Member Info for Happyhaddock

There's certainly some truth to the fact those in their twenties face a much steeper uphill battle to build some savings than those of a more mature generation did. These youngsters will also have been born into a society where paying interest on debt is "normal", "ubiquitous" and an expected part of routine expenditure. Furthermore debt is heavily marketed and promoted by banks looking to milk customers as lifelong indentured cash cows such that they can then trade the debt as a commodity. Whereas I was raised to think of being in debt as being bad or a sign of being weak willed, impatient and unwilling to do without whilst actually saving to pay for what you want .

I do have sympathy for those whose income doesn't stretch to covering the bare necessities but I also question a world that now regards things like a smart phone, broadband and satellite TV as part of those bare essentials. Society has been living beyond its means for far too long and has created a sense of entitlement that it can no longer afford to meet.

However I'll stop there before this becomes too political.

I've just seen a statistic that frankly shocked me into questioning how naive I may be about other investor's behaviour.

I personally have never, and never would, borrow money to invest in equities... it just seems like a recipee for disaster, all the more so in the current economic climate.

However, apparently my views are not shared by many. Seemingly the vast majority of youngsters who trade stocks (>80%) do all borrow money in one form or other in order to do so, and only the retired tend to share my view that it is risky.

I wonder if this may account for the very nervous, twitchy nature of those who panic with every slight drop in share price and who only make very short term trades rather than long term investments.

Is anybody here willing to share their views attitudes about such things?

@2020 upside - you ask when you become a long term holder -

I suppose you could say when you look at today's price action and have the courage (stupidity?) to shrug and simply say "Nah! Who cares"

It's getting harder not to care about the daily moves but if you are keeping your eye on where things may be a few years from now rather than a few days then you are probably a LTH even if you've only held the shares for a few days.

"if one's a CEO of an exploration company, it's not enough to be a good geologist; you have to be good at PR too and finance"

There's certainly some truth to that but you could argue nobody ever has all the skills needed for any complex task. At heart great management is about finding, motivating and inspiring confidence in those who actually have the different skills a business needs. With the right people around them a great manager only needs enough understanding of the bigger picture so as to to delegate appropriately.

It would do no harm to periodically have somebody put out a few reassuring words to engage with private investors and let them (us) know we are not forgotten, whether that's the CEO or some spotty teenager employed to manage company social media posts probably matters less in the modern world than in the past. So long as the information is professional and not misleading it should help regulate sentiment.

Cheers

HH

@ silverhorse - I was born old and looking forward to retirement, and if you think UFO will put years on you, then as the saying goes "you ain't seen nothing"

The best explorers offer an asymmetric risk making long term healthy profits more likely than losing everything, the worst a pretty certain loss. None come with guarantees. UFO is making rapid progress for a junior explorer, the bad ones exhibit more volatility and make no progress at all.... if you can't afford to wait several years to see if you've made a good decision, then you can't afford to invest in junior explorers and need to find a safer place for your money.

I understand about the lab delays, but labs all over are delayed for various reasons, in Australia many labs are backed up by sheer demand.

I suppose it comes down to whether you view delayed results as a major problem that affects the desirability and prospects of a company, or merely a minor irritation we have to wait out. Short term traders will always drift away if there is no news to move a price, but long term investors won't. Artificially trying to stimulate or create news is very much a double edged sword.

Good communication from a CEO can help but I'd be cautious of too much cheerleading having seen it's damaging affects in other explorers I've invested in.... All that really needs to be said is that we've no reason to doubt the quality of results, we simply don't know how soon we'll get them back. If we have to ride out a short term loss of sentiment and dip in SP, it doesn't affect the quality of the company.

If anybody doubts that irrational sentiment is more important than fundamentals to low volume AIM stocks, at least in the short term, then I think we have the proof here.

However whilst sentiment can disappear in flash for no apparent reason, the opposite is equally true as we all know these stocks can go from massively undervalued, to massively overvalued, and back down again without needing a logical reason.

I'd second those comments of aprogerson.

In the past I've been scpetical of some of the "high" grades mentioned in association with closed mines and the tailings linked to some of my other junior explorers, but come to realise just how high a barely economic grade used to be, and that with modern technology and higher metal prices what was once dismissed or left behind can deliver far more metal and profit than from most new finds.

@Slimgizmo - I think the point is that there are a good few LTH who will sit and wait ... you'll probably not find any celebrating the fact, but its all just par for the course for those who, to quote a cliche " have been there and got the T shirt"

@stevomining "It is clear the market has lost faith in BBG to get things done. As I mentioned before, a lot of this is not his fault."

You say it is clear, but I would counter and say that is an unprovable statement. The data shows both the daily volume and the share price of UFO has stumbled since the spike which we can attribute to greater selling pressure than buying pressure, but it is mere speculation as to the motives for that action as markets do not require people to submit reasons for their investment decisions. Before attributing anything to the company, let alone a single aspect of the company such as its CEO it is always worth looking at the wider market to see how comparable industries are doing.

As you yourself mentioned, there are many juniors in the mining/exploration space who spiked last Autumn, many of whom are now down a significant amount since then. (arguably those with the greatest potential to cause a spike on excitement?)

Companies like GGP, OMI and ECR to name just three have seen large price drops and nobody would suggest a loss of faith in Bill Brody Good would affect these companies he has no connection with.

I am not saying your opinion is wrong as I have no evidence to back up a counter claim, only that it is wrong to express as fact an opinion you yourself cannot support with evidence. To me the more plausible explanation is simply sentiment has gone from this sector for time being, or if not gone the dropped back to a more usual level.

In some respects I did my learning about markets a long time go when things were different and I'm well aware that in the current economic climate I do well to question how applicable everything learnt in the past is in terms of making future decisions.

In the 80's when it was popular to go "carpet-bagging" building societies, I built my first portfolio of shares in various newly floated banks for no financial outlay, which made making mistakes no less educational but somewhat less expensive. Oddly enough through a tortured and complex route those free shares in my first PEP, or at least the proceeds of various trades on them to end up as unit trust in an ISA were ultimately what I cashed in to buy my various speculative plays in junior explorers including UFO.

@Dip666 I doubt silverhorse meat any harm by his comments I just get the impression he is a young and enthusiastic guy with all the self confidence and impatience of youth.

I do find it odd though that when young folk have perhaps sixty or seventy years left ahead of them their timescales and plans are often measured in months, whilst the elderly who may only have a decade or two left ahead of them are happy to plan over several years.... Just one of many oddly irrational things about human behaviour.

junior explorers, and to a lesser extent the whole of AIM is as much about short term sentiment as long term fundamentals.

Those of us with a time frame and horizon measured in years can see the potential in ECR, and will probably continue to sit on the shares we hold, thereby doing nothing for the share price.

For those looking for a short term trade then it is likely to be years before we start making a profit from selling gold and that is not guaranteed. Until then short term sentiment will dominate. If everyone believes that good news will push up the price then traders will pile in and make such beliefs a self fulfilling prophecy. However the arrival of actual news (good or bad) invariably hints at the fact there will then be another wait until the next news arrives and so will always be a trigger for some short term traders to move on.

@openthebox - well I can do the irrationally exuberant as well - it was not long ago I put forward a bullish prediction as to how the SP could get to £2 - though admittedly that was in the context of illustrating how hugely variable and potentially unhelpful projections can be dependent upon the assumptions and numbers you feed in to them -not because I was suggesting it was sensible to assume the SP would actually get to £2 in the foreseeable future...

The most accurate way to predict the future is always to wait patiently until it becomes the present.

Well one drill hole doesn't make a gold mine, and we all know there's a long way to go yet... but nobody is going to grumble at at an intersect of nearly 10g/t from a first hole

Here hoping this sort of news and these sorts of numbers become routine enough to justify building a gold mine.

@silverhorse - whether the SP is 1.2p , 1.5p, 0.8p or 0.6p is somewhat irrelevant to me in the short term as I'm not chasing a few percent up and down here and there ... I've said before that I first got in at around 0.1p with a long term view (3-5 year minimum and potentially 10+ years if the prevailing macro-economic situation keeps pushing things our way) and have not sold any shares even at the 3p high as I hope that in a few years 3p will be a triviality seen in the rear view mirror.

I admit to being fascinated by other people's day to day psychology and beliefs in terms of what they think will happen when and how quickly they think UFO may take off. However I'll continue to take my pragmatic and cautious view of expecting things to play out more slowly than the prevailing views expressed here... if I'm right then my patience will be justified, if I'm wrong and things happen quickly then it's a pleasant surprise along the way. If this absolutely tanks which seem highly unlikely then I'll not have lost more than I was willing to speculate on an interestingly asymmetric risk.

I'm certainly not a specialist or qualified geologist but although now working in the creative arts I do have a collection of undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications spanning a range of physical sciences and of the many things I've done in the past I was once required to teach a little basic geology.

I wouldn't take this as gospel and as such I'd defer to those who do actually know, rather than merely making an informed guess.

However in most cases new rock strata have to form on top of something, either by settling down on top, or forcing their way up through cracks to get on top of existing rocks. If the underlying surfaces are not even, then the new rock can form unevenly. Further more over time geological forces have a tendency to move, squash, compress and bend the layers they may first have formed in. Plus those on the surface weather back to sculpt away the softer rocks in to new shapes. So whilst sedimentary rocks of old sea-beds may first form in pretty even layers, most mineralisation occurs as a consequence of geological upheaval disturbing pre-existing rock formations, hence the fact metal ore is so often described as being found in "veins"

Probably not the most technically detailed answer but hope it helps a little.

"...to suck in the navi investors"

Brings to mind ten foot tall blue skinned eco-warriors - are such aliens likely to want to invest in a nascent mining company?

well much like Bill's previous interview the gist of the message is "we're getting on with it" along with a more general plea to be patient and recognise exploration is a slow and many stepped process, where Australia in particular is heavily backed up with delays.

nevertheless all sounds positive.

@ TT - you say conservatively a ten bagger from here if we go into production.

I tend not to want to predict actual numbers and perhaps I am more conservative than you, but whilst I would say more than a ten bagger is very possible if things go well, I'd be reluctant to ascribe a ten bagger as a "conservative" estimate, at least in the near term.

If Brockman is all we hope for and eventually goes in to production, then yes a ten bagger from here does feel a conservative estimate.