Member Info for Happyhaddock

Give Trump his way and it will be more than 4years of chaos ... just today I read that he's already looking at ways to bypass the American constitution and go for a third term in office!

Well for all the hype in advance, the daily price chart clearly shows how much of an impact the "silver squeeze 2.0" has had on the metal today ... not that you'd expect otherwise if you advertise in advance to those you intended to squeeze what you intended to do and when.

.. still I'm sure talking about it in advance has been good to those with youtube channels promoting precious metals.

@norm - I doubt doubt what you say, as a general rule developing any kind of mine for any kind of mineral is generally well beyond the funds of a small explorer.

The role of any junior explorer is simply to prove that what they have has a reasonable enough potential of being turned in to a profitable mine. They have to do enough to convince somebody else to provide the big bucks. At the moment both EH and Pinderi both look as if they could be taken across that line but I suspect that both will take more "small money" and more drilling to get them to the point large miners will want to step in with big money.

Much as I've long said I'm here for the potential of our non ferrous metals more than our iron ore, lets not get ahead of ourselves.

EH has some amazing grades but at present a very minimal total resource. Reporting good grades boosts sentiment in the short term but to be taken seriously as an important silver producer you typically need well over 100m ounces; we'd need a twenty five fold increase just to get there.

Hopefully ERW can generate a bit of interest in EH and raise funds to advance it in a way UFO couldn't, but I'd rather wait and see what happens than make presumptions about any tiny early stage junior explorer.

"I’m not sure how much X-ray analysis costs"

Back when I was using XRF analysis machines they were huge expensive lab based bits that you had to take samples to and then wait for results. Nowadays an introductory basic portable hand-held unit can be bought for upwards of £10k and can deliver results in the field within minutes. Whilst the quality of data you may want may rule out using the cheapest of equipment I'd be surprised if as a company our geological team didn't own their own pXRF set up and weren't generating results as they go;

If the above is the case then there should be no specific extra costs involved beyond the basic wages of having a geological team in the field.

I'd like to repeat here my fist post on LSE from several years ago as the sentiment remains as valid today as when written back then.

Like many, I've held a speculative position here for quite a while and I remain a patient and pragmatically cautious share holder. However, with many having excitedly bought at much higher prices, only to witness big falls, many of the posts on this board have become insecure bickering and personal insults.

So, whilst there is no reason that anyone should care about my views, might I remind people of the obvious!

1) AIM exists as a fund raising mechanism for smaller companies. Share dilution and/or taking on debt is therefore par for the course for mineral explorers trying to advance their inherently risky projects. If you can't handle a sector characterised by uncertainty, delay, loss and failure, or don't trust a company's management then you shouldn't speculate in such shares.

2) Countless statistics show that almost all active investors underperform passive market trackers whilst about three quarters actually lose money trading stocks. So remember, the ability of an "investment" to meet your expectations doesn't depend on what other, potentially ill informed, people hope will happen in the future, it depends upon how realistic your own expectations were when you decided to speculate in such a volatile sector.

3) Bulletin boards typically represent the views of a most passionate and vocal minority, not the silent majority who actually move markets. Acting on blind hope or the advice of strangers on the inter-net without taking responsibility for your own actions and researching all possible outcomes is effectively committing to losing money.

4) Consequently it may be delusional to assume that overzealous arguing directly influences enough wealthy investors to drive a share price either up or down. Not that this stops that vocal minority from endlessly complaining and accusing others of "ramping" or "de-ramping" when things aren't going as they hoped for.

5) Nobody benefits from acting on emotion. Simply learn from your mistakes if you have gambled with more than you can afford to lose or allowed yourself to form unrealistic expectations about risks, valuations and/or timetables.

It is possible to respectfully debate conflicting opinions about future unknowns by politely presenting opposing facts to support an alternate theory, where offensive and inarticulate comments can de-value even valid points. Sadly, many posts are simply emotional rants which aren't actually making any point about investing, the economy or the company in question. We may all wish to vent frustration from time to time but no one should insult, patronise or try to silence people with differing opinions simply to bolster their own delicate egos.

So does anybody further their own cause or credibility if they present themselves as a petulant bully squabbling in the school yard?

@5x5, whilst I don't recall the specific numbers for EH's highest ever grade , it has previously reported high grades of almost 40kg/t so that impressive grade you quote isn't necessarily something that has been held back, for as we know such market critical data shouldn't be withheld.

However as you say a repeat of another number like that should garb the attention of the markets... Another explorer I hold a position in "re-launched" a project with a headline grabbing grade from their first "new" drill hole, though at the time I questioned if the money spent drilling had been to learn something new geologically or simply to drill where they already knew they would deliver stunning grades as they needed the publicity... Either way it did the job and saw their share price rocket enabling them to raise a lot more funds for much less dilution, so the drill hole arguably made sense financially even if not geologically.

Well I'm yet to be convinced that over the long run the positives of this JV outweigh the negatives, but I'm glad to see the markets proving me wrong today.

Everybody here knows just how much speculators in UFO love a whiff of excitement about silver and how irrational they can get, just as we know how short their attention span is... so here's hoping UFO and ERW can do enough to maintain that excitement as our share price starts to scale the cliff-face back up to where it once was.

@norm - as you know the primary reason I'm here was for a punt on silver (much more so than the iron ore), so I'll readily accept that a narrative about activity at EH has to be a vast improvement on a narrative about inactivity... only time will tell if ERW are the folks to actually move EH forward where my concern is that we've given away a lot in this deal and placed our trust in another company that is arguably no better than UFO.

As we all know it is far easier to grow a share price if the number of shares issued doesn't change. UFO have increased our mkt cap over the last five years but our share price has gone down as the number of shares ballooned... The question is how easy will ERW find it to grow their mkt cap over the coming months without issuing any more shares.

It doesn't seem unrealistic to assume that progress with EH could double ERW's mkt cap (or more) but the Aus$0.1/share mentioned only seems realistic if they can grow their mkt cap without issuing more shares... All comes down to how much they can achieve before the cash they've raised is all spent and needs to be replenished.

Does this JV remind anybody else of the famous line often quoted from the old sit-com Yes Minister...

"We must do something... this is something... therefore we must do this."

Ordinarily the purpose of a JV is for a small company to gain access to a large company's funds so as to move ahead with an expensive project it can't afford to advance on its own, usually done at the sacrifice of giving away majority ownership and control of the project.

UFO are a small company with a small mkt cap and a few interesting assets that need moving forward, so I'm not opposed to the idea of a JV in principle. What seems odd is to give away so much to JV with a company that has an even smaller mkt cap than we do.

I can see why ERW see this as a good deal but I'm yet to be convinced of what it is that ERW bring to the table that wasn't achievable on our own. For ERW to move EH forward they are still going to have to raise a lot of cash on a routine basis, something not easy for tiny mkt. cap. companies to do as we know.

Surely if funds can and need to be raised off the back of EH's potential we should be the ones doing it? Instead we seem to have outsourced the need to raise capital rather than found a partner with lots of it already.

And seemingly said ehhh?

The big increase in daily volume clearly shows that the markets view this as important news, however our share price has moved down by no more than on any other day when it is buffeted around just by noise during a lack of news. So clearly much as the markets have spoken they seem to be saying that they don't know what to make of this.

Well whilst the debate will continue about whether this is a good or bad deal, we can at least put to bed all the endless suggestions that our BOD wouldn't deliver a deal before the end of Q1 -25 as they implied.

I've been saying since 2020 that I was here for the potential of our our non ferrous metals, which I believed would be more capable of moving our share price than our our iron ore, and that as things always take much longer than folk expect I'd not judge UFO's progress before 2025.

So here's hoping that ERW prove more capable than I fear, and that by the end of this year UFO will have proved a worthwhile punt for me.

I've read and re-read the section about the DTM and can't get pat the ambiguity over whether "contributing to all joint venture expenditure" relates solely to all mine construction costs after the DTM or also leaves us liable for a deferred payment our 30% of JV expenditure enjoyed as a free carry until the point of getting to the DTM?

Either way neither seem something that make this a great deal for us other than if seen as a rescue deal where a tiny share of something moving forward is better than full ownership of something going nowhere.

Well I like to offer a fairly calm and balanced opinion, so having read the ERW news release it is probably best that I say nothing at all about it!

@Helx2 - I've said many times before that if speculating in junior explorers that I mentally write them off as a complete loss the day I buy the shares on account of the huge proportion that fail, then wait patiently for years to see if they do ever deliver on their potential.

I don't think anybody here doubts UFO's potential, nor the improving sentiment for precious metals. However surely you can acknowledge that much as they "talk a good talk" the problem here is that trust in our management is very low because they seem to repeatedly fail to deliver on the things they talk about.... doesn't mean this will always be the case as the norm for junior explorers is to be derided as useless year after year until they either go bust or make that leap to the big time. Consequently, markets neither seem confident that our management will deliver the JV's they keep talking about, nor that any deals done will be on favourable terms given our apparent weakness.

Well junior explorers are always always talking to other parties in the background and trying to sell their potential.

Today's RNS isn't bad news and suggests such talks are still taking place, but in appointing a new corporate adviser it does somewhat hint at looking to start new talks, which in turn sort of hints that old talks hadn't gone anywhere.

In truth this RNS doesn't really leave us any the wiser in terms of how any deals may or may not be progressing or inform us of any timescales, meaning that the optimists will still hail our potential, the pessimists will still bemoan the fact we haven't progressed as quickly as they would want and the patient will still wait to see if anything comes of this.

As is so often the case in a sector in which there is a repetitive sense of de-ja-vu about the recurring problems that characterise so many junior explorers, there is rarely any need to say anything new. So on that basis I'd like to repost something written a while ago about another company.

Volatile commodity prices always generate comment on this bulletin board and sometimes heated discussion. Furthermore I do recognise that any long term sustained gains in underlying commodity prices that outpace increases in typical operational costs should benefit us in the future if we do actually start selling a product to market.

However, within the broader context of a risky exploration sector noted for endless delays, debt, dilution and disappointment, then daily fluctuations in the price of a commodity we aren't yet selling seem unlikely to be that relevant to our share price. Today, one of countless days without any news of progress from our management, has so far seen our share price unmoved by fluctuations in commodity prices. This suggests that days on which moves in our share price have correlated in some modest way with changes to commodity pricing may just have been coincidental noise within the general volatility of this sector.

By and large much of the discussion on LSE bulletin boards is about people filling periods of inactivity trying to feed their own confirmation bias by ascribing meaning to randomness or silence. Such actions typically tend to lead to differences of opinion, personal conflict, insults and petty point scoring.

Across the whole sector, statistically the most likely outcome for any junior explorer is a slow protracted death by delay and dilution. We all speculate in the hope of finding the exceptions that will buck that trend, yet impatience can often lead folk to expect progress or seek reassurance at far more frequent intervals than this market typically provides.

I suspect it is that impatience that leads most to lose money even on the rare few companies that do ultimately succeed. It is not without reason that a recent study showed the most successful portfolios to be owned by dead people, as they don't get impatient. Those that make good money out of the junior exploration sector seem to be people who trust their own research and are willing to accept that most of the time nothing worth talking about will seem to be happening. Furthermore they accept that most of the good things they do want to talk about will probably take much longer to happen than hoped for and may never happen at all.

My shares here have been in the bottom drawer for many years and I can afford the risk of leaving them there for many more. If we do go the way of most junior explorers I can afford the small loss on a modest speculative position. If we do go on to great success then hopefully the wait will have been worthwhile and more than compensate for my losses on other junior explorers.

@smiller - if I remember correctly the last time this came up as a topic of conversation I mentioned that I'd looked into what was needed to call an EGM and you'd need 30% of the UFO shareholders backing you... more than is often the case with UK registered companies, but not so rare for those registered through off shore tax havens like the British Virgin Islands.

See point 10.2

https://www.alienmetals.uk/wp-content/uploads/180926-Memorandum-Articles-of-Association.pdf