Member Info for Happyhaddock

@Chrisatbirdies - pretty much what I was going to write - UFO quarterly activities report pretty much involves sitting waiting for others to do something.

About the only small positive compared to other quarters of waiting is that at the moment there are actually others doing something for us to wait for.

A short while ago I mentioned that I was wavering about trimming my position in OMI as it was showing me such great profits and was dominating my equities portfolio.

In some respects my hand was forced when some numpty drove in to my parked car and wrote it off. I therefore needed to quickly realise some ready cash to buy a new vehicle pending the insurance company processing a disputed claim. This didn't align exactly with OMI's very top but given today's price is now looking like an opportune sale.

Still holding the bulk of my OMI shares which I expect to do well over the coming years, but short term volatility is always to be expected in this sector!

I've never been so sure about this idea of people paid to promote stocks on bulletin boards. Maybe there are enough fools out there to voluntarily lap up all the rubbish spouted on-line? Personally if I owned a company I wouldn't pay money to people to put out the sort of garbage I just laugh at and ignore, I'd want them to be more believable and less obvious.

Maybe there are successful paid promoters on LSE but I find it hard to believe they are the fools that are endlessly criticised by one and all for excessive ramping.

Many people will have many different views about where precious metals and related equities will be going in both the short and long term.

The most important thing to remember is that in such a volatile sector - which today is - is never to assume you will always be right and never be too greedy. If the markets offer you big profits then sell a little while you can as you don't know what tomorrow may bring... just don't sell everything in case you are wrong.

Long term I remain relatively confident about FRES but that hasn't stopped me taking a little out at recent highs - a move from sub £5 to £24 should be good enough for anybody.

WSBN are a company with a history of being better at promotion and drawing in excitable speculators than exploration, though that fact on its own says nothing about the geology at Red Setter.

I remain hopeful about WSBN as the potential is immense but I got in cheaply at 0.1p and sold just enough at near 2p to leave me a free ride should assays not delivery what we hope ... until we get those assays I'm assuming nothing where I can't help but read recent RNS as more hype than actionable fact.

" after that the world's our lobster"

I won't disagree that UFO have some potentially great assets but we have also been beset with the kind of transient, lackadaisical management who if told "the world was their lobster" would turn out to be allergic to shellfish.

Lots of possibilities here but we've spent years watching this bulletin board get ever more excited about possibilities that came to nothing, so let's just wait and see what happens this time.

Whilst nice to see LND finally start to show some positive action having been loading up in the sub 4p range over the last 18months with a good chunk bought below 3p, I started this week by initiating a move to free up some money ready to buy more LND early next week.

It now feels as if that money may have to find another home or just go back where it came from; - Not that sub 6p isn't an unreasonable entry for somebody looking to start a new position, just sadly not the bargain I was hoping for.

I first posted the following summary about a year ago, where folks here will each have their own views about how much the situation has or hasn't changed.

Since 2020 I've highlighted that delay, dilution and failure are the norm in an exploration sector dealing in hope. For years I said that our share price may struggle as Hanc*ck was unlikely to deliver revenue before 2024; that, because such things typically take longer than expected, 2025 would be my first date for appraising UFO's progress.

Expressing these views lead to years of insults from those here who, since 2020, have fed other people's confirmation biases and endlessly asserted that we would start mining Hanc*ck "imminently". We didn't receive permits to mine until 2024, are yet to start physical preparations, whilst our share price is over 95% down on its 2020 high.

Our excessive turnover of directors has left us effectively rudderless since 2023. Despite marketing Hanc*ck with very optimistic projections, each prior CEO claimed that they couldn't actually guarantee their estimated timelines. Similarly our transient management continually hint that we are near to securing a deal to finance Hanc*ck but are yet to confirm anything.

Despite months of Chinese stimulus, high grade DSO is down from above $140/t at the start of 2024 to about $100/t as of writing this. Hedging one year ahead on the futures market to late 2025 currently secures about $95/t, whilst for late 2026 that figure is near $90/t. In 2021 and again in 2022, I highlighted how drops below $100/t in iron ore's volatile price were rendering several smaller Australian producers unprofitable. Hanc*ck's 2024 development study predicted op-ex costs of $85/t where, for four of the last ten years, the average annual iron ore price was below this level. Long term forecasts remain conflicted, spanning from below $55/t to over $100/t.

We don't know how close to projected op-ex costs our total expenses will be, nor how any rumoured partnerships may affect expenses or income. Regardless of the quantity or quality of ore in the ground, we still don't know when (some now say if) Hanc*ck may start mining or hit target production volumes. Nor do we know how any revenue generated may compare to monthly sustaining expenditure, initial capital costs, or any "performance uplift payment" that may have to be paid to Windfield Metals.

Alien's journey may have awoken many speculators to the risks of a sector defined by uncertainty. I have always said that the long term potential of UFO's non-ferrous metals is why I chanced a small speculative position here. I remain content to patiently maintain this modest share holding, where the swing from unbridled optimism to angry pessimism now apparent on LSE has not changed my cautious views about the relative risks, potential rewards or probable timescales of the gamble I took.

Well we all know that silver can attract the most emotional of speculators meaning the metal can spend a long time going nowhere, but when it moves boy does it move ... I can't imagine any disagreeing with the notion that things may now get very wild and volatile.

Might irrational silly season be with us again?

Well we all know that silver can attract the most emotional of spectators meaning the metal can spend a long time going nowhere, but when it moves boy does it move ... I can't imagine any disagreeing with the notion that things may now get very wild and volatile.

Might irrational silly season be with us again?

@yayay - I think the biggest argument against UFO being a lifestyle company is the excessive turnover of management. If you want, and have found, a cushy easy life where you are being paid to do nothing, you don't move on somewhere new within months.

I'm not saying that there isn't something questionable going on with our transient merry-go-round BOD, but lifestyle companies are run by people who get comfortable in the big chair and just put their feet up, our management aren't around long enough to even sit down!

Well . I flinched and sold just enough on this spike to 2p to more or less leave me a free ride ... not that it involved trimming much having got in at 0.1p but as the old cliche goes, "nobody ever went broke taking an easy profit".

Hopefully all the shares which I'm still holding will do well, but if not no worries.

@yayay - some of these youngsters can be so impatient in chasing rainbows elsewhere!

in geological terms it can take millions of years for these rocks to form, if it takes a few centuries more to get them out of the ground that's a mere blink of the eye relatively speaking! 🤪

@5x5 no doubt that those of us who have been advocates of silver for many years are, or at least should be, doing very well at the moment,

I can't quite claim to have nailed the very bottom in 2024, but I loaded up on FRES at £4.79, today it is over £24, whilst just so far since the start of this calendar year my equities portfolio has collectively averaged a return of over 200% and is now worth more than at the height of the pandemic bubble.

That said silver is such a volatile thing I never rule out short term unpredictability where the end of the month and especially the end of the quarter tend to be times when we see a bit of brief downward pressure on silver prices... Not that a few days volatility is reason to be selling or trying to trade positions I've calmly held for years and tried to add to during obvious downturns.

"Every day for the rest of this month is likely to be red for silver"

Such cynicism implies you've spent too much time around the silver market... don't you know the traders usually manage to close out their positions just before the last day of the month ... on that basis a few days downward pressure from here wouldn't be at all surprising but I wouldn't rule out little tick up on the last day of the month 😉

In the short term placings are always bad news as they dent confidence and momentum. However what makes them good or bad is what the management do with the cash over the medium to long term.

If anybody believes it will all be squandered just on salaries for the BOD then they would do well to sell up. Those who believe it will be spent on useful exploration that moves forward our assets probably won't care about a momentary dip in price.

I've criticised directors at other exploration companies for not being more opportunistic and grabbing all the cash they can when over excited markets are wanting to throw money at them. In my view this sets up nicely for some time to come so I'm not unduly bothered by what I expect to be a short term drop in price.

@wents - never assume we're run by monkeys. Whilst we can never know for sure what is going on behind the scenes, there is at least an argument to be made that we are being run by capable individuals who are simply trying not to make it obvious that it may not be the interests of small shareholders they are acting on behalf of.

Churning through a merry-go-round of ever changing and transient management simply makes it that much harder to point the finger and blame any one individual when things don't progress as we might wish.

Well the merry-go-round continues... I suspect many will be pleased to see some depart, but will these latest appointments stick around long enough to even warm their seats? Or like their predecessors will they soon be gone with little to show for their time at UFO?

Well, we are now getting in to that rare and glorified territory where our daily price gains are significantly more than I bought the bulk of my shares in OMI at.

When achieving multi-bag gains on a weekly basis common sense says I should probably skim a little off the top to give myself the peace of mind of a free ride but I can't help but feel that just excitable hype alone can carry this further, and that there is a very real and strong probability of OMI delivering much more than just excitable hype.

For the time being I'm yet to sell any shares in OMI but I may have to soon if only to to rebalance my equities portfolio which by dint of OMI's success is now dominantly skewed in its favour.

Well the froth and excitement seem to be returning to the junior exploration sector. It seems many years since we'd go day after day with many juniors repeatedly making moves up of over 10% and when I could look at the day's AIM leader board and it would include much of my my own portfolio.

Long may it continue!

I'm sure some will have done better but so far this calendar year my entire equities portfolio has averaged a return of over 130% which isn't to be sniffed at, and it is pleasing to finally be able to say that UFO is contributing to that.