SAN FRANCISCO – Rimfire. Animas. Exeter. Bitterroot. Orezone. Boxer. Forty Nine North. Are they:
1. Knights of the New World Order? 2. Characters in an Erin Hunter “Warriors” fantasy? 3. Travelers on the road to riches?
Miners and their promotional attaches are in high gear this month of May. On the road. Scheduling mine tours. Pumping fleshy hands. Licking plates. Publishing resource upgrades. Celebrating their MOUs at cocktail parties in exotic Latin ballrooms.
Granted, such activity is the telltale signs of bankers and promoters and almost always a warning sign for Ticker Trax subscribers.
So here is the warning, from Ian McAvity, Canadian super-charter (he draws his own charts – like rolling a doob, only for profit) and Central Fund of Canada (CEF.A in Canada) board member who pens Deliberations on World Markets.
“Most of the mining companies are capital intensive and have, in some respects, regularly been harvested by the investment bankers, issuing shares whenever there's any bullish sentiment,” Ian tells me. “You may recall my concerns about this back in the orgy of paper issuance in late 2003/early 2004. The Gold Miners vs. Gold Ratio has not seen those levels since. “
Ian McAvity has been rolling his technical Deliberations since 1972 or so. He is no plate-licker in my book. (I chat with him and separate the gold from the fools in an upcoming Thom Calandra article to be published in Bernie Schaeffer’s Sentiment Quarterly.)
About that orgy, though. This spring cycle, funny thing is, few of the companies on their caloric roads across downtown America are explicitly working the plate-lickers for money.
From firsthand word alone, I know of at least 10 miners on North American tours. Gold, silver, lithium, molybdenum, copper, iron ore, potash, uranium, platinum, tantalum. (There are four to five times that number checking in and out of Chicago/Manhattan/Toronto/Boston/Denver/San Francisco hotel rooms this week … and another 20 to 30 miners working London, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin and Jersey.) Their fiscal flag-nogging means working the ham-and-egg breakfasts and the back-slapping beer belly dinners – just to tell their story. Most of the companies are based in Canada and are exploring for precious metals or oil or lithium or (fill in space) in Mexico, Canada, the USA, parts of Africa. Most of the executives right now are happy just to “tell the story.” Even the companies with just a few million dollars left in their treasuries say they are on the road just to “tell the story.” A fairy tale? Or is the New World Order preparing its acolytes for glorious returns?
I was, and to some extent still am, a sap for stories. Few of us, Ian McAvity the technical artist included, would be moved to action by numbers and charts alone. The stock market is a market of stories: an evolving archive. Still, we all learn our lessons. These days, even if the waffles are plate-licking good and the baseball tickets are free, I excuse myself from table, always politely, if the story is too high pitched . . . or the metrics don’t match the meter of the narrative. Or if the story – timber, porphyry, open pit, poly-metallic, whatever -0 is flat out laughable.
No poetry and I am out of there, poetry being my meta for profit.
Leonard D. Jaroszuk, CEO of Enterprise Oilfield Group (E in Canada) in Alberta, Canada, told me the other day over some oatmeal and berries at the Mandarin Hotel in San Francisco: “This is the part I like best, meeting the people, the ones who stuck with you, the ones who can appreciate the love of a sensible business.”
I did not excuse myself from Len and his top lieutenant Desmond’s table that morning, I can tell you that. Tiny Enterprise Oilfield – along with several (but perhaps not all) of the companies I mentioned in the lead of this article – are telling worthy stories with “sensible themes.”
The themes include: stimulus spending, supply deficits for some specialty metals, easing government restrictions, increased use of silver in hospitals, genuine discoveries that can reach market within two years … even, in the case of Canadian service company Enterprise Oilfield (E in Canada), a fleet of mud-sucking trucks and a kick-ass Alberta crew.
So, if you happen to be attending a natural resources conference, say, Joe Martin’s Cambridge House event at junior mining ground-zero in Vancouver, B.C., and a Saskatchewan fund manager invites you on a trout fest in the 49 north country, or a lithium lady opens up a spot for the next field tour, don’t double-clutch your wallet.
Right now, these folks re just telling their story, and some of those stories will make some of us very flush. At some point, sure, these very same narrators will ask for cash via PIPEs, secondaries or limited partnerships. That is how the resource world turns.
The Cambridge House show next month likely will bring a record number of investors and commodity-related exhibitors to the city’s convention centre beneath the Pan Pacific Hotel, June 7-8. I’ll be there with a Ticker Trax workshop and panels.
Set Search Alert: Peramivir
Ticker Trax Planetary Prospect BioCryst Pharmaceuticals might see torrid trading in coming days. The company (BCRX in USA), identified in December 2008 as a Planetary Prospect for subscribers, receives milestone payments from Japan’s Shionogi & Co., a pharmaceuticals company that trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
In our Ticker Trax library, we explained (February/March) how BioCryst (market cap: $180 million and climbing) receives payments from Osaka’s Shionogi for achieving milestones based on test results and ultimately, sales, of influenza compound peramivir.
Shionogi hopes to submit a drug application for peramivir to the nation’s health ministry for approval by year 2010. In the USA, the government earlier this month began a review process for peramivir as an emergency addition to anti-viral stockpiles in the event of an influenza epidemic or pandemic. See: Ticker Trax Update on BioCryst.
Ticker Trax subscribers have several chapters of information about the Alabama company, which also has molecular compounds at various stages for psoriasis, cardiac arrest and leukemia. One of those chapters explains how to set search engine alerts for peramivir and other terms relevant to the virus H1N1.
That is all for now.
Ticker Trax™ Please see tickertrax.com. Subscribers, please click here for password-secure Ticker Trax. If not, please subscribe to Ticker Trax, exclusive to Stockhouse, if you have the time and money to follow our Planetary Prospects and our Instant Value Candidates. Planetary Prospect No. 6 is out of the box.
THOM CALANDRA of Ticker Trax helps his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom co-founded CBS MarketWatch and MarketWatch.com. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom pegged $300-ounce gold as a long-term hold. HOLDINGS: Thom’s holdings are listed for all Stockhouse members on www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. It is public and free to view. He and his family own recently minted gold and silver coins. They have owned BioCryst Pharma for almost four years.
Ticker Trax™ is published by Stockgroup Media Inc. Ticker Trax is an information service for subscribers and neither Stockhouse nor Thom Calandra is a broker or an investment advisor. None of the information contained therein constitutes a recommendation by Mr. Calandra or Stockhouse/Stockgroup Media that any particular security, portfolio of securities, transaction, or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. Ticker Trax does not purport to tell or suggest the investment securities subscribers or readers should buy or sell for themselves. Subscribers and readers of Ticker Trax should conduct their own research and due diligence and obtain professional advice before making any investment decisions. Ticker Trax will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a reader’s reliance on information obtained in the reports. Subscribers and readers are solely responsible for their own investment decisions. Opinions expressed in Ticker Trax are based on sources believed to be reliable and are written in good faith, but no representation or warranty, expressed or implied, is made as to their accuracy or completeness. All information contained in Ticker Trax should be independently verified. The editor and publisher are not responsible for errors or omissions or responsible for keeping information up to date or for correcting any past information. Ticker Trax does not receive compensation of any kind from any companies that may be mentioned in the report. Any opinions expressed are subject to change without notice. Owners, employees and writers may hold positions in the securities that are discussed in Ticker Trax. PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL THOM SEEKING PERSONALIZED INVESTMENT ADVICE, WHICH HE CANNOT PROVIDE. Copyright 2009 all rights reserved.
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