Member Info for Happyhaddock

@yayay - all too true about how folk have become all the more impatient in an age of instant social media.

I think we all know this bulletin board's history of endlessly getting excited about how the "next news" is both imminent and will be transformational to the share price... only to find that news doesn't arrive as soon as expected and doesn't have a major impact on the share price. How often have we ben told by those here that whatever we are doing at the moment is "the most important" thing, only to find it is simply one of many things that need completing.

We're moving forward at a pace typical of the industry, and whilst native title clearance is important it's merely one of several important stages. At the moment everybody is obsessed with it because its the next thing, presumably at some point it will be resolved, after which folk will stop thinking of it as the most important thing and become equally obsessed with whatever comes next.

It takes time to put a mine in to production, so long as we keep moving forward I'm content to wait ... all this over excitable impatience just seems to lead to years of disappointment, which probably isn't justified for a company that is moving forward.

@cj - you present this as a binary will or won't have already been passed situation.

Whilst we can hope that this will have been passed , never discount the ability of "red tape" and committees to tie things up in a failure to agree to anything and the need for more meetings to revue additional information before deciding on anything.

@christatbirdies, it was never likely that we'd be ready to start generating revenue until a good way in to 2024, so Q4 2024 isn't such a wait. Admittedly I was kind of hoping to be shovel ready by the end of 2023 and to be generating revenue in the second half of 2024, but nobody here needs telling that putting a mine in to production is a slow process.

@normbeef - that is a very rational view that's difficult to argue with - and yet there's still that famous quote that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

PM investors have grown old waiting for prices to explode to the upside. So long as they continue ticking upwards to offset inflation as they've always done, then they'll have done their job for me... though anything more in terms of meeting some of the crazy price moves forecast on the internet would be a nice bonus!

@AWP - strange how perspectives change;

When in mid 2021 I suggested that the price of iron ore might eventually stabilise a little below $140/t I was accused of negative pessimism, for at that time it was only just coming off the spike above $220/t. More than two years later achieving $140/t is now seen as a positive aspiration.

Who knows where the price may end up in the coming months as analyst's forecasts remain widely conflicted. Even this morning I've just read an article discussing both how stimulus in China could boost their real estate markets driving up iron ore, or destabilise their real estate market seeing iron ore prices collapse below where they are today.

The natural tendency of this bulletin board for the last few years has been to get over excited and always assume the "next news" will catapult the share price higher, then when it doesn't the assumption switches to the next "next news".

Would getting native title sorted be an important step we should be pleased to have achieved? - Of course it would be.

Is it the only important step we still have to clear before being able to mine? - No it is not.

As has been said by others, the fact that everybody here is talking about a meeting on the 30th doesn't mean that we are guaranteed to get good news on the 30th, or that even if we do get good news that day our share price will immediately rocket upwards sustaining all the gains it makes.

Given the volatile nature of our share price I'll be quite content simply to hear over the next few weeks that we've ticked another thing of the extensive "to-do-list" and hence moved one step closer to the day we actually start generating revenue, rather than simply talking about generating revenue. If our share prices lurches about a bit if/when that news is released it wouldn't surprise me, but nor will it have any impact on my decision to sit and patiently wait rather than try to trade in and out of daily moves.

@cj - I hope you are correct but folk who have spent any time around the junior exploration sector know that expectation is the biggest cause of disappointment. That the biggest reason that folk lose money is selling up through disappointment when things don't play out as they'd hoped for.

The approach that suits my own temperament is having bought in to something that looks undervalued and has potential is simply to be very patient, expect nothing and wait to see what happens.

@yayay - whilst we can hope that things progress "very quickly afterwards", where government red-tape is involved it is always prudent to assume that things can, may and probably will take longer than anyone ever feels reasonable or justified.

I'm not claiming to know how much longer we may have to wait to finally get all the clearances we need to start physical work, only that for three years folk here have been claiming they are imminent. Throughout that time I've claimed that I didn't think we'd be ale to start physical preparations before late 2023 or see revenue before 2024.

So if things do fall in to place for us before the end of the year it won't be a shock, but nor would it be a shock to find that in a few months we still don't know when our mining permits will be granted but that folk here are still claiming they are "imminent".

I personally think one of the biggest problems with chartist's technical analysis is that so many of them are traders which naturally compels them to look at the detail within short term charts rather than the broader patterns on long term charts.

For the last three years we've been in a gentle decline, if the price nudges above that declining trend line we pull back, if we fall below we tend to nudge back up to that declining trend, never deviating too far from it. In the middle of this year we got news of "delays" and a heavily dilutive fund raise which pushed us below that long term trend suggesting we needed to pull back up a little.

It's taken a few months but our share price has risen to meet that declining trend line around 0.3p. We all hope that we can break out of that long term downward trend but its no surprise to see a little pull back as we nudged over that trend. We'll need to see a much bigger move up for our price to decisively break above that trend line, or several months of holding station for the trend line to fall well below our share price... Might that happen just on expectation of good news or will we have to wait for definite facts... who knows anything can happen on AIM!

I think a large part of the perceived "problem" is the route we've taken to get where we are.

In about four years we've gone from a mkt cap of just over £2m and a share price well below 0.1p, to now having a mkt cap of close to £14m and share price approaching 0.25p. Ordinarily most would see that as "good" progress. Unfortunately along the way we hit a wild spike that took us to many multiples of where we are today and as such we have all had to witness things fall back to "sensible levels" ... Frustrating for those of us who could have got out at huge profits and are now left looking at pitiful profits. All the more frustrating for those that bought in at the highs and are now looking at large losses.

Would there be such frustration with a "normal" rate of progress if it had been matched with "normal" share price progression?

Alas we'll never know as we've all chosen to speculate in a wild and volatile sector whose behaviour is characterised by being anything but "normal" and where prices can move wildly and erratically in no time at all and where most ultimately fail... Some other junior explorers I've speculated in have cleared the "difficult" hurdles of finding ore, raising funds and building mines and still ended up going in to administration because they couldn't make enough cash from mining to pay their debts.

So, on the plus side we still seem to be moving forward and aren't bankrupt which puts us above many in this sector!

If that doesn't sound like much of an argument for "investing" well that merely reinforces my view that this isn't a sector you invest in ... its only for speculating with money you can afford to lose, but viewed that way I still like UFO as a speculative punt.

I'd like to re-post this as a lot seems as relevant here today as when first written about another company.

Some might cynically say that the focus of a junior exploration company's board of directors is to keep raising enough cash to pay their own salaries. However those directors might say they are there to keep the markets interested in the company so they can keep raising the funds needed to explore. This isn't easy in a sector noted for endless delays and losses, where most projects fail and where even the fastest projects can take many years to progress.

Without lying to the markets or concealing truths, management try to generate enough new enthusiasm to compensate for frequent dilution and impatient market participants who sell up. Good marketing seeks to highlight any positives by hinting 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", "potential" "prospective" or "estimate" that provide wriggle room should people's expectations later fail to be met. In other words, when promoting reasons to be optimistic, directors may be legally forbidden from leading us up the garden path, but they can step to one side whilst encouraging others to excitably run ahead on their own.

I've seen many private investors criticise junior exploration companies for misleading markets, or exploiting small shareholders by deliberately running a company in to financial troubles so that it can be taken private "on the cheap" by its creditors. Such critics are often emotional individuals who, in the absence of hard facts and full numerical data, rushed in to buy the herd's enthusiasm for a good story. Then without allowing adequate time to either prove or disprove that story, they make losses selling in to the herd's impatience. Such people need to recognise that most explorer's PR translates as "...we can't confirm anything yet, but please help us by getting excited anyway".

If your money and purchases are minimising the share's price decline then the directors and their marketing are succeeding. Consequently every speculator needs the ability to buy, hold or sell shares without being distracted by a company's PR or the emotions of other investors.

You need to understand what is usual for this volatile sector in terms of a company's stated goals and when, or even if, they are achieved. You must then look for reasons why a specific business may be an exception rather than the norm. This is done by analysing their communications to separate definite and actionable facts from distracting promotional aspirations. Understanding how others may fail at this helps judge share prices in terms of if any potential upside outweighs possible downside. Yet as you cannot eliminate the risk of future unknowns you must be able to live with the consequences of things not going as hoped for, which typically means not speculating with more than you can afford to lose.

In terms of "poor management" - I don't see a "failure" to put Hanc*ck into production in 2021 , 2022 or even 2023 as poor management as that never seemed realistic in the first place. This is why I always said 2025 was my first date for judging UFO and why I often said I didn't think it likely we'd be able to begin any physical preparations before the end of 2023 or start generating revenue before 2024. So far we've merely been progressing at the sort of pace I've been encouraging others to expect of the sector.

If there's been any "poor management" it has been in not addressing shareholder's unrealistic expectations, or in some cases actively exploiting them so as to raise funds at more affordable share prices... though can that truly be called poor management?

@normbeef - it was only a few days ago I was commenting upon how surprisingly stable iron ore prices have been in 2023 - They started 2023 a whisker below $120/t and have not moved more than a few percent above or below that all year... So when you mention a move up of 40% "this year" you are presumably referring to the the previous 12months and the volatile swing up at the end of 2022 before things stabilised? As if there is a trend in "this year" I would describe it as uncharacteristically stable rather than dramatically upward.

Though as I think everybody here knows and you yourself mention, whilst current prices would hopefully deliver us decent profits, in a year from now Iron Ore could be any price.

I think the thing that has surprised me most about iron ore prices in 2023 is their stability and that for all their small daily moves up and down how little they have changed.

Ten years ago prices were around $130/t and since then they've been up and down all over the prices with lows below $40/t and highs above $220/t. Yet we started 2023 with iron ore just below $120/t and have not seen moves of more than about $15/t above or below that level all year... oddly stable for iron ore and great if it continues as this is a level at which we should be able to make some sort of profit.

However would anybody bet money on iron ore prices remaining this stable over the next few years? History suggests it wouldn't be a wise move, and the wide range of conflicting analysts forecasts suggests there's still no consensus of opinion about where they'll goin the future. I certainly wouldn't take what prices are doing this week as an indication of where they may be next year or the year after, though we can all live in hope that they do keep getting stronger as some are forecasting.

@Bishop - but don't you know you have to put the Christmas sprouts on to boil around Easter - I predict it will be a while yet before the price of sprouts rises!

I think the statistic went that if you missed the ten best days of the year then the likelihood is that for most stocks the rest of the year would average out as a loss ... sadly nobody publishes a timetable in advance telling you which are going to be the ten best days such that you can meaningfully deploy your capital elsewhere whilst waiting.

Much as it may prove to be another prediction that history consigns to the dustbin, as early as 2021 I said that our price would move when we least expected it but that I believed we were setting ourselves up for another irrational price spike before the end of 2024.

Well, whilst we can speculate about the reasoning and if it is simply over excitable FOMO as one big trade prompts lots of other people to assume something must be happening, we can't deny that today has seen some unusual trading.

I suppose the next few days will tell us if it's been another storm in a teacup where things will drift back to where they came from, or if news does come out to have justified such activity?

CB when it comes to junior investors a golden rule is never to "invest" in them as they are too unpredictable and the sector as a whole is basically a punch bag for macro-economic factors it can't fight back against or control. This is why the sector is defined by massive delays, losses and failures and why junior explorers are for "speculating" with gambling money only.

Another rule is to be very clear with yourself if you are a trader or actually wish to speculate on the long term fundamentals. I'm not a trader but those who are benefit from ignoring everything company's say and focusing only on price charts jumping in and out every few days as price momentum changes. Otherwise if you are going to speculate on fundamentals you need to be immune to price charts (aside from deciding the price you are waiting for to buy in at) and be willing to give an absolute bare minimum of five years if not a decade to see any meaningful progress that will significantly change underlying values enough to dominate over the inherent price volatility.

In terms of management lying to us about time frames, don't view it as a deliberate attempt to deceive, just recognise that their job is always to keep punters interested so that year after year they can keep raising the cash they need to stay afloat. When nothing is known for certain they will always offer the most optimistic predictions wrapped in clauses and caveats. Always judge statements of best intention against what is normal for the sector, rather than as a promise made in isolation.

Given that we can't know what the future holds I reckon on most speculative punts in junior explorers going belly up. Yet if I can get one right out of a dozen, then the rewards can be more than good enough to cover all my cumulative losses elsewhere and then some.

Like the rest of the sector our price performance has been erratic for the last few years and probably will be for the next few. Even if we do put Hanc*ck in to production at some point in the future as seems likely, there's no guarantee as to how our costs will compare to our revenue. That said I still like UFO's long term prospects so I'm happy to leave my shares in the bottom drawer in the hope it will eventually become the good one that covers me on losses elsewhere, just like I hoped that those that have already gone belly up would also be "the one" that made it big.

At the moments the markets don't seemingly want to gamble and so this sector is flat, but for those waiting for a good buy in price to take a gamble, then they are most often found in flat markets when nobody else want's to gamble.

Last week brought good news, but as we tick another thing off the slowly diminishing "to-do-list" many of the cautionary points I've been making for some time remain relevant.

In early 2021 I said that it would take a minimum of two years for Alien to start mining iron ore whilst 2025 was, and remains, my first date for reviewing progress. I often cautioned that our share price might struggle after its wild spike as it was unlikely that we would start physical preparations at Hanc*ck before late 2023 or see revenue before 2024.

Expressing these views lead to years of insults from those here who always assure us of Hanc*ck's imminent and explosive growth. Much to their chagrin and anguish it is not yet permitted or financed, whilst our share price is almost 95% down on its 2020 high. The last big drop was triggered by a heavily dilutive share placement which is implied will only fund us until "early" 2024.

Our last CEO said that with permitting out of his control he would not offer timeframes, yet he twice deferred aspects of an optimistic plan for Hanc*ck to start shipping ore in 2023. Our latest CEO recently implied that "subject to a reasonable timeframe to secure the required approvals" construction at Hanc*ck could start in spring 2024, estimating that we might be producing iron ore by autumn 2024.

I've previously highlighted how drops below $100/t in iron ore's volatile price, both in 2021 and again in 2022, temporarily rendered several smaller Australian producers unprofitable. Market forecasters still disagree over whether future supply or demand for iron ore will grow most or if recession may shrink both. Prices are currently just off a six month high with conflicting short term predictions for DSO above and below this level. Longer term predictions span from below $55/t to over $100/t where hedging ahead on the futures market to autumn 2024 today secures almost $100/t, whist for autumn 2026 that figure is near to $85/t.

Beyond erratic ore prices, we only have an estimate of Hanc*ck's direct costs. Energy costs remain volatile plus we don't know how things like consultancy/legal fees, financing costs or royalties may add to our outgoings. Regardless of the quantity or quality of ore in the ground, there is no certainty over the source and timing of further funding for Hanc*ck, when it may receive permits or hit target production volumes, and how any revenue generated may compare to monthly sustaining expenditure, capital costs, or any "uplift payment" still to be agreed with Windfield Metals.

Bulletin boards like LSE are full of people confidently telling us what the future holds, but all we can be sure of is that uncertainty makes junior explorers inherently risky. However, that won't stop me from patiently maintaining my speculative share holding here where, although our iron ore may be the first to deliver revenue, UFO's wealth may lie in the long term potential of our non-ferrous metals.

I'm always somewhat amused when people talk about FUD... The very nature of speculating in junior explorers is that you are dealing in uncertainty and doubt. If folk associate uncertainty and doubt with fear then you have to question why they are here and if they have the right temperament for this sector?

If the success of a junior explorer was assured then purchasing their shares wouldn't be speculating and risking significant losses for the potential of big gains, it would be investing in a known entity for small and predictable returns.

I think the bigger concern than those you brand FUDsters are those who deny the uncertainty. Personally I find those who argue that a company is sure to succeed are no better than those who argue it is sure to fail. We remain dependent upon all manner of external factors we can't possibly be sure of or have control over. The outcome isn't certain but I'm willing to take the gamble on UFO as I feel the odds seem favourable.