STICK a fork in the uranium share frenzy - it's done.

Now even the more favoured stocks in the sector are getting hammered. Take Toro Energy. It went as high as $1.28 last year; on Friday it closed at 27c. Toro acquired some great projects by taking over Nova Energy but those are in Western Australia, and now perhaps the market is - rightly - taking a more sober view of that state's obduracy on the subject of uranium mining.

Then there's Curnamona Energy - $2.85 last April; its last sale was 60c. Or Uranium Equities, which has fallen from 90c over the same period to 14.5c.

At the more grassroots level, the sellers have to keep dropping their prices until they get down to where the bargain hunters are waiting. Like New Age Exploration, which is way down the uranium food chain with some extremely early-stage exploration in Western Australia. Fifteen trading days went by without any New Age sales, then someone swallowed hard and took 13c a share for 20,000 shares, meaning the company's price fell 23.5 per cent on that $2600 transaction.

How about Northern Territory explorer Uramet Minerals? On Thursday its price fell by 18 per cent - on a single share trade going through at 9c.

Some sanity returns

THOSE who follow the sector suspect that investors are cutting and running. Punters have lost their nerve (and their patience) with seemingly never-ending exploration stories.

But, our observers add, with the still strong spot price and the underlying bullish trend towards nuclear power, some companies with advanced projects may have been oversold. What is probably more certain is that some degree of sanity has returned.

The junior end is overcrowded globally, with around 400 listed uranium companies still at the exploration stage.

A British mining magazine recently pointed out that uranium projects in Africa got up and running much more quickly than in Australia or Canada, as Paladin proved at its Langer Heinrich mine in Namibia. Which perhaps explains why Extract Resources has bucked the share price deflation trend. The stock was at 9c a year ago, and went as high as $1.45 in mid-February and was holding at $1.22 on Friday. Extract reported last week that, at its Rossing South project in Namibia, first pass drilling indicated mineralisation extended over a zone at least 3.2km long.

Meanwhile, Mark Muzzin is probably thankful that he has still got a lot of regulatory hoops to jump through before he can float his planned U Energy. The ex-oil industry man has just picked up interests in two tenements near Port Augusta from Minotaur Resources but has until next January to consummate an IPO.

Another company happy to quit uranium ground is Empire Resources. It has sold off for $1.75 million its Yarlarweelor uranium project northwest of Wiluna to a new float Radon Resources (good luck with that) and will use the money on its copper and gold projects.

Junior floats sinking

FORGET the floats for junior miners - uranium or not. It's first-in, best-dressed for the few spaces in the lifeboats.

A new generation is learning the 1987 lesson that, at the first whiff of a market meltdown, no one wants to know about the junior sector. It is now consequences time for all those who threw money at all those good, bad and indifferent floats in 2007.

The result is that most get swept away as the tide goes out. Colonial Resources went untraded for 12 business days and then 100,000 shares were crossed at 10c, a 23 per cent decline. In the December quarter, incidentally, Colonial spent $43,000 on exploration and $100,000 on administration.

Listed in December, unloved in February. Gold and silver explorer Global Geoscience went untraded for 15 business days then plummeted 45 per cent last Monday on $1100 worth of its shares being dumped.

Someone was also anxious to get out of Traka Resources. Its only trade last week - for $650 worth of shares - sliced 30.2 per cent off the company's price.

And some Geopacific Resources shareholder got desperate after only 42,000 shares in the company had been traded over the previous month, so ended up letting what had been a 32c share in January go for 20c.

And many companies are going to be in a position of having to return to the market for more money, even if they have some impressive prospects, as does Icon Resources. This junior had $1.38 million on hand at December 31 but in that quarter had parted with $901,000 (most on exploration). If its cash burn continues at that rate in the present quarter, then Icon will soon have to start thinking of another capital raising.

The penny clearly has dropped for some Icon shareholders who sent the stock from 20c the previous week to 16c by Friday.

Eye on the silverware

WHILE most eyes were on gold last week, we were watching the silver price. The futures hit $US20.50 an ounce on Friday, against $US11.60 six months ago. The latest price is still less than half of what the Hunt Brothers got the metal to when they tried to corner the silver market in 1979, but it is fairly stupendous by the levels of the intervening decades.

There is talk that the total position of futures contracts on the metal totals somewhere in the billions of ounces, but that silver held in Comex warehouses amounts to around 100 million ounces. If, as this argument goes, most of these contracts are on the short side, where is all that silver going to come from if the speculators want to close out the contract?

Regardless of whether there is a financial accident waiting to happen, it would be worthwhile keeping up to date on silver plays. Advisers Fat Prophets put out a "buy" on Coeur D'Alene Mines CDIs at around $5.26. Coeur is unhedged and it has solid geographical diversification with operations in Australia (its silver purchase deals with CBH Resources and Perilya) along with the US, Mexico and South America. Fat Prophets particularly like the Palmajero project in Mexico which Coeur acquired by taking over Bolnisi Gold.

On Friday, however, Coeur reported a 38 per cent fall in fourth-quarter profit due to lower production.

Also on Friday, Silver Mines reported more high-grade drilling results from its Webbs project near Tenterfield, NSW. The company said high-grade silver and base metals mineralisation had been repeated in a number of holes. Diamond drilling has now begun.

Tailenders

* Tin miner Metals X is diversifying into phosphate, taking a controlling interest in the Agaton project in Western Australia, a timely move with the boom in anything connected with the global agriculture sector. South Boulder Mines has, meanwhile, begun a review of the potential of its Lake Disappointment potash product.

* Three Trafford Resources directors have exercised options to inject $1.85 million into the company's exploration war chest, which puts off the day when the company has to go back to the market. Meanwhile, directors at Pryme Oil & Gas have relinquished 7.5 million options to relieve the company of the impost of expensing these options in its accounts. Don't hold your breath waiting for other juniors to follow suit.

* Fair and balanced as always, we report that United Minerals Corp - which has never been backward in coming forward regarding its iron ore project in the Pilbara - has commissioned a pre-feasibility study including a 110km rail spur to join the railway being built by Fortescue Metals Group. That's progress, but still not time to pop the cork of the Moet.

The Australian implies no recommendations regarding any of the stocks mentioned. The author does not own shares in any of the securities mentioned.