The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition that after a multiyear bear market in which nearly every junior mining stock got decimated, the sector is enjoying an honest-to-goodness recovery in 2016. The Post's Peter Koven writes that this year's mining conference in Toronto is ringing with renewed optimism as commodities, particularly gold, are rebounding. However, the early evidence suggests this recovery is limited to a very small group of companies. The high-quality juniors are raising money again and enjoying huge bumps in their share prices. Meanwhile, nothing has changed at the low end. It was not always this way. TSX Venture Exchange-listed companies raised an astounding $4.2-billion from brokered deals in 2007 alone. Ultimately, the vast majority of those funds were flushed away on bad projects with almost no trace they ever existed. As generalists slowly wade back into the sector this year, they are being incredibly careful with their capital. "There's really just a handful of us who had opportunities to finance in the last few months," said George Salamis, chairman of Integra Gold. Along with Integra, the select group includes Kaminak Gold, NexGen Energy, Gold Standard Ventures and a few others.