Further, Minmetals withdrawal of its bid for Equinox Minerals was scathing, as Minmetals CEO Andrew Michelmore wrote from Australia, “While we still consider the Equinox assets provide a good fit with MMR’s strategy, the price offered by Barrick is above our most optimistic assessment of value. Competing with Barrick at these prices would, in our view, be value destructive for MMR’s shareholders.”

Our trading instincts are that Barrick Gold appears oversold after falling nearly $4 or 9% thus far this week, and that it will not add any value in selling the ABX shares now. We are going to carefully and painstakingly weigh multiple issues prior to going forward, including

(1) Exact returns from Equinox Minerals, and how much of the US $7.65 billion paid can be recovered prior to year-end 2012 as a near-term measure of risks.

(2) Potential rates of return from Barrick Gold's recent largest investment alternatives such as Cortez Hills, Pueblo Viejo, Pascua, Donlin Creek, Cerro Casale or other initiatives. Cortez Hills offers over a 100% return at current gold prices as the only "home run" within ABX's project queue, while the other projects might earn 10% to 20% returns at the moderate $1,000 gold prices that ABX used to calculate its year-end 2010 reserves and much better returns at prevailing near $1,500 prices. We will compare Equinox's returns to these alternatives.

(3) A re-evaluation of Barrick Gold's major exploration projects, where ABX's large dollar outlay for Equinox casts some doubts about its lack of optimism that its own exploration queue's quality.

(4) An updating of our 2005 to 2010 database of 40 large copper acquisition transactions last published September 30, 2010 (attached) that averaged $0.12 per lb of copper resources, where ABX just paid four times as much for an average ore grade deposit lacking a fashionable address. Clearly the expectations of large mining companies are rising towards $4 copper from $2 long-term copper prices prior to the late-2008 recession.