Small-Cap Corner: Betting on the Bullfrog

Shares of gold miners have started to show signs of life recently, a scenario that could help these companies eventually perform inline with or even outperform the yellow metal itself. Among those gold miners that is starting to perk up is Bullfrog Gold BFGC, a highly speculative miner that, according to Yahoo finance data, has just two employees and a market capitalization below $18 million. In the past month, shares of Bullfrog have jumped 3.5 percent. Narrow that time frame down to the past week and the performance is even more impressive as the micro-cap has surged by 13.5 percent. Combine those gains with the fact that volume has been trending higher in Bullfrog and it is not unreasonable to say that some traders are starting to take note of this unheralded mining play. Still, it is not inaccurate to call Bullfrog "anonymous." Spend some time perusing the usual Web-based mainstream financial news sources and it is clear Bullfrog has not caught the media's eye to this point. Bullfrog's Newsboy project comprising 5,240 acres of state and federal lands located northwest of Phoenix has shown historic resources in the main deposit area were estimated in 1992 at 5.3 million tons averaging 0.04 gold opt and 0.7 silver opt, according to the company. Bullfrog also has a potentially lucrative mine about 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas adjacent to a mine owned by Barrick Gold ABX. These lands are adjacent to Barrick Gold's Montgomery-Shoshone mine and within one mile of Barrick's Bullfrog mine. Between 1988 and 1999 these two open pit mines produced approximately 220,000 ounces gold and 2.3 million ounces of gold, respectively, Bullfrog said. At the end of the first quarter, Bullfrog had no debt on its balance sheet and $1.4 million in cash. Those factoids are impressive for a company the size of Bullfrog, but it is still worth noting the company is speculative. Bullfrog is still in the exploration stage and reported no first-quarter revenue along with a wider quarterly loss. Caveat emptor.