Member Info for Happyhaddock

BB - in spite of my patient caution I wouldn't be here if I didn't think UFO a worthwhile investment;

that said the primary points I've been making for the last 18months or more are;

1) that whatever anybody here says there are no certainties in this sector. UFO is merely one company where I personally think the potential long term rewards outweigh the short term risks... I've put my money where my mouth is but I am prepared to be wrong! ( so far my profits suggest I've been very right)

2)minerals exploration is always a slow, unpredictably volatile, business that takes much much longer than most private investors hope for, usually coming to fruition long after the impatient have given up and sold out. I am therefore expecting to under-estimate how long I may have to wait for my investment to show any really big gains.

3) countless statistics show that that vast majority of active investors underperform passive market trackers and about 75% actually lose money. I am therefore expecting almost all the predictions I read here to be wrong.

It is only logical to assume that those who have invested in a company will think more favourably about it's prospect than those who have chosen not to invest. Bulletin boards tend to reflect the views of a minority of the most enthusiastic investors so are hardly places for unbiased or moderate opinions.

If you can recognise that statistically the odds are against you making profits trading any share and that those odds statistially get worse if acting on the advice of bulletin boards then you are probably ahead of most... that may just be enough to encourage caution, patience, and above all else, self reliance in doing your own research and forming you own opinions.

However, as I've said before I'm expecting that our SP may stagnate a while longer, that we may have to wait until April 2023 before we see any upturn in sentiment, and that I expect to be wrong about those two points in that our SP might finally move when we are all least expecting it.

I wouldn't claim to know where something as volatile as the silver price is going in the short term and certainly wouldn't buy or sell based upon either my own guesses or the somewhat arbitrary lines others draw on charts to support their bold claims...

...but, although the market repeatedly makes fools of those making predictions, it wouldn't surprise me if the price of silver broke below the low of May 13th relatively soon, and it is in my mind as an outside possibility that it may eventually bottom around $18/oz before moving up again in 2023.

It seems a safer bet to say it will be moving measurably higher over the next decade or two than the next month or two!

@Chrisatbirdies - Cheers - I hope you are right about a higher SP for UFO before Christmas, but as I've said before my own expectations are that we may have to wait until April 2023 before we see a change in sentiment and any meaningful move up.

That said, if I had the confidence in my own expectation I'd have taken my money out of here a while ago with a plan to return later, but trading such unpredictable and volatile shares is an easy way to miss out. Consequently I'll stand by an earlier prediction of mine that this share price will probably make its big move when we least expect it.

@Chris2 - the fact that a plan doesn't aim to deliver instant results doesn't mean there isn't a path toward generating revenue.

We can maybe agree to disagree about UFO struggling to stay in business, but whilst the path may be a longer slower one than some of the eternal optimists here may like, I'm of the opinion that UFO is sure footed enough to make it down that path.

@picax - no doubt this will be another case where I get shot down for de-ramping for expressing a more cautious view than this board's most vocal optimists... however...

Valuations of junior explorers are all subjective and forward looking, what matters more than any single estimate from a long list of different forecasts of what a company may be worth in the future is what the markets value it at now. Brokers valuations tend to be the most optimistic by the very nature of the fact they don't get employed to put out low valuations. As such it is always wise to assume most companies will be below their broker's valuations and "under-valued" most of the time.

Alien has great potential for the future, in my opinion much better potential than any other explorer on AIM. (hence it being my biggest holding in my equity portfolio) That said it is a tiny company that isn't yet generating any income to support a valuation plus sentiment is currently against the sector. Consequently there is not yet any perceived "rush to beat the crowds". It seems to me that folk are happy to invest elsewhere as there is still the perception that with nobody buying they'll have time to buy in to Alien closer to when things start to happen for the company and there is more certainty as to what they are then buying in to.

It's a "game of chicken" that works until it doesn't ... this is a sector characterised by companies going nowhere for ages and then making unexpected moves that can snowball even bigger without any obvious trigger.

Its just the nature of the beast that you get in early and wait, and wait and wait... or you risk grabbing the tiger by the tail when it pounces.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to call myself an expert but I've been investing in a variety of junior explorers for some time, where TYM has to date been one of my poorer performers...

So, if you are an excitable type then yes these grades are probably enough to get you excited, being the more pragmatically cautious type then I'd merely say they are enough to justify further interest... however they certainly aren't bad news!

A single grade on its own isn't an absolute indicator you need to view lots of them in combination with locations, intercept widths and depths... however in the loosest of terms I personally work on the notion that 3% copper is probably very good news, 0.5% copper over a decent area/volume probably good enough to make an economic mine with some mines operating in bulk near surface with grades as low as 0.3%. However as I say you can't judge too much until you've enough holes to model a resource and tell if or how profitable it may be.

people often claim precious metals are a hedge against inflation. Remember that "data" or "numbers" don't directly move markets they are one of many indirect influencers of investor sentiment, which is what then affects their buying and selling.

In the past it has been fear of inflation that has affected sentiment and there's usually a lag between prices going up and people beginning to fear the fact that price rises aren't just dinting their disposable income this week , but routinely affecting how they have to budget each month and how they prioritise between doing without or spending their depleting savings. Remember also that the first to be truly affected by inflation are the poorest without savings to fall back on or protect by moving them in to metals, the last to really feel inflation's bite (as opposed to simply hear about it on the news) are the wealthy with savings to protect.

I don't know if precious metals will or won't prove a good protection against current inflation, I'm merely suggesting it may be a bit too soon to judge if the wealthy are going to start moving their money in to precious metals as they have in the past.

@Huldiii - Warren Buffett always maintains that having identified and researched a company you think is great then you shouldn't diversify into something you feel inferior ... unless you feel a need to protect yourself from your own ignorance and being wrong.

It is a great philosophy but I'm not so arrogant as to believe I'm as knowledgeable or will share the same success as Mr. Buffett and so, personally, I like plenty of insurance against my own ignorance...

@yayay - perhaps we both remember when the "latest" share prices were looked up in a pink newspaper printed the day before and when trades were then conducted by sending paperwork to your broker via Royal Mail to be executed another day or two later once received in their office!

... not quite old enough to have traded via postal instruction myself... but old enough to remember sitting beside my father as he did.

I tend to agree with Warren Buffett that investors would make far better decisions if share prices were only published once a year in an annual report, as they'd then focus more on underlying value rather than price.

As it is it seems as if people aren't buying because they are waiting to see the share price shoot up and people are selling because they are fed up of seeing the price go nowhere. However irrational it may be history shows that we have previously had the strongest buying when we were most overvalued, yet common sense says the biggest profits come from buying something undervalued.

"nobody will be buying or selling with a crazy spread like that."

exactly my point - the MM's obviously like a slow start and time for a coffee in the morning... where as many other shares start pre-trading with no bid or ask and hence zero spread which is perhaps a fairer way of representing that the markets aren't fully open.

Either way after a few minutes of trading the spread usually closes a lot.

another day opening with a crazy spread - 40% this morning!

@smiller - fair point - UFO was one I got right which is all the more pleasing in that it was also the one I put the largest percentage of my equity portfolio into... however I do have one or two right dogs in my portfolio that I've got wrong.

Oddly the worst (currently down 75% from my own average) was one I rated as a much safer investment than UFO but with smaller probable returns given how advanced and supposedly secure it was in terms of having proven mineral resources, experienced management and secured financial backing of some of the real big names in the business.... I'm still hopeful in the long run but its going to be a real slow climb back just to get to break even after bad luck sunk it.

@smiller - never say never in terms of things getting worse, nobody here wants to see our price fall further but if the wider markets crash then it can take everything down with it as folk liquidate anything they can sell, further perpetuating a crash.

When things are at rock bottom and everyone else is panicking that's when you see how much conviction people have in a particular company to buy in the belief it will bounce back.

Myself I built my main UFO holding at around 0.1p and I last added to it back in late summer 2020 when the SP was about 0.6p as that was the last time the price looked undervalued yet sentiment looked inclined to lift us.

The more undervalued we look the more tempting it is to add at these prices and average up a little, but until there's at least some hint of sentiment returning my inclination is to just hold my current position and watch. This has always been a long term investment for me and I suspect we may have to wait a little longer for that boost of sentient we need as any good news we have put out recently has largely been ignored by the markets.

@ slater606 - my comment was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek even if there is an underlying truth to the fact silver really isn't a market you should try to predict or expect to follow any kind of logic.

It's an old cliche but you don't try to time the silver market you just have to spend time in it.

the broader long term trend for silver is up but there's an awful lot of noise within that trend which means you can get "brief" reversals that can last years... if you think in terms of decades rather than months silver is not as difficult to predict, though still easy to get wrong!

I think our MM's like a slow start and time for a coffee in the morning as we always seem to start the day with an insane spread which quickly closes once the markets get going.

@Forestgump - you've more or less nailed my investment strategy with UFO.

I know this industry/sector progresses slowly and every week I assume that this week isn't going to be the week things will take off and so I encourage others not to get carried away with short term forecasts, especially the wild predictions folk like Max do like to make. Week after week for the last 18months I've been right to advise caution and patience but I remain invested as I believe the long term prospects of the company mean once in a blue moon I'll be wrong and profit handsomely from it.

I think there's a difference between expecting him to achieve things out there and expecting him to achieve things out there that lead immediately to some sort of RNS.

If there are deals being done they are sure to come with various red tape and due diligence which mean that even if things may be broadly agreed in principle in private they are unlikely to be finalised, signed-off and publicly announced there and then.

If you are hoping for some sort of important announcement about a signed-off deal to come out of this trip, then it may be wise to think about the sort of things that could potentially have been broadly agreed in principle months ago for the lawyers to have been picking over ever since.

None of us really know exactly what BBG hopes to achieve in Aus. but the safest way to avoid disappointment is to expect nothing. This is a slow business where things always take much longer than most private investors hope for, typically coming to fruition long after the impatient have sold up and moved on.

...given the ongoing laboratory delays in Aus, I wouldn't reckon on getting any assays or drill results back quickly ... one junior explorer operating in the general area has only just got back drill results from samples submitted in October.

It's a real lottery as how long you have to wait as some (perhaps those paying more to queue jump?) have been getting results back much faster.