Member Info for Nickqj

Money Week has an article about platinum by Dominic Frisby. Issue 1149, 24.3.23. It likes the prospects of platinum but notes that it has disappointed in the past and sees three reasons why it could do so again. Tharisa is the company to buy though. It likes the long life left in its mine. Also Karo, the new one being built in Zimbabwe.
I read articles on commodities frequently but I dismiss many as paid for articles. This one comes across as much better as it contains facts and figures to support the claims.

There is a short section from the CEO in this video. It all sounds really promising but all my investments in industrial metals are down badly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fwy6PXUe6s

Legalwolf, Thanks for this. You are correct and I would add that investing anywhere in the UK is risky. Everyone we deal with is out to swindle us. My father received 7% from a building society investment account for his 20 years of retirement. No one is giving that now.

You may all have seen this article a month ago but just in case .....
https://total-market-solutions.com/2022/12/panther-metals-plc-dec-2022/

The long article by Total Market Solutions is well worth reading beginning to end. PALM gets a description and a good one. If you are invested here there are two links at the end worth reading. The Oil and Gas article mentions several promising small companies. I am thinking of 88E. The article "12 companies to follow in 2023" mentions GUN which looks worth considering.

BurtonD, thanks for this. Most helpful. They will not all succeed but the preface makes a good case for investing in this business area.

Tamerinvestor; I have suffered from auto correct myself. Recently my dehumidifier became a dehumaniser.

A couple of comments here mention titanium. The RNS said tantalum and the two are not the same. Titanium is a plentiful element and we can have as much as we want. There is a preferred ore for extracting the metal and even so the extraction is expensive. Working the metal is also expensive. If parts made from titanium are expensive it is not because the world is running out of the metal.

I like the optimism shown here but I still worry POW and similar explorers are risky; most drill holes reveal worthless dirt. PJ himself said most projects fail. Nevertheless, I am breaking one of my rules to diversify and I bought some more shares today. I may well buy more if the price drops.

Bobbust: I would encourage you to be optimistic here. As PJ himself points out most projects fail but the prospects here are as good as any. You seem unhappy with the pace of the investigations and analysis but the technologists have their procedures to ensure accuracy above speed. If you doubt me have a look at ECR where a second set of analyses showed many huge discrepancies including one sample which first gave a 0.1g of gold/ton and later showed 48g of gold/ton. If POW wants to get results faster the costs will have to rise. With so many projects on the go I expect POW is trying to get the best value for its money.

I spent 40 years in industry mostly as a chemical analyst and I have to say to correlation between the two sets of results is shockingly bad. Most errors occur in the sampling stage and chemical analysts like me insist on taking the the sample; I would not rely on someone else's word for my results. Part of the cause for the discrepancy might well be because the rock cores are of uneven concentration. There is, or was, a British Standard for sampling uneven compositions but the requirements are so onerous that neither ECR nor any other company would want to pay the costs.
The RNS did not go into the detail of the analytical procedures but the choice of analytical procedure would affect the result. As an example, just before I retired I had to determine the thickness of some gold plating. I used three well established techniques all using certified standards and came up with three different sets of results. I commented that they were all equally correct.

BurtonD, thanks for the TMS link. Generally very positive but PALM seems to have a great number of projects under way. Can the company keep up progress on all of them without frequent placings?

I see in today's RNS the proposed battery will be 49.9 MW. The connection will handle that power. How long will the battery supply that power? A minute? A day? An energy rating (in MW hours) would have been useful. The equivalent RNS in FSFL does not say either.

I was most interested to read the strategies we investors try to increase our savings. If you are lucky or skillful enough trading frequently works. SMT has the advantage of a small spread. I prefer to buy and hold and my holdings in SMT are an example of that working.
I am however considering selling SMT because I think the change of manager is for the worse. Also Baillie Gifford has lost its way. I used to hold five BG investment trusts but sold the others because of poor performance. SMT's winning strategy of buying early stage companies is no substitute for a good manager. I back small companies that might grow fast among the mineral explorers but I would prefer to give the job of picking stocks to good managers.

There was a lengthy discussion about the grade of 0.6% being low. A few months ago I read that in copper's case mines of 2.5% have mostly been exhausted and that 0.5% is the future. If production is to continue the price will have to rise.
A possible recession in China caused the price of copper to fall recently. That is probably temporary as demand for copper is increasing. Sooner or later 0.6% will be profitable because there will be nothing better.

Andersj: Last Sat at 12.47 you seemed unhappy that ECR seems to be starting again. If you look for a mineral in a likely place, find a little, look again for more, find a little more and keep going, either you find lots or you give up. In this business most projects end in failure so starting again is the inevitable consequence. One good result of a change of CEO is that the new man does not lose face by abandoning his predecessor's projects.

I do not like the exposure to Chinese companies either. Nor Tesla, I think Tesla will be squeezed by established car companies. For me the best reasons to sell SMT are that the new manager is not the calibre of the old one. Also Baillie Gifford as a whole has being going wrong for a couple of years now. I have already sold MNKS, EWI and PHI because of inferior performance.

I listened to yesterday's interview with interest. I do not know much about the internal finances of companies even though they are important. My background is as a chemist in industry including the ion exchange he mentions. GB comes across as someone who knows what he is talking about. He assumes rather too much I think, does everyone know that phos acid is short for phosphoric acid and what the significance is? Nonetheless he gets my approval and I intend to hang onto my RBW shares even though we are in a rough patch. I reject 50% of companies if I do not like the CEO, e.g. Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.

There is always a worry that a company with a falling share price could fall to zero. In POG's case the world will always buy the output. How much debt does POG have now? If the debt is low enough I think now is a buying opportunity.

Troajan, Thanks for posting this. The content was informative and makes a believable case for finding mineralisation. I am as optimistic here as with POW.