eb1945: There has never been a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the TSX Venture Exchange. They'll kill you soon as look at you. I'm serious, ask around. If you're investing in mining companies, be very aware that you're associating with fraudsters and criminals of the worst stripe.

(Don't worry, you can still make money off them. We don't register on their radar, except sometimes as potential dupes or stooges.)

With that in mind, the last thing a mining company wants to do is rase money when they need it. As already noted, if you run to the market in desperate need of a cash injection, they will indeed beat your shares down 50% in value before the PP closes to get the best possible price. In fact, the company doing the placement is often the one to beat the share price down.

Basically, asking them to PP with a month or two of cash on hand is like asking them to walk into the showers at Attica and spend all day picking up bars of soap.

When I started investing this year, I didn't believe all the conspiracy theories about "bad guys keeping our stock down"... since then I've seen short attacks on SVL and RIO, and purposeful stop-loss triggering all over the place. A lot of the conspiracy theories you hear will be pure paranoia and denial on the part of duped investors, but a nonzero amount are actual conspiracies.

Just be aware.