Monday Slingshot Open.
Test Expected.

Much appreciated Lakedweller2. I ended up having 46 official company meetings and well over a dozen unofficial meetings/mini presentations at bars, restaurants, and in hallways. The good news is that we’ll have a lot of good interviews to come out over the next 1-2 months from all that networking, and we’ll be bringing back on some companies we’ve not caught up with in a while, as well as some new companies.

Additionally, there were, of course, lots of interesting discussions catching up with other resource platforms, newsletter writers, corporate management teams not featured at the event that were circulating around, capital market guys, activist investors, and thought leaders in the space. Things kicked off at 8am each day, and then continued well past midnight at the various venue bars all week long. Every time we moved rooms or went to lunch or dinner there were so many friends and sharp folks that you’d bump into in the various buildings, balconies, and paths to different venues. Almost everyone you’ve ever heard of in the sector was there in Beaver Creek, and it is one of the best and most efficient conferences I’ve ever been to.

I’m totally wiped out tired and just got in at midnight last night, so I’m going to spend the weekend resting up and then start working early next week to line up a lot of interviews for the weeks and months to come. Stay tuned!!

SCZ.V is a thing of beauty—I’ve been waiting for this stock to bottom out and it’s beginning that process. I’ll make my first purchase soon.

another fleecing…that money goes to worthless government bureaucrats…period….

I haven’t read the proposal, but I did see a headline that seemed to indicate the proposed royalty would apply to Federal Lands. Whether that is the limitation or not, it seems that all the price suppression, phony paper markets and intervention should have made a “royalty” just another form of theft against the mining industry.
It would be more appropriate to put a royalty on Central Banking and Wall Street.

Good question DT. It should also be noted that UPS and FedEx also raised their rates to consumers to pay for the higher wages. We saw the same things with the airlines raising their ticket prices after giving their employees a substantial 30%-40% raise. That was what I was getting at in my question to Peter Boockvar… about how rising labor costs were translating into inflated service costs to the consumers.

Hi DT. Most of the folks we talked to at the conference were in agreement that the lows we saw in Gold & Silver & the mining stocks were last September/October of 2022, so in that sense, that was intermediate low for the sector, and have been building out of it since then.

Now, as we know, we saw that nice 8 1/2 month double digit rally out of the September low for Silver and the GDX, GDXJ and many of the producers through late April/very early May (when we saw the banking crisis). Gold took a little longer to bottom in early Nov at $1618, but silver and mining stocks were already leading the way higher out of that large bear trap (where many talking heads were still calling for $1450 or $1375 gold to be tested and got wrong-footed on the PM sector as a result). That was a technical “false breakdown” or “bear trap” and out of that we saw a nice short-covering rally fuel that move off the Sept 2022 lows.

Granted, since that rally peaked out in early May, things have pulled back down again for the last 5 months, in another bearish leg, turning the sentiment back down again, but the metals and most of the larger miners are still at higher lows than were they were a year ago. If those lows from last year were to be pierced through, then we’d have more chart damage to overcome once a bottom was found, but so far we are still elevated above those levels in GDX, GDXJ, SIL, SILJ, and most of the mid-tier and major producers and larger developers. I realize a number of the volatile juniors are at 52 week lows, but they tend to overperform to both the upside and downside, and most will eventually react to the leadership in the main PM ETFs and underlying metals direction, once a larger move is at hand.

Most market participants really are befuddled by how severe the pullback in mining stocks has been in relation to gold and silver prices that are actually holding up quite well based on historic price levels. The mining stocks are acting like Gold is going below $1600 or Silver is at $16, and most agree that we just need to see the rate of change move back to higher metals prices and a breakout above the $2070-$2089 resistance zone in gold to get the momentum switched back to a more bullish move higher in the mining stocks.

The vast majority of the folks we talked to don’t expect to see that breakout in the PMs until the Fed and other central banks are done hiking rates. With a skip expected for September, that has most investors looking to the November Fed meeting to see if that is where they may do one last hike, or confirm they’re going to just stay paused for a longer period of time. With inflation creeping back higher a few ticks the last few months, many are still anticipating one more 25 basis point hike before they are done with rate hikes. The dollar and bond yields have rallied as a result pressuring the PMs, but those are very much tied to Fedspectations.

Most of the calls for rate cuts have moved out into mid-2024 along with most calls for the recession to get more complex by the middle of next year. That is the same thing the vast majority was expecting last year for this year, so it seems everything got pushed out by another year, so take that all with a grain of salt, as the can was kicked down the road for a whole other year longer than most were expecting, creating a sideways channeling range-bound market for the last year of many ups and downs in most markets (general equities, bonds, currencies, commodities).

As a result, personally, I’ve not been doing much other than trading the ranges in some PM stocks, but mostly holding the core positions for the eventual move higher in the sector for the medium term. If we do see more weakness though where the lows from last year are broken in the mining stocks, then I’ll likely have take a few positions as tax losses for year end, and rotate the remaining funds into other core positions to average down in them (resulting in fewer portfolio positions), as I don’t have much dry powder left to deploy at this point (maybe 2% left).

There are many fantastic values to be found across the whole spectrum of PM mining stocks, as many are valued closer to where they were last year in September all while metals prices are substantially higher than where they were last year at this time. Personally, I’m still mostly camped out in producers, royalty companies, larger developers, and a spattering of explorers, on the higher end of the quality spectrum. I’ll shift that down the food chain as things turn up higher over the course of the next year.

One bright spot in the resource sector over the last few months has been the Uranium stocks, and they’ve had a really good rip higher, so I may pull a few profits there to raise some funds to deploy back over into the PMs and critical minerals stocks.

Wishing you good trading, whatever your strategy is to navigate these turbulent waters. Ever Upward!

If you sold at the peak today you would be up 50% if you’d bought when chairman exercised warrants…… but cash is still king. 🤔

Well at least until the daily walk back.

https://santacruzsilver.com/news/santacruz-silver-reports-fatality-at-its-zimapan-mine-in-mexico/

Here’s the corporate presentation that they gave at Beaver Creek for additional info:

https://www.gowebcasting.com/events/precious-metals-summit-conferences-llc/2023/09/13/silver-tiger-metals-inc/play/stream/36823