Member Info for Happyhaddock

I suppose the smaller the company the more important "volume and sentiment" become...

You can "invest" in a big blue chip FTSE100 company because you have the hard data to value it. I've said it before and I'll say it again.. with a junior explorer you can't value a company as an investment based upon it's turnover/profits/loss as they rarely generate income, you can't even value them on a "fire sale" price of assets as the very nature of exploring is that you have to spend a lot of money to actually arrive at a value for the assets when the assets are primarily large amounts of rock and dirt that may or may not contain something valuable.

Junior explorers are fundamentally selling a dream; valuing them is "finger in the wind" stuff based upon confidence in the management's understanding of geology along with their understanding of how to raise funding... issues that relate back to the volume and sentiment.

In my view CB has demonstrated both an understanding of the geology and understanding of how to raise money, he has however done it in a manner which has killed a lot of investor sentiment... this I hope will prove the be short lived as sentiment is such fickle thing.

jtb - no such things as bad publicity eh?

To me the strongest aspect of ECR is the nearly £6m in the bank... exploration is all about drilling and we can afford to do that... a lot of that.

The money can't guarantee what is in the ground but it gives us a far better shot at finding anything that is there, and as you say we have already had some data to prove the ground isn't devoid of gold... we just have to find out if it's a little or a lot.

AG1989 - exactly - good prospects but but we need to wait upon some actual facts and real numbers we can do something meaningful with beyond speculate about how good the prospects might be.

Everybody thinks and works differently but I have an approach of asking myself is any latest piece of information a known fact I can use to re-assess the value of a company, or is it simply "good news" that boosts sentiment in the company and increases the prospects of getting actual facts which increase the value of a company in the future.

The price I'm willing to buy a share at is determined by the former, the number of shares I'm willing to hold by the later.

With ECR my price was anything under 2p but the number of shares I was willing to own kept increasing with the talk, I just wasn't sure if news would raise my valuation to meet the actual SP, or if the SP would drop to meet my valuation.

As it was I got to buy some more when it dipped below 2p... had I known better I could have waited a few hours longer and bought in at 1.6p

Superspesh "Happy.....the misunderstanding wasn’t anything to do with PI’s, he told the market that he had results of the first hole but in his wisdom decided not to release them, speculation is only natural. Then instead of results we got a placing after being told were fully funded....eh??!!"

Speculation is natural, acting on speculation comes with risk, limit your actions to acting only on fact and thing get less risky... As for placings I always work on the assumption they are a possibility with any explorer.

I'm not saying that communication couldn't have been better handled, only that everybody has to decide for themselves what information they are going to act upon, or if they wish to act before having the information.

much as the new interview is more positive... let us not forget that much of the original misunderstanding came form private investors making assumptions, talking them up on boards like this until suggestions of hoping to do things soon became "now" and then getting disappointed when things didn't happen immediately.

delays out of the hands of the CEO are still delays out of the hands of the CEO ....

the mistake was upsetting private investor sentiment - from a business point of view raising an extra £2m at 2.2p now looks a good move...

we'll see in the long run whether a bank balance or sentiment is the more difficult to rebuild

generally a far better interview, didn't really say anything we didn't already know but a far calmer and more polite attitude and he was actually selling the positives of the company without actually "over egging the pudding"

"Reading the chat board for weeks has been like watching a slow-motion car crash."

sadly the same is true of too many boards, it is no great secret that success as an investor is as much about understanding other people's failings as it is understanding your own.

I know my timing stinks hence topping up at just under 2p rather than recognising the potential for the hysteria to take this as low as 1.6p... but in the long run I don't see it as an issue as sub 2p was where I regarded this as a worthwhile purchase and I achieved that... sentiment can go up just as quickly as it can come down, so at some point this will be overprice again.

I think grades of 19/g/ton are worth pursuing a little further at HR3 before moving on...
we have the ability to drill a hole and get basic info back pretty quickly before deciding where to go next.

CB will no doubt do his own thing, and is in better position than us to make judgements, but whilst I would not commit to a lot more holes at HR3 I'd like to see at least couple more.

@AG19189 " I'd be surprised to see 2p today and and don't think the sell off is an overreaction"

I agree that we probably won't see 2p today but I do think the sell off was somewhat of an over-reaction , especially in terms of the emotional hysteria. However I'm not saying that some degree of sell off wasn't overdue

I think below 2p this represents a worthwhile punt for those who understand the risk of junior explorers, where I bought in a while ago and have since topped up twice but always under 2p.

There is the chance for great news in the future and I don't think the last few weeks have changed that, what has changed is that more people have realised that it is only a chance and not a certainty, hence the SP has found a more realistic level closer to 2p which is where I suspect it may settle over the next few weeks.

well LSE now seems to have caught up with itself and is again displaying more sensible numbers for the SP

where exactly does LSE get its share prices from? - something truly bizzare going on with mid, bid and ask that bares no resemblance to what any other site is reporting for FRES

I'm not invested with BZT, but my history with ECR is similar to with UFO ... thought they both looked cheap and worth a punt, both saw large gains in SP to levels I thought a bit too punchy, both pulled back a lot but both left me in profit.

UFO is by far my largest holding, ECR more minor but I did top up my ECR holding a couple of times over the last few days simply because of the crazy over reaction leaving it looking cheap again.

Sure Craig Brown screwed up investor relations at ECR by letting folks imaginations and hopes run ahead of facts, but in terms of the company prospects he seems to be doing OK if you view it as a speculative punt on an exploration company rather than a guarantee of a productive mine... That said I still view UFO as the potentially better punt

The ECR board has gone absolutely crazy ... a junior exploration company with almost £6m in the bank saw its mkt cap drop at one brief point below £15m on the basis of an RNS that announced they'd made a discovery of a small intersection in a drill hole of almost 20g/t Au.

Many folk evidently wanted much more and news of a JV there and then, without this they were disappointed. Admittedly the CEO didn't help by giving a very grumpy and largely pointless interview which seemingly irked people even further.

"Have folk stopped to think that their impatience at the lack of blockbuster news is more down to their own greedy desire for returns than a lack of actual progress from the company ?"

A sentiment I've expressed on other boards where people have been freaking out and accusing the CEO of all manner of underhand behaviour. Exploration is a slow process and things rarely happen in a smooth and predictable manner.

well I did top up when it dipped below 2p as it seemed a worthwhile opportunity - so it's not as if I've bailed out.

whilst it was an amazing grade ,until we have chased it across a few holes to establish the size of this vein it doesn't have to equate to much gold, whilst it is probable that it will equate to a decent find you could argue that, for the sake of argument , we get 100kg at this grade as just a freak anomaly we hit by luck, then that's not much more than one ounce of gold.

The SP will respond to further drill results showing how representative this grade is.

jtb - I can see some advantage to a place where you can deliberately play devils advocate for the sake of debating contrarian or conflicting opinions without fear of things descending into emotional gibberish and personal insults...

However as the saying goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I share your view that this may well come good in the long run but I suspect we may be in a for a few lean months before things start to look more positive again. As I've said I'll just tuck my shares in the bottom drawer and forget about them for a while and see where we are later in the year.