrong across the gold sector I find. Not always, but often enough. The main thing is they broaden my outlook, in that they make me see things from different perspectives. I may not always agree with them, but I appreciate the viewpoints regardless.

I don't have a strong view on ARU myself. Not really for or against them. I'm generally wary of early stage project developers - or even mid-stage to late-stage project developers, across most sectors, because there's usually a lot of risk that either things fall apart, fall over, or hit roadblocks, or even just have significant commissioning and ramp-up issues and bottlenecks. So I still view Lynas as the best exposure to REOs that the ASX offers, because they are established producers already. However there's no doubt that there is big money to be made by backing winners at the earlier stages - very high risk, but also very high potential reward.