Member Info for Happyhaddock

@Talking Sense, I'm well aware of how these exclusivity deals work and why they put such statements in to RNS's.. it is quite literally because they are merely about talk and don't guarantee an outcome.

I've a small speculative position in another junior explorer that in mid 2022 signed such an exclusivity deal to talk about some relatively modest financing options (~£20m-£30m). To date there has been no news to say that the talks have broken down, but equally there's has ben no news to say they have been successfully completed, the only official news we've had is that they continue to explore all options to finance our project.

As you say todays news is a positive step forward for ECR but doesn't ensure we will cross the finishing line any time soon.

Whilst today's news is undoubtedly positive, lets not get ahead of ourselves as we don't yet have a signed deal to buy anything from us. We already knew various parties were interested in talking to us and we hoped that those talks would lead to a decent injection of cash into ECR. Today is no different in so much as we still hope and expect confirmation of good news but this RNS explicitly states that we aren't there yet and where lawyers and accountants are involved it could be a little while longer yet even if things are going well.

As I sit here reading an argument about cruciferous vegetables I'm reminded of how a description I once read about commentating upon the game of cricket shares so many similarities with speculating in junior exploration companies ;

- that it is the ability to endlessly digress and pass the time with banal small talk so as to fill extended periods in which nothing is happening.

Cup of tea and a scone and jam anyone?

Well I've long said that our real value lies in our non ferrous metals, so it is good to hear the company talking about them again.

However as wents implies it is more talk of potential and things to come rather than of things actually accomplished... so whilst it is definitely not bad news I'll keep waiting patiently for some quantifiable progress.

More than a leak I was wondering more if fear of changes to capital gains tax are prompting people to move shares in to their ISAs before the budget tomorrow? - certainly seem to have been a few largish "paired" trades going through in a way I'd more often associate with the end/beginning of the tax year.

Whilst far from a bomb proof reality, my general observation is that precious metals typically get knocked back a bit towards the end of the month as that's when options traders usually start squaring up futures contracts and try to minimise their loses.

Increasingly those interested in physical metal seem happy to play along with that as the exchange for physical mechanism allows traders to take real metal out of the paper exchanges with contracts bought at price dips. However the more the trader's price dips get exploited by those actually taking delivery the harder it becomes to suppress the price and the more likely the next price dip at the end of the next month drops to a slightly higher level than the previous month.

Fair enough and I hope you are right ... but I've learned it is best to treat any feeling in my water as a reason to consider antibiotics more than a reason to consider investing. 😉

@cj - the attempt to inject a little positive sentiment is to be applauded and I hope you are right...

However, I've always maintained you need to look at at least a 1year chart to get a handle on short terms trends and a 5year chart to get a sense of long term trends. Sadly the move of the last 5 days needs to be a lot bigger to register as more than noise on anything other than a traders day charts. Conversely I've lost count of the number of occasions over the last few years that this bulletin board has got excited and hailed a bit of short term volatility as the start of a re-rate.

To repeat a line I've copied and pasted here several times over the years; "So, nice as it is to see a little positive price activity today, nothing about this appears outside the routine volatility of the last two years or indicates to me a significant change in sentiment just yet."

Well despite this bulletin boards somewhat muted response, I personally though the presentation wasn't so bad.

It seemed realistic in not wanting to promise too much too soon, and whilst Brad's self deprecating sense of humour probably isn't what is needed in a sales pitch I'd rather that than some greasy CEO that is clearly lying through their teeth in promising things that everyone knows aren't achievable .

For several years we've been dealing with much larger partners running the show. Now is the "make or break" time when our own BOD have to step up to the plate and prove themselves as there is going to be nobody else to hide behind or blame.

Every junior explorer is a gamble as to whether management have what it takes, and it is pretty much the expected norm that in this sector everything takes longer and costs more than expected so I don't place much faith in any company's forecasted timelines or budgets. However I'm happy to leave my shares in the bottom drawer a bit longer to see if OMI can deliver on its potential.

@turbo, - I hope you are right about 2025 being my year for UFO, but back in 2020 I did reckon on needing to allow at least 5years to see any meaningful progress for UFO, I was just surprised by the brief price spike of 2020.

Not that I can complain about how 2024 has treated me financially as I've made more from the rest of my savings and investments in the last 10months than I earned through working over the last 3-4years, its just that UFO (and more generally my other small speculative punts in the junior explorer sector) contributed a small negative to that much larger gain.

Whilst we will probably never know the reason behind it, I'd be curious to know if this "massive" buyer has been prompted by belief in our iron ore or our non-ferrous metals?

In theory our iron ore is our primary focus of interest but talk about that for the last few years has mainly corresponded with a slow draw-out downward price move. However, whenever the precious metals markets show any excitement we tend to get a corresponding buzz here and a tick up in share price even if the route to monetizing Pinderi Hills may be a somewhat longer and less certain one than our iron ore.

So whilst I can't speak for others I've always maintained that our real wealth lies in the long term potential of our non ferrous metals, and merely hope to be proved wrong in remaining more cautiously sceptical of other people's enthusiasm for Hanc*ck.

@chisler - I agree that the change in gold price of late has been significant which will hopefully benefit us at what ever point in the future we begin selling gold.

However with in the broader context of a risky sector noted for delays, dilution and disappointment, then increases in the gold price seem unlikely to be responsible for yesterdays drop in our share price. The very fact that today we have mostly bounced back again suggests it was just noise within the general volatility of this sector.

By and large much of the discussion on LSE bulletin boards is about trying to ascribe meaning to things of little significance, actions which ultimately tend to lead to 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 need to repeatedly 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. 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, and that even the things worth talking about will probably take much longer to happen than they expect.

My shares here have been in the bottom drawer for many years and I can afford for them to stay there for many more. If GWMO goes the way of most junior explorers I can afford the small loss. If it does go on to great success then hopefully the wait will have been worthwhile.

Whilst the fact Brad, by his own admission, hasn't enjoyed any past success I'm happy to leave my shares in the bottom drawer as I've been here a good few years and happy to wait and see how things pan out.

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 in the form of jewellery or bullion. Conversely ever more silver is consumed by industry, with recycling not very economic at current prices.

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. In 2022 about 200million ounces of new silver was produced by primary silver mines, almost 650milllion more 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 coming to market currently exceeds all industrial needs. Current silver "deficits" can therefore be addressed simply by establishing a 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 tiny fraction of mainstream savings moved in to precious metals, the whole bullion market could be swamped.

@formerlyeasyp - I'm reminded of the following post I made here during the promotional run up to a London mining conference some while ago. At the time Brad George had just been interviewed about Orosur by legendary commodities investor Rick Rule...

Well, much as Brad found plenty of positives to talk about, 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 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.

There's still lots of reasons to be hopeful about OMI's assets as a speculative play, but I sense Brad George didn't convince Rick Rule to become one of Orosur's investors.

Well it is probably fair to assume the recent price move in FRES has been driven by the recent price move in silver.

The question remains as to whether we think we are still in a " calm and rational" market where our price move will be determined by people logically examining how the silver price will change our revenue and profits or if we may be entering a "wildly irrational" market where all common sense goes out of the window and it just becomes a mad scramble to grab anything with even a whiff of silver about it.

Current silver prices should help our bottom line but silver speculators can be the wildest and most irrational of all speculators and we all know what has happened in the past when folk get over-excited about silver!

@Max111 - I've used Atkinsons for years and just tried their web-site ... logged in first time and took about 3seconds.

If you are having trouble check your own systems, the issue may be technical at your end rather than their own system being overwhelmed.

I did notice last week that they were awaiting delivery of new stock on some popular products but that all seems resolved as of now.

I'd like to re-post something that I first wrote about another junior exploration company some while ago. It highlights how so much of the discussion on LSE has an eerily repetitive sense of déjà-vu ... So what's changed and is there anything new to say?

Clearly our share price is showing a little volatility again. However, can today's price move be attributed to a specific change within our own circumstance, or is it merely noise within the general trends typical of a risky junior exploration sector noted for delays, dilution and disappointment?

Junior exploration companies are all high risk speculative punts at the mercy of external macro-economic sentiment and that fact hasn't changed today. Their constant need for positive PR both to aid the periodic fundraising needed to stay in business and mitigate the dilution it can cause hasn't changed today. The occasional need or desire for a change of management as a project matures or its goals and timelines are amended hasn't changed today. The rocks on the land we hold are still the same rocks and haven't changed today, nor have the technical tests we must progress through to identify any minerals in them. Similarly there have been no changes today to the bureaucratic administrative processes, timescales and costs involved in advancing an initial discovery all the way through to a measured resource and then on to an operating mine.

Did any of us expect that today we would see this price activity? - Seemingly not. Should we expect that our share price will always move predictably and smoothly in the direction we would hope for... of course not!

I would say the broader long term picture has not changed today. Consequently those familiar with the nature of junior exploration companies and the risks we take in speculating in such things will probably see no reason to get worked up. For those less familiar with this sector whose fickle sentiment is governed only by daily price action, it may be that there have been some significant changes to your understanding of the timescales over which you need to tolerate the risks and how many different things all need to "come good" if hoping to see any reward. Recognise also that you don't make big returns buying when everybody is excited to acquire, or selling out when everyone is dumping shares in frustration. The rare few that make good money out of junior explorers tend to be patient contrarians who take the increased risks of going against the herd and then waiting.

In short don't listen to those who have written us off as dead in the water and don't listen to those who relentlessly promise imminent riches. Recognise just how much is still uncertain, how much time, money and effort it may take to resolve all the remaining uncertainties and consider how likely various different outcomes are. Only then speculate with what you can afford to lose based upon your own perception of the risks and possible rewards.

@peanutty - If countless statistical studies show that the vast majority of projects in this sector run behind schedule and over-budget, and where most ultimately fail, surely it is realistic to allow for the probability that the company we have speculated in may also experience delays ,overspends and run the risk of failure? If I remember correctly the last study I read suggested that the average delay developing a mine was 24months with an 80% overspend.

Sure we all hope we will be the exception that comes in early and under-budget, or at least on time and on budget, and sure we can all point to rare exceptions where this was achieved, it just seems strange to expect the exceptional. After all it is not as if I am saying our BOD have done an exceptional job when they are doing as badly as most other junior explorer's BOD... I simply find it curious that folk here appear surprised that we are where we are when it seemed predictable enough for at least some here to have been warning of such possibilities for years.

@pebsi - whilst I agree that our BOD, or what we have of a BOD given the revolving door policy with which they come and go, aren't exactly showering themselves in glory, the term "pure incompetence" may be a little strong. Sure they haven't lived up to the the expectations of people on this bulletin board, but look across a wide sample of junior explorers and that statement is true of most where you'll find similar complaints.

Again we come back to the issue that the only cause of disappointment is expectation. If expectations aren't realistic then disappointment is a natural outcome. You can ask if our BOD have exploited the unrealistic expectations of small shareholders and most would say yes. Perhaps the more relevant question is if the company would be in a better or worse position had it not exploited those unrealistic expectations?

Those that feel exploited and have lost a lot of money are naturally angry. From my own perspective I took a small punt on a risky junior explorer and four and half years later the share price is still more or less where I bought in at whilst our portfolio of assets is arguably in a better position. Compared to a couple of my other small speculative punts in "more advanced" juniors that actually had operational mines but have since gone bust, then UFO isn't doing so badly.