Member Info for Happyhaddock

Well I've been the first to criticise our CEO in the past for being too self deprecating and understating things too much. A decent enough quality to have as a person but a problem if involved in marketing.

Whether it was a deliberate effort, or simply the quality of our assets but last night's short presentation was about the first time I felt he got the tone right. No "hard sell" or "spin" but an upbeat summary of the considerable positives.

I think OMI's drill results are good enough to speak for themselves, hopefully alleviating the need for our CEO to say much more, and to some extent I'd rather a CEO that isn't all about spin... So hopefully this conference will allow Brad George (assuming he himself will be at PDAC) to simply answer intelligent questions from informed attendees without him having to do any "salesmanship".

Mention of another conference reminds me of the following post I made here during the promotional run up to a London mining conference before we re-claimed ownership of our Columbian prospects from our ex-JV partners. At the time Brad George had just been interviewed about Orosur by legendary commodities investor Rick Rule, with many then suggesting that our self-deprecating CEO was a liability who should stick to geology and stay away from marketing work. Clearly our Columbian prospects have improved massively since then, but have OMI's promotional skills?

Well, much as Brad found plenty of positives to talk about in terms of our assets, the thing that struck me through much of the interview was Rick Rule's facial expression...

In the past Rick has talked endlessly about how nearly all the money in this sector is made by serially successful individuals whose prior successes have been in very similar endeavours specifically relevant to the task in hand... We then had Brad "promoting himself" by admitting he'd been unsuccessfully involved in various geological roles in various countries without making any notable discoveries; How he had failed in commodity's finance and only got the job here through luck and because he was cheap, available and was already friends with those running OMI...

I think Rick Rule's facial expression during those comments was a master class in diplomatically trying not to give away what he really thought about what was being said. So whilst there are still lots of reasons to be hopeful about OMI's assets, I sense Rick Rule wasn't persuaded to place his faith in Brad George.

Given the current discussion I'd like to repost some data culled from various reports in 2023.

The earth is said to have formed containing about sixteen times more silver than gold. Most of the gold ever mined is still held as wealth, but ever more silver is consumed by industry..

Silver is currently mined at a little below a ten to one ratio with gold, that is to say less than ten ounces of new silver come out of the ground for every new ounce of gold. Surprisingly many consider this fact more important than relative production costs when debating what constitutes a "fair" gold to silver price ratio. So for reference, primary gold miner's average all-in-sustaining-costs in 2023 are about $1350/oz of gold, whilst the average AISC of primary silver miners is around $13/oz of silver. However, huge pre-existing inventories buffer the pricing dynamics of gold supply, and silver is largely priced as a by-product of mining other metals where even primary silver mines produce much more than just silver. Without "credits" from other metals, primary silver miner's average AISC in 2023 are estimated to be around $38/oz of silver.

Roughly 6billion ounces of gold have been mined throughout history with about 3billion ounces still stored as "good delivery" ingots in bullion vaults around the world. This massively dwarfs production of about 120million new ounces of gold per year with investment demand for physical gold around 150million ounces per year.

In comparison it is estimated that of the roughly 45billion ounces of silver historically mined, only about 2billion ounces are still in bullion vaults as "good delivery" ingots underpinning commodities trade, but about 20billion ounces remain in cupboards as old jewellery, teapots and other nik-naks. In 2022 about 200million ounces of new silver was produced by primary silver mines, almost 650milllion ounces as by-product from other mines and over 150million ounces was recovered from recycling. Monetary purchases currently make up over a quarter of the roughly 1200million ounce total annual silver demand meaning that freshly refined silver still exceeds all industrial needs. Current silver "deficits" can therefore be addressed simply by establishing a new price that encourages a change of name tag on ingots already stored in vaults. However, annual mine production has been falling whilst industrial silver consumption is forecast to keep growing, which may eventually start to drain vaults.

Put another way, at 2023 prices, 3billion ounces of gold is worth around $6000bn, 2billion ounces of silver is worth almost $50bn, yet the global savings and investment market is worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. If only a little of the cash currently invested in gold moved to a speculative play on silver, the whole silver market would be swamped. Similarly if even a fraction of mainstream savings moved in to precious metals, the whole bullion market could be swamped.

In a sector where there is a repetitive sense of de-ja-vu about the recurring issues that characterise most junior explorers, there is rarely any need to say anything new. As such I'd like to re-share something written a while ago about another company.

Some might cynically say that a junior exploration company's board of directors is only there to raise enough cash to keep paying their own salaries. Those directors might say they are there to maintain market interest so they can keep raising the funds needed to survive. This isn't easy in a sector noted for delays and over-spends and where even those projects that succeed can seemingly drift in limbo for years.

Junior explorers fight to attract attention by promoting future "possibilities" where, without lying to the markets, management try to distract from set-backs, frequent dilution and impatient market participants who sell up. They repeatedly hint at even distant links to topical ideas or remote chances of near term good news. All this is presented using caveats and words like "hope", "target", "prospective" or "estimate" that provide wriggle room should they later be accused of promoting unrealistic expectations. In other words, when championing reasons to be optimistic, directors may be legally forbidden from leading us up the garden path, but they can step to one side whilst informally encouraging others to excitably run ahead on their own.

I've seen many private investors accuse the management of junior explorers of incompetence, dishonesty, or of deliberately running down their assets so they can be taken private "on the cheap" by their creditors. Such critics are often emotional individuals who, in the absence of hard facts and full numerical data, rushed to buy the herd's enthusiasm for a good story. Then without waiting to either prove or disprove that story, they make losses selling in to the herd's impatience. As such nobody should allow a company's PR, rumours or the emotions of other investors to feed their own confirmation bias.

Every speculator needs to recognise that most explorer's PR translates as "...we still can't confirm any new facts, but please don't lose interest in our latest narrative". Regardless, if your purchases have helped minimise the share's price decline then the marketing has succeeded.

You need to learn when, or even if, most other explorers achieve their stated goals and just how common failure is in this slow moving yet volatile sector. You must then identify the likelihood of a specific business becoming the exception. This is done by analysing their communications to separate verifiable and actionable accomplishments from distracting superlatives and promotional aspirations. Put another way, the uncertainties that determine the balance of possible reward against probable risk are best understood before spending your money so as not to be left angry and surprised should your hopes not be quickly fulfilled.

@yayay the sentiment is one expressed by C.S Lewis but not his wording, so must be somebody else's quote... the quote I know from C S Lewis can be paraphrased as ;-

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised through good intention may be the most oppressive."

@smiller - if I were to continue your analogy, I wouldn't so much say we have stalled as our "car" has been without a functioning engine for a quite some time, but it still looks pretty sat on the driveway though ........😋

"You gotta back your horse if you want it to win"

A strange choice of analogy as the amount of money backing a horse has no influence on its athletic ability, speed or stamina. The amount of money backing a horse does however prompt the bookies the shorten their odds to reduce what they pay out should it win, whilst a horse with no money backing it can win a race, which from the bookies perspective is the perfect outcome.

If you want your horse to win you need to make sure it has a good vet, trainer and jokey in charge ... many might question if UFO have that.

Everybody has their own views about what moves markets and where there are or are not causal links...

Do prices go up because folk got excited, or do folk get excited because prices have gone up? Markets makers derive profit from the number of trades not the direction they go, if they have a stagnant market where nothing is happening and folk aren't buying or selling they need to shake things up in order to make their money. IF they move the bid and ask people sit up, take note and start talking.

From my point of view the important question to ask is what has changed regarding UFO's prospects over the last few days to justify a sudden changed in sentiment and if the bid and ask moved on a large increase in volume? If you feel nothing has changed then there is no justification for the price rise.

So do rampers influence market makers, or do market makers influence rampers, or are they one and the same?

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

Give OML his/her due, they have a lot of energy for their task.

... but, as a wise man once said to me many years ago "You seem young and enthusiastic, but given time you'll get over that."

I'm sure we all hope that OML is correct, but experience teaches you that you don' make money on hope.

@Wolfy - I'd rather not believe that what you say is true, but I couldn't with straight face argue that you are definitely wrong.

It may have gone unnoticed but we've now gone more than 24hrs and more than three whole pages of assorted posts here without Max111 having anything to say; no comments about iron ore prices, no news of Chinese stimulus, no news of foreign engineering projects, not even a notification that he's just topped up at never to be seen again low prices.

Place just doesn't seem the same without him after all these years 😋

OatMilkLatte is clearly trying to assume his role and clearly has the irrational exuberance to be our new head cheerleader, so has Max111 finally hung up his pom-poms?

We all know the history of some on this bulletin board who endlessly claim that imminent news will cause the share price to rocket. Since our share price spiked above 3p in 2020, many have endlessly rejected warnings of over-enthusiasm only for reality to keep falling short of their bold predictions. How often was it argued that "this time is different" because whatever was being done was "the most important thing" or a "game changer" when, in reality, it was just the next thing on the "to do list"? So, when Alien's progression has been typical of the sector, can repeated failures to meet this bulletin board's high hopes be attributed to unrealistic expectation, and have expectations changed?

In autumn 2023, many here claimed that a share price re-rate was near based upon Hanc*ck being certain to get native title approval before the end of Nov.2023. These people robustly dismissed suggestions that, even if approved without objection, a decision may take some time to be formally ratified and may not move the share price as they hoped for. As it was we only had to wait until mid Dec.2023 to receive an RNS confirming native title approval. On anticipation our share price had climbed from about 0.17p to start the week that native title approval was announced at 0.32p. Following that RNS it quickly dropped to 0.22p, soon reaching 0.13p.

With that fall in our share price, this bulletin board's "justification" for predicting an imminent re-rate switched to months of jubilant claims that our mining permits would be issued within days. Again folk dismissed warnings of over-optimism with anticipation lifting our share price back up to 0.22p. We finally received the RNS confirming the issue of our mining permits in Apr. 2024 whereupon our share price quickly fell below 0.18p, dropping as low as 0.11p in the following weeks.

This bulletin board then fixated on our share price re-rating on an imminent JV to finance Hanc*ck's production. Hope took our share price back up to 0.24p, yet after about half a year of anticipation UFO "deferred" joint venture discussions, hinting in 2025 that silver, rather than iron ore, would become our new focus of attention. This indecisiveness, along with the need to keep raising sustaining capital, has seen our share price drop to 0.07p

Long delays and share dilution are normal for this risky sector's many failures, but also its few rare successes. Most steps forward are sign-posted in advance leading fickle traders to "buy the rumour and sell the news". This has typically resulted in spikes in trading volume and new names appearing on this bulletin board to impatiently champion predictions of imminent price gains. I've said for the last five years that I thought our wealth lay in our non ferrous metals and that I would first review Alien's performance in 2025. So, I will continue to hold my small speculative position and take the risk of waiting to see where we end the year.

I do love a good quote, but I'm not sure others should be repeating my own words as quote worthy; nevertheless here are a few more quotes that seem apt;

"To be sure that you mis-understand something, is far rarer than to mis-understand something you are sure of."

"Fighting trivial battles with inconsequential people is a task for small minds with big egos."

"Silence is the hardest response for the fool to understand and the most difficult for them to refute."

"The worst thing about worrying about how stupid the average person here seems to be, is knowing that statistically speaking half are even more stupid than that!"

@Rocket, I'm not saying that rational people don't buy shares in junior explorers, only that they aren't suitable for rational investment. Everybody likes a little irrational punt every now and then, but anybody who believed they have made a rational investment in a junior explorer probably should have done a lot more research before committing their cash.

The best you can hope for from such research is to make decision that although the odds of success are small, the potential reward is sufficiently large as to justify a small punt.. you could argue that is a form of rational decision making, but committing large sums of cash in the expectation of sizeable returns based solely upon a company's marketing and self promotion is either a sign or ignorance or irrationality.

@yayay - but you would then be assuming rational behaviour. We all speculate in the smallest of junior explorers hoping for that wild and irrational move in share price.... rational people with sense don't invest in junior explorers, for as I've argued here before they aren't "investment" vehicles.

They are purely speculative dependent upon the future outcome of so many unknowns in a sector that collectively loses billions a year. Thought of as lottery tickets the irrational hope and excitement makes more sense.

The gift that keeps on giving

In a sector where there is a repetitive sense of de-ja-vu about the recurring issues that characterise most junior explorers, there is rarely any need to say anything new. As such I'd like to re-share something written a while ago about another company.

Some might cynically say that a junior exploration company's board of directors is only there to raise enough cash to keep paying their own salaries. Those directors might say they are there to maintain market interest so they can keep raising the funds needed to survive. This isn't easy in a sector noted for delays and over-spends and where even those projects that succeed can seemingly drift in limbo for years.

Junior explorers fight to attract attention by promoting "future potential" where, without lying to the markets, management try to distract from set-backs, frequent dilution and impatient market participants who sell up. They repeatedly hint at even distant links to topical ideas or remote chances of near term good news. All this is presented using caveats and words like "hope", "target", "prospective" or "estimate" that provide wriggle room should they later be accused of promoting unrealistic expectations. In other words, when championing reasons to be optimistic, directors may be legally forbidden from leading us up the garden path, but they can step to one side whilst informally encouraging others to excitably run ahead on their own.

I've seen many private investors accuse the management of junior explorers of incompetence, dishonesty, or of deliberately running down their assets so they can be taken private "on the cheap" by their creditors. Such critics are often emotional individuals who, in the absence of hard facts and full numerical data, rushed to buy the herd's enthusiasm for a good story. Then without waiting to either prove or disprove that story, they make losses selling in to the herd's impatience. As such nobody should allow a company's PR, rumours or the emotions of other investors to feed their own confirmation bias.

Every speculator needs to recognise that most explorer's PR translates as "...we still can't confirm any new facts, but please don't lose interest in our latest narrative". Regardless, if your purchases have helped minimise the share's price decline then the marketing has succeeded.

You need to learn when, or even if, most other explorers achieve their stated goals and just how common failure is in this slow moving yet volatile sector. You must then identify the likelihood of a specific business becoming the exception. This is done by analysing their communications to separate verifiable and actionable accomplishments from distracting superlatives and promotional aspirations. Put another way, the uncertainties that determine the balance of possible reward against probable risk are best understood before spending your money so as not to be left angry and surprised should your hopes not be quickly fulfilled.

"They must be very confident of a deal, whether a JV, offtake or sale for either one of their promising projects."

Our BOD are always very confident of such things right up until the point they leave without, and possibly because of, delivering nothing. If such confident assertions were coming from a CEO with a proven history of recent success then markets might believe them. As it is we lost our last three CEO's in short order, have been without one for over 12months and are all waiting on a reason to believe the stories we have heard many times before might just be true this time.

Folk remain here either because of belief in our assets or morbid curiosity, you may be hard pushed to find anybody here who believes in the track record of our management.

Well delays and set backs are just normal and routine in the junior exploration sector, especially those trying to become junior producers. So, as I said a short while ago when some here were adamant we'd become a gold producer on the 16th;

"there are lots of reasons for patient long term optimism here, but also a lot of folk setting themselves up for short term disappointment"

I'm sure these health and safety issues will be sorted, then we can begin trials to identify the next tweaks and changes we need to keep working towards the desired outcomes we want ... it is just unfortunate that impatient markets typically deliver such volatile changes to share prices on such predictable outcomes.