Time was when exploration stocks were the darlings of investors on the Irish Stock Exchange. In an era of high inflation when investors here first started looking outside national boundaries, there was an excitement surrounding such shares which, with the best will in the world, could not be said to infect the more solid public companies in the industrial and financial sectors.

Those days, of course, are long gone. Too many investors have seen their dreams of sudden wealth buried with the failed oil/gas testing wells and deserted mining projects. Furthermore, those seeking to experience the excitement of the rollercoaster that can be the stock exchange now have the whole technology sector on which to place their bets.

In this climate, the news that Pan Andean Resources shares had lost 47 per cent of their value following the failure of its latest project in Bolivia to deliver the goods can only accentuate the gloom. With small capitalisation stocks struggling all the time to attract interest against competition from Europe and further afield, the exploration sector can ill afford such bad publicity.