Member Info for Happyhaddock

Nobody knows why a CEO might sell a tiny fraction of the shares he holds, but we do know how easily the markets can spin all sorts of stories from such an action.

To me at least, and has been said by one or two others, the more important point is where the iron ore price is heading... whilst volatile and changing all the time, futures prices are currently heading the wrong way for us... there's nothing in 2024 above $85/t and for much of 2024 they are below $80/t which may be a tough act for us to meet all our outgoings on... So here's hoping things have picked up a lot by the time we are signing deals.

@norm - like you, I to was the product of the 1980's comprehensive system in what would have been called a rough inner-city school had it actually been in a city... as it was it was a rough deprived "out-of-town" working-class Northern comp. that has since been bulldozed...

That's not to say I haven't been to the "posh schools" where one pupil's fees outweighed one teacher's salary, it's just that I was on the payroll teaching/babysitting the kids of the gentry, rich and famous, not a pupil. However my working class accent and attitudes didn't really fit with the management's attitudes and aspirations so I didn't last long there... I was just a little too free to speak my mind in terms of not sucking up to or tolerating those families with the deepest pockets... It's hard to get the school to expel a pupil if daddy has just donated £4m to build the school an engineering workshop so his spoilt brat can build sports cars in the evenings and weekends.

"...its a policy driven mess.. they should automate Interest rates.. it should be algorithmic / or AI driven"

Better still do away with central banks interfering with interest rates altogether... just let market forces dictate rates as individual borrowers negotiate with individual lenders as this tends to minimise the widespread problems that lead to central banks and government's overreacting one way or the other and creating ever bigger problems.

Obviously a calculation of a yearly return require a knowledge of both total income and total expenses, neither of which we have data for.

Forecasts for ore prices next year or the year after have been conflicted for a long time as there is no consensus of opinions as to where they are going. Ore prices are volatile, as are futures prices for those looking to hedge against future volatility. No matter what your beliefs about the future you can pretty much find market analysts making claims to back them up. UFO based their modelling on about £100/t CFR but we've been both above and below that recently and may well be in the years to come.

As mentioned UFO have alluded to FOB costs of below $60/t but not all the additional costs that make up total expenditure. We will probably have to allow something more for shipping from port to client. We don't know what our annual costs of financing will be (if any) but it has been suggested that we'll be paying a royalty to AA for two years if that financing deal goes ahead. In terms of royalties it is also common to pay something to the Aboriginal people whose ancestral lands are being mined, but we don't know if that will be the case with UFO. There may also be legal and administrative costs for outside consultants along with salaries for management, plus who knows what other costs contributing to total expenditure.

Many compare us to Fenix whose last financial reports implied $43/t in additional costs above their FOB costs of $62/t but we don't know how similar our own costs may be to theirs.

No doubt we'll all have hopes and opinions as to our future bottom line, but for the time being such things are more speculation than fact.

@napth - need I remind you of the last time you took it upon yourself to start insulting all those here whose views you disliked?

Back then I pointed out that over the prior month you had posted more insulting comments about me here than I had posted comments on this UFO board. Whilst insulting many others here, you had also dragged your squabbles with those elsewhere on LSE on to this UFO board. At that time your own fickle emotions had caused you to flip from claiming you were buying UFO one day to selling almost the next day, this leading you to insult those whose views you had only just been championing.

Much as you sought to portray me as a de-ramper, many more people had approved of my pragmatically cautious views than approved of your antagonistic hostility. That is to say at that time, the most popular of my previous month's posts about UFO had received 19 recommendations, whilst they had averaged 9 per post. My comment challenging the proportion of your remarks dedicated to belittling others then received a further 17 recommendations. Seemingly many felt that we would all be better-off without you trying to sustain old personal vendettas that made your own behaviour look increasingly inconsistent and disproportionate.

Over the last 30 days I've made 12 posts on this UFO bulletin board where in spite of my usual cautionary tone the most popular of these received 21 recommendations, collectively averaging over 10 per post. Popularity is no guarantee of being correct, but whilst I've never claimed that my views will be any more accurate than anyone else's, many still seem to appreciate what I have to say.

My opinions have remained consistent over time. That is to say that I have always felt that if you speculate in a junior explorer you need a long term view and must have the patience and emotional fortitude to hold a contrarian view without being swayed to follow other people's euphoric excitement or melodramatic despair. In such a volatile sector noted for disappointments, delays and losses small exploration projects are often affected by external factors beyond their control. So, as share prices often deviate far from the underlying value of the company you should never risk more than you can afford to lose.

As best as I am able, I try to put aside what I'd like to see happen to UFO so as to evaluate all eventualities, including outcomes and timescales that conflict with my own hopes. If acknowledging possible downside-risk conflicts with the promotional agenda of a few fervent evangelists on the inter-net, then so be it. Over a period in which UFO's wild price moves have left many here claiming to be heavily in the red, it has remained my largest equity holding. Through trying to take a realistic long term view, purchasing at the right price, and having never sold a single share, UFO is still showing me a decent profit. So, whether by good luck or good management I deem that a success.

I've been saying since the end of 2020 that it would take a minimum of two years for Alien to start producing iron ore, whilst 2025 has always been my first date for reviewing our progress. I've long said that I personally thought our struggling share price might bottom around April 2023, that the start of physical preparations at Hanc*ck may be delayed until late in 2023 and that it could potentially be 2024 before we saw any revenue.

Sadly these views have been relentlessly criticised by a minority here who have spent the last two and a half years cheering each twitch up in our share price and arguing that everyone must buy UFO "before it's too late". However, much to their chagrin and anguish, we are yet to start mining whilst our share price recently bounced off a 30month low.

Our new, but now departing, CEO stated in interview that he would not offer timeframes for permits that are out of his control, yet twice so far this year UFO have deferred aspects of their own timetable for Hanc*ck. So, if Alien hit their latest target it will now be the end of this year before we start mining iron ore, whilst any further delay could push first revenue beyond 2023.

I've also highlighted how in 2021, and again in 2022, lows in volatile iron ore prices temporarily rendered several smaller Australian producers unprofitable. No matter what your beliefs about the future you can find market analysts making forecasts to support them. They disagree over whether supply or demand for iron ore will grow fastest or if economic uncertainty may shrink both. I've seen year end predictions for DSO that are both higher and lower than the current iron ore price, with long term forecasts spanning from below $55/t to above $95/t. Hedging ahead on the futures market to summer 2024 currently secures a little over $85/t, whilst for summer 2026 that figure is below $75/t.

As well as the experts disagreeing on where ore prices are heading, we've only been given an estimate of Hanc*ck's future FOB costs, not our total sustaining expenditure. Regardless of the quantity or quality of iron ore we have in the ground, these leave much uncertainty if trying to judge how IOCA's future income may compare to its outgoings. At present we can only hope for the best whilst preparing for the worst.

I've always said that I invested in UFO for the long term potential of our precious metals as this is where I believe our wealth lies. Whilst I will support any project that helps fund exploration of EH and Munni Munni, the extent to which Hanc*ck may do this is yet to be proven. We cannot be certain that our margins will always shelter us from extreme market volatility, but by my 2025 review date we should hopefully know what IOCA's all inclusive costs are and hence the lowest iron ore price from which we could make a profit.

Well I've been saying ever since the crazy spike of 2020 that we should expect a long period of struggling prices, and that I thought sentiment might finally change having hit some sort of low in April 2023.

Well it's far too soon to know if today is that low or if we still have further to fall beyond April, but for the first time in roughly 30months I've started to dribble some more small change into UFO. Not enough to average up my book cost and reduce my overall percentage profit by much as there's still plenty of potential risks to consider here, plus I'm already a bit "top heavy" in terms of my weighting towards UFO, but if you are going to buy something the best time is always when others are desperate to sell.

Clearly our share price has gone down today, but only within the range of recent natural price volatility. That is to say earlier this month we quite quickly went from roughly 0.41p to about 0.48p without any news from the company. So without today's news would there have been the same reaction to dipping from about 0.46p to below 0.40p and back up to about 0.41p on fairly modest volumes?

Junior exploration companies are all high risk speculative punts and that fact hasn't changed today. The rocks on the land we hold are still the same rocks and haven't changed today, nor have the bureaucratic administrative processes we must navigate. In terms of our iron ore we still face the same drawn out waiting processes and the same risk that, by the time we do have permission to start mining and a secure finance deal in place, volatile ore prices may or may not have fluctuated below our as yet unknown total sustaining costs for running a mining operation. In terms of our precious metals we still face all the same risks of being at a very early stage of dealing with lots of unknowns where much hope and exceptional prospectivity still doesn't guarantee developing into a detailed business plan stating what, where, how, when or even if we are to start mining these metals.

The staff of companies change from time to time, and more frequently with those where the nature of the business is rapidly evolving. So, did any of us expect these specific changes to the BOD today - seemingly not... Should we expect our BOD to remain the same forevermore, of course not.

For those familiar with the nature of junior exploration companies who understand the risks they are taking by speculating in such volatile things I would say not much has changed today in terms of the bigger picture. Consequently such folks will probably see no reason to panic. For those who are less familiar with this sector who focus exclusively on the short term, it may be that there have been some significant changes in terms of better understanding the risks you are taking and perhaps the timescales over which you need to tolerate those risks if wanting to see any reward. Recognise also that you don't make big returns buying when everybody else wants to buy or selling when everyone else wants to sell. The rare few that make good money out of junior explorers tend to be contrarians who take the increased risks of going against the herd.

In short don't listen to those who have written off UFO as dead in the water and don't listen to those who promise immediate riches. Recognise just how much is still uncertain, how long it may take to resolve all those uncertainties and their different possible outcomes. Only then speculate what you can afford to lose based upon your own perception of the risks.

Am I mis-reading todays RNs or has our resource estimate gone backwards from 10.4mt @ 60.4%Fe in 2021 to 9.1mt@60.3%Fe today?

...well... placements are a rarely seen as good news. However under the current circumstances, issuing new shares at more or less market price and having the BOD take a chunk might be one of the more positive bits of news we've received lately.

I'd like to repeat some thoughts that I first shared shared a few years ago as the sentiment seems even more valid today than when first written.

Like many, I've been invested here for quite a while and I remain a patient and hopeful share holder. However, with many having excitedly bought at much higher prices, only for prices to fall, 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 to try and grow. Routine share dilution is therefore par for the course for mineral explorers trying to advance their inherently volatile projects. If you can't handle a sector characterised by delays and uncertainties 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 and about three quarters lose money trading stocks. So remember, an investment's ability to meet your expectations doesn't depend on what another, potentially ill informed, investor hopes might happen in the future, it depends upon how realistic your own expectations were at the time you decided to speculate in a volatile and unpredictable sector.

3) Bulletin boards typically represent the views of a most passionate and vocal minority, not the silent majority who actually move markets. If someone blindly acts on the opinions of strangers on the inter-net without having done their own research and taken responsibility for their own actions they will likely have already lost whatever wealth they had to invest.

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 speculated 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 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; posts 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 belittle 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 what they have written makes them seem like a petulant bully squabbling in the school yard?

As has been said much depends upon a definition of winning or losing.

Putin's PhD thesis was on the economic strategies of planning a global mineral economy... not a topic you stumble into by random chance, and not a level of academic study you reach if you aren't dedicated to and knowledgeable about your subject.

Nobody could defend the reckless and heartless loss of life that comes from starting any war. However, if you look beyond wanting to draw coloured lines on maps and saying this or that bit of land is now mine/yours and look at the way the global economy is changing and has changed since the war with Ukraine started ... might Putin be fighting a different war to the one we read about in battle reports and casualty figures?

Well as has been said many times before over the last couple of years or more, a small move up in price doesn't have to mean the start of a re-rate, even if every re-rate has to start with a small move up.

It seems only recently this bulletin board was having similar discussions as the price went up from below 0.5p to briefly hit 0.6p before then dropping again back to about 0.4p. Our share price is noisy and volatile and goes up and down a lot. Over the last two years there's been more down than up but at some point we all hope that will reverse. However for the time being I'm not seeing anything happening to our share price that is outside of the usual volatility.

If in six months time our share price is much higher we can look back and say this was the start of a significant move, if in six month's time our share price is largely unchanged it won't have been. At this point we've had people call far too many false dawns to get excited about small move.

@dickie "This is so far MY biggest loser in 5 yrs. I have been forced to sell up over half a dozen times thru a need to secure funds. Each time at a loss."

Clearly it's not my place to tell others how to invest their own wealth, but if in 5 years you've been forced to sell up at a loss more than half a dozen times it sounds as if you are investing money that you can't afford to tie up in risky long term "speculative punts".

Letting the market dictate when you have to sell is never good, especially when prices are unpredictable. The junior exploration sector is very volatile, generally slow moving and as a whole loses billions of dollars a year, so is not the best place to put money you may need to take out again a short while later.

Many will tell you if you can't afford to lose it all then it shouldn't be risked on junior explorers and if you aren't prepared to wait years for a possible result again you shouldn't risk your money on junior explorers. The flip side to that coin is if you aren't prepared to wait years for the right buy in price in the first place the junior exploration sector probably isn't for you.

Anybody that says they haven't made mistakes in this sector is just lying, you just have to learn from them. Myself I've three explorers in my portfolio at the moment that are down >80% which will either pick up or go down further that's just the nature of taking such speculative punts in this risky sector. I'm not selling them though as after only two or three years they've barely had time to warm up let alone achieve anything worthwhile just yet.

@Allwinnerspiad - I was repeatedly asked (and criticised) at the time why I wasn't selling when we were around 3p...

I said at the time and have often repeatedly the fact that if you have the mentality of a trader then you are looking to get out with repeated small profits... Would a trader have sold at 20% profit, 50% profit, 100% profit, 200% profit would they ever let things run as far as 300% profit without selling up? Simply put traders don't get the opportunity to sell at 3000% profit because they would have sold out and moved on long before then.

Even if I'd let things run to 300% profit before selling I'd still be waiting to get back in again at the price I would have sold at. Multi billion dollar "blue chip" companies are safer investments but will never offer you twenty baggers or fifty baggers or hundred baggers. Tiny little mineral explorers that are only worth one or two million are the sort of companies that statistically are going to lose you a lot of money and then go broke, but should you find one you believe in that does actually make it big then the sky is the limit.

My approach is simply to invest a modest amount I can afford to lose, mentally write it off immediately as a 100% loss then just give it lots of time to see what happens. Many years later most such investments will have failed but if you've found one good one out of a dozen then the profits will more than likely cover all your combined losses and then some.

Helicopters on the drive are so "new money" don't you know they are to be kept on the back lawn ;-)

Perhaps not quite in the same league as you Normbeef, but a largely similar story here...

I bought in when the mkt cap was just £2m, then in no time at all I watched the share price more than x30bag. Hindsight says I should have got out on the spike of late 2020 but whilst it was obviously over priced back then you never know how far an irrational spike can run and I'm not the sort to jump in and out of investments as a trader... I'm the sort that buys in the belief you actually want to own part of the business long term because you like where it may be heading.... So whilst still in profit here I've taken a "paper loss" of more than twice my typical annual income and a profit that had I cashed it in would have paid for the new industrial building/studio/workshop I was planning on constructing for my business.

However no regrets as you live and learn, and to be honest having set 2025 as my first review date for UFO, then in another two to three years we may be back up at those heady heights again anyway, so given time we may look back on the last two or three years as nothing more than a trivial wobble.

Hi SteveE60 ... not sure I'm any kind of guru to learn from.. they do however say we all learn from mistakes it's just that the smart try to learn from other people's rather than making their own... so on that basis I learnt the hard way where it was the 1980's when I first took an interest in stocks/shares so perhaps I've gone through enough of an apprenticeship in which to have made a fair few mistakes to learn from.

I suppose a first rule of thumb is to recognise that if most people are losing money you need to be a contrarian and do the opposite to most people. You need the courage of your convictions to go against the crowd and be willing to buy the stuff that is massively out of favour and hated as that is when it is cheap

The second rule of thumb is to recognise that there may be a good reason why something is hated and out of favour so you should never commit more than you can afford to lose however well you believe you have researched a company. In short no one ever buys a company they believe is bad but statistically most people get things wrong in a sector that loses billions every year.

Thirdly you need to understand the timescales involved in exploration and that volatility, delays and sets backs are just "normal". If you've bought something because it is cheap and out of favour then it will take a lot of work, some good luck and potentially several years for the company to do enough to bring it back in to favour.

As for WSBN I looked at it for the first time a few years ago when the price was circa 2p. I ultimately settled on putting my money elsewhere when I found a company with a similar mkt cap and similar upside potential but more by way of established finds to mitigate downside risk. Then came the crazy spikes of late 2020. WSBN 10bagged the "other" company I put my money in 30bagged before both crashed back again. I then told myself if I could get into WSBN at much less than 10p I'd dabble a tiny stake and only commit more if it got back to 2p again. I sat and waited for over a year before I got to buy a few shares in WSBN at an entry price I liked. As things stand I am down a few hundred quid on WSBN which is neither here nor there and in some respects I wouldn't mind if that loss grew as it may offer me my sub 2p entry point for a more worthwhile purchase... not expecting it to get that low but you always keep some cash in reserve for opportunities that come your way.

I suppose that comes to a last point of advice... don't chase the markets. Folks seem to assume they must be buying or selling all the time to make money. Profits come from patiently waiting for opportunities you truly believe are worth acting upon... sometimes I've gone a whole year without buying or selling anything at all.

I would like to re-post some potentially self evident, but often overlooked, points relevant to all junior explorers.

Mineral exploration is slow, expensive and high risk where the sector as a whole loses billions every year. Even wealthy partners can't guarantee success. Valuations of all explorers are subjective based upon the limited numerical data available at the time discounted to allow for sentiment derived estimated probabilities surrounding future unknowns and the number of years over which projects may (or may not) unfold.

The sector is so volatile even good explorers can, and do, experience drops of over 50% en-route to long term success, whilst bad explorers may multi-bag en-route to failure. Judgement of a company's performance will inevitably be biased by an individual's purchase price and whether they are seeking a long term investment or short term trade.

Markets don't care what you personally hope for, know or misunderstand; they are moved by how everyone else acts. Statistics suggest most active traders underperform passive market trackers and roughly three quarters actually lose money trading on-line. Another statistic shows that with the growth of web-based share dealing, the average time an equity is held as an investment steadily fell from well above a decade to just a few months. As such impatience fueled by ignorance, fear, greed, margin calls or fickle narratives contributes to the volatility of AIM listed explorers. I have seen self proclaimed experts on LSE who directly compare share prices without understanding the principle of market capitalisation, folk who believe the term diamond drilling means an explorer is finding diamonds, or because they don't understand what a nominee account is they think that high street banks are an explorer's major shareholders. None imply informed investing.

Many study fundamentals which may move a share price over the long term. I do not pretend to be able to predict how, in the short term, volatile prices can deviate so much from fundamentals or prevailing narratives. However, whilst we may judge those who act contrary to our own views to be wrong, they should not be ignored. Everyone may come to a different conclusion regarding how best to act upon "the facts". Few may consider the behaviour of all those who just skim-read an RNS's title, misunderstand information, chase the momentum of the crowd, or instead act only on social media memes, yet every purchase or sale will still contribute to moves in a share price.

The irrational will always be difficult to rationalise or predict. All the more so in the current distorted macro-economic climate of extreme central bank interventions where market prices may bear no semblance to underlying values, potential risk or reward.

I am a patient and hopeful long term holder here but I do my own research, take responsibility for my own actions and I never forget the phrase CAVEAT EMPTOR.

I think the distinction we need to make is between the "analytical" and the "emotional" investors.

I've said before that iron ore is a "boring" play for those that like definite numbers to put in to spreadsheets. With iron producers their share prices move after the event dependent upon facts. Silver is a narrative driven metal moved by excitable sentiment where a good story can push up even the most distantly connected company's share prices long before anything becomes fact.

I think that is the reasons you can pick any week of any year and find silver promoters making wild claims about how silver is always on the verge of a wild break out. It doesn't mean it actually is, or that it does break out every week, but every once in a while such stories gain traction and become self fulfilling prophecies when enough people get excited about the silver narrative.

Over the long term I am a silver bull I just don't expect to be able to predict when or how silver may move, and never assume the next move must be imminent. Only that being associated with silver can be enough to benefit from the mania it can attract even if we aren't actually producing any at the time. If we have actually got some sort of deal in place to actually be extracting precious metals at whatever point prices next take off ... well who knows how we way benefit.