Good afternoon
the US$ is making new highs, and the gold price does not like it! Metals are holding today, following a few, very weak days. I believe and hope, that this has been the reaction we needed to have....in my opinion, one can look at buying again...and for gold, we are getting close as well. Holdings of the ETF are still falling - US-investors obviously still selling...and as one should never underestimate the nationalism of US-investors, this could go on for just a little further. In the space of just 4 trading days, the GDXJ has fallen by 20%, mirrowing the outflow in the physical.
Some of the few stocks holding well are both based in Ecuador - Solgold as well as Ross Beaty´s vehicle Lumina Gold both are hardly down. But I guess they have also been helped by having gold/copper exposure, not just gold.
The German PPI rose by a tiny 0,1% - but it did so for the first time in 3 years!
Marindi - I briefly touched on them before. Interesting, very small company, run by Joe Treacy, who is a very nice, straight and experienced operator. Some might remember him from years ago, when he was one of the 2 guys running Kagara Zinc, before they went under with zinc trading at less than half of todays A$-price. Marindi is having a large ground position just next top Kidman Resources, who have found what some analysts regard as the best, Australian hard rock resource of Lithium. MZN are just next door - 1500m or so away, and have today reported their first drill hole, which hit 34 m with 3.1% lithium, which is a very exciting intersection. Furthermore, there is some litigation going on in the moment. MZN are of the opinion, that Kidman JV´d their ground ( before they actually knew about the lithium ) with Marindi ( Marindi is capped at 22 Mill A$ today, KDR at 190 Mill A$!! ). Whatever the outcome will be ( I assume some kind of JV as an out-of-court settlement ), I think MZN are a good punt without the court case even. One more interesting aspect is, that 236 mill MZN options are expiring at the end of this month, at 2ct - Marindi closed at 1.9ct today, and traded as high as 2.5ct, with 71 mill shares traded! The option excercise will continue to put pressure on the share price for the next 2-3 weeks, presenting new investors with a good buying opportunity. My fund is a small shareholder, and I admit, that I orginally did not buy them for the lithium, but for their zinc/copper exploration!
Berkeley - have ordered the first long lead-time equipment for their uranium mine in Spain. The prices are 20% under what BKY had budgeted in the bankable feasibility study, and the early order will bring forward production by a few month. This certainly assumes, that they will be able to fix the financing. The fact, that tehy have ordered these big-ticket items early, shows, how confident BKY are to get it done one way or the other ( that is: either more equity / bank finance / offtake or a mixture of it ). One thing is for sure : This will be an extraordinary low cost uranium producer, and the sahres can go quite a bit higher over the next 1-2 years. I am selling a few on the way up here and there - but only for riskmanagement reasons, as I have a relative large position in the stock.
Have a nice evening!
WS