Peru is a great place to mine, but make sure you know the environmental and social situation.

Mining. He is pretty positive on the metal sector, gold prices, etc. Generally speaking, gold prices are inversely correlated with the US$, and the world’s confidence in America. We are seeing a slowly improving economy in the US and are probably going to see interest rates bumped up again. Those are both negative for gold. But the flip side of that is Trump and his administration. We are dealing with someone unstable, and the team behind him is certainly inexperienced. He is concerned that they are not going to be able to react and deal with a major global crisis, or black swan of some sort. Feels that is what is holding up gold prices even though other things would suggest that it goes down. On a more positive note, major mining companies are not finding enough gold to replace what they are mining, their reserves are depleting. They’ve cut exploration dramatically and are not finding new deposits. The place to be right now is in the very junior exploration sector with good people and legitimate projects, and that is going to do really well this coming year.

This has the Pebble deposit which has about 90 million ounces of resources, and copper to match that. It has been promoted pretty heavily as the Trump gold play, with the idea that with deregulation being easier, it will be permitted. You need to be aware that these mega projects are in the middle of nowhere in Alaska, the headwaters of the largest Salmon fisheries in North America. A difficult place to build a tailings facility. The CapX needed is $8-$12 billion. It has to include a deep-water port, a pipeline, energy, a road, plus all the infrastructure on-site. There is not enough detailed work done on this to make an assessment to decide if this is really economic or not.

(A Top Pick March 8/16. Up 42.86%.) This company and its team are amongst the best explorers in the industry. A solid company doing solid, generative, conceptual exploration.

Bought this 4 or 5 years ago by a private placement. It didn’t do well. They’ve restructured the company and kind of firmed it up. The geologist running it is good and smart. Has a joint venture with B2Gold (BTO-T) looking at a very prospective ground in Finland, probably one of the top places to be exploring. Just recently released some results of some surface sampling and found large boulders with visible gold in it. If subsequent drilling can confirm that there is some continuity to that, it is an interesting speculation. He would watch this.

They’ve been in Ecuador quite a while. Formed a joint venture, and made a very impressive copper/gold discovery. There are a lot of other periphery copper/gold systems around there. This is looking pretty good. He missed it, and it is looking more expensive than what he would want to pay for it.

Has a lot of respect for the president. Bought this in December, and just sold it a few weeks ago. The stock has come off since then. An interesting play, and something certainly worth holding in terms of gold. They are producing gold out of Arturo, and it looks like the grade is higher than expected. The Cove deposit they are drilling out seems to be hanging together now. He sees no fatal flaws here. He would like to see this under $2, and if he saw it at $1.50, he would buy a lot.

A very large, low grade deposit. It has a little over 1 million ounces M&I, and probably 3 in inferred resources. A real, sketchy sort of deposit in that the mineralization is spotty. If you were to try to mine this as an open pit, your waste to ore ratio would be extremely high, especially given that it is such a low-grade deposit.

A high-grade deposit in Papua New Guinea. The land package is great and the exploration potential is really good, but what they are doing is mining narrow high grade veins. The previous company was not able to do this. Until they can show they can make money mining those veins, it’s not something he would be interested in. There are a lot of promoters pushing things, and you want to be careful.

A great company and worth while accumulating, but it is really important on junior stocks to pick your price. At this level, it is worth accumulating, but there is no urgency. These guys generate really good big picture ideas, and they get a major mining company in to test it.

Metals & Mining. Has been pretty negative for the last 4+ years, but in November he thinks he saw a fundamental change in currency and gold prices. He has been buying more into the precious metals sector. Feels this rally in the gold price is long term bullish. It may have a pullback in the near term. Serious investors are recognizing that gold is an asset to have right now. He also feels it is fortunate that we have not seen the silver price rise yet along with gold. Globally we are looking at the major equity markets turning over, currencies are being devalued across the board, and in many countries we are looking at zero to negative interest rates. At that point, gold actually makes sense. This time we are actually seeing gold going up in US$, which is very different.

Base Metals. These are in their bottoming process. It could take a while. It depends on global demand, and he doesn’t see it picking up this year, maybe into next year.

In Nevada and has done well. An interesting story. They’ve had Oceana Gold and Gold Corp. do private placements with them. Have a small oxide gold resource in Nevada called Pinion. Not real big, and goes underground quickly, and the strip gets high. Recently pulled 2 holes north of there in the Dark Star project, which are quite good. If they can be extended, they are onto something significant. Moving to the north it tends to feather out, but is open to the south. What happens in the next 2 drill holes to the south is going to tell you everything you need to know. His concern is that there might be a blockage structure coming across.

The big catalyst going forward is if they found, identified and drilled out an economic deposit. Have been drilling this project for 10 years plus. They continue to hit mineralization, and there is good mineralization on it, but his concern has always been it’s a shattered up vein system, so it is difficult to put in a high grade mining scenario because the veins are jumping around. Not convinced it is a significantly economic deposit.

A fantastic discovery. They just put out a resource of 200 million pounds at about 2.5%. Within that, there is a high grade core of 120 million pounds of uranium. That 120 million pounds is the bulk of it. It is currently defined by 7 drill holes. When you get a deposit that great, it is going to take a lot more infill drilling to bring it up to “measured and indicated”. A great deposit, great discovery.