Get Your Tickets to the 2024 VRIC: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2024-tickets-664703244297
Warren Irwin and David Lotan provide their views on where the metals and mining sector is headed, along with outlining the specific commodities, regions of the world, and companies they think will outperform in the years ahead.
Rosseau Asset Management: https://www.rosseau.com
Follow Warren on X: https://twitter.com/ItsWarrenIrwin
00:00 Introduction
00:53 Commodities Supercycle
07:51 Mining Challenges in the Era of ESG
11:20 Opportunities in the Mining Sector
17:25 Capital Flows to Commodities
22:51 How Can Retail Investors Approach Mining?
30:41 Gold and Gold Mining Stocks
#miningstocks #goldstocks #preciousmetals
If you are serious about your portfolio for 2024 then get yourself to the Vancouver resource investment conference in Vancouver British Columbia on January 21st and 22nd hello everybody and welcome to the Vancouver resource investment conference Channel my name is Jesse day we’re counting down to the VC January 21st and 22nd there’s a link in the description below where you can get your tickets but we are of course bringing the VC to you
With our series of expert online panels and I’m very excited for today’s I’m joined by Warren Irwin the president and CIO of Roso asset management and David Lan CEO of LHI capital and today we’re going to be talking about medals and Mining gentlemen it’s great to have you both on the
Show thanks for having us Jesse thanks for having us Jesse yeah great to have you here I want to start with this narrative that’s been going around for the past few years about a Commodities super cycle um a lot of experts in the commodity space have been talking about
This that there’s going to be a shift from the Fang stocks and the Magnificent 7 overvalued tech that’s all going to roll over and people are going to go after the new shiny object which will be real Assets in the form of Commodities I’m wondering how you both see that
Narrative is that close to the reality is it more complex and subtle than that and uh David I’ll go to you first sure Jesse I think that uh that certainly looked uh like a transition that was happening after 2022 when the NASDAQ was down 33% in a completely awful year uh
Also for mainstream equities in the United States which had a similar performance but of course we’re up 43% on the NASDAQ this year and probably very close to alltime highs which were around December January of 2022 2023 so um absolute garbage carvana pelaton the Goldman Sachs index of profitless tech
Has multiplied in value in the last year I I I meant to look at ARC before we came on air to see how Kathy Wood did in last year although I think she was a bit of a lagard so seems a little uh early to pronounce uh the death of uh us uh
Fluffy NASDAQ stocks and and uh that being said uh the world’s inability to permit new minds to bring new Supply on I think threatens to create bottlenecks for the next 10 or 20 years in some of the very crucial resources that Society needs to flourish and uh so I’m bullish on
Commodities and I think that we’re going to have a supply driven bull market at whether there’s another Chinese Miracle of urbanization that’s going to come out of for instance India I I think it’s a little too early to suggest that’s going to happen and Warren your thoughts are you
Bullish on Commodities across the board moving forward um are there certain Commodities that you think will be more in demand than others and do you also see this as a supply driven bull market no DAV is exactly correct um when when when you see my perspective it’s
Based on of course my most reasonably recent experience back in the the 2000s when the nasda crashed and then everybody looked around and said well that was a fun ride Let’s uh see what else is out there that’s cheap and right now um there are some very good
Similarities between the two because uh as soon as anoun that collapsed people were saying all right enough with this these baloney stocks that don’t make any money that had trade at multiple billion dollar valuations and it was quite a quite a bit of a joke I made some money on the on the
Upside and the downs I was doing a bit of NASDAQ trading myself at the time uh when Roso in the early days of Roso um but then the the transition happened and uh things got rolling but and that was after a period of time just to set the
Stage for it when that transition happened uh we had a rock and roll super hot mining Market from from the early 90s till Brix blew everything up what around 96 97 time frame so we had a really hot market then we had quite a number of years where you
Know Commodities were a dirty word and then when the NASDAQ did collapse people were looking around for real things real real value things like that right so they came to the to the resource sector and that’s where we we were able to get a pretty good run from about 2000 200ish
To 2008 2010 whatever you want to call the top on that so I I live through that and that’s I think that’s what what I what I saw is people just were blew their brains out in the uh in the tech market and they were looking for something real and something cheap and
That was the Commodities and today uh I did a graph the other day for my year in review uh a graph of the S&P 500 versus the uh Goldman Sachs Commodities index and it was able to I was able to go back to about 1970 so
That’s the last 50 plus years right half century right and today in relationship to the S&P 500 the go Goldman resource index is at the lowest level in half a century so there’s a great argument for that and then you take a look at um well what what are theart what would turn
Around Tech what would turn what would what would collapse Tech to get people to focus on something different and you know we’re obviously seeing a lot of U lot of potential issues on the horizon for instance with apple these whole issues with foxcon what the Chinese are
Doing with foxcon and the supply chain and and critical metals and this whole I I would be very afraid right now if I was Apple building all my products in China it would just just not give me a great level of comfort and and just the whole whole thing around chips and
Manufacturing of high-tech products in and around China and not in the good us OFA right so that could be a really really bumpy here going forward but let’s take a look at the issues like like David touched on with respect to Commodities you know I was you know
Before I got on this call I was just thinking to myself about that that type of question and what you have here is like David said like trying to get a mine permitted is is really really tricky and the whether it be the NGO is going against you the government’s going
Against you uh the most recent stupid regulations I’ve seen which just you know I wonder why I’m even in Canada anymore is the the Canadian government and their limitations on strategic IC metals and selling to the Chinese right so the problem we have right is Chinese
Are the buyers for a lot of these Commodities right so uh that’s a bit of a problem but like like Dave said what’s going to happen here is all right put all these rules against us miners put uh you know tons of ngos shut down cury Panama shut down everything give give a
Um the indigenous band of 200 people 500 miles away from the project say is whether the project goes ahead or not not okay fine we could take that on the chin but we’re going to see it here when you try and build your Teslas or your electric cars because there won’t be any
Copper mines there won’t be any nickel mines you won’t we won’t have any any of the critical metals that you’ll need to accomplish what you’re doing so um it’s eventually gonna happen and and David yeah I just wanted to follow up on what you were saying warn about L
NOS trying to block mines governments kind of turning socialist you talked about the situation in Panama um a lot of South America seems to be plagued by issues Mexico I believe putting a ban on new open pit minds and uh before we hit record here David you were talking about
Um some mins in Serbia that that faced issues in the past as well due to NOS how do you think the pendulum is going to eventually swing the other way I guess is my question because a lot of these world leaders are talking about the energy transition the new green
Economy without really factoring in the amount of actual mining that needs to take place for that to happen and a lot of them take completely opposite stances where on one hand they’re talking about pushing the green energy transition and on the other hand they’re completely against mining in all shapes and forms
In their own country something’s got to give so what what are your thoughts there yes I would would agree I think there’s been sort of a collect of delusion in Europe Canada and the United States really in the developed countries in particular uh populations there have orally been very
Wealthy uh and uh very energy intensive and I think there was this assumption that we could transition to Renewables untested unreliable unknown and very high risk and really give up almost none of our standard of living and for a while this proved to be true and unfortunately for
Germany uh the lesson is being learned in the hardest possible way uh it almost would seem like the war in Ukraine was a pretext to get Germany off of Russian natural gas and the economy is de-industrializing now it’s in contraction I think the damage that that’s been done to Industry there won’t
Be undone potentially for decades a lot of these high-end manufacturing uh businesses in Precision Mach machinery and chemicals are leaving and they won’t come back and so in places like Germany United Kingdom where they turned off their nuclear stations destroyed their cool cool fire power plants uh the
Standard of living is declining and the cost of living is going up Canada and the United States we really haven’t had to face this yet uh but if the goal of the administration in Canada and the United States is to Electrify our vehicle fleets the amount of raw
Materials that we’ll need will drive costs up by a multiple across the Spectrum the era of globalization has now come to an end countries and corporations are right now racing to secure the materials they need for the their supply chains if you are serious about your portfolio for 2024 then get
Yourself to the Vancouver resource investment conference in Vancouver British Columbia on January 21st and 22nd and I’d like to shift now to investment in the mining sector and ask where you’re both seeing opportunity at present and Warren I’ll start with you are there any particular Metals um or maybe even regions of the world or companies that you’re watching at the moment that you think present an
Attractive value proposition yeah I’m seeing quite a bit of value out there so it’s it’s pretty ridiculous frankly what what I’m seeing for instance I I’ll take a look at give you some examples of of some of my my Holdings that um are super cheap for
Instance uh you know uh I’m a big fan of met Cole met coal Char you know generates CO2 but there’s no there’s no substitute for it in the next many decades um India is going to be doubling their steel production by 2030 that’s you know only seven years away and
They’ll need twice as much met coal right and China is continuing to grow too India doesn’t have a domestic source so you know met Coal’s north of $300 us a ton and uh you’re able to buy certain met coil companies today uh with with resources in the ground tier one
Jurisdiction supportive of met coal mining his history of met coil mining history of providing the smelters with highquality met coal and you can pick that up for an Institute value of 40 cents right so youve got $300 When You Yank the black stuff out of the ground
Put it on a ship and you buy it for 40 cents so tremendous value also with respect to Copper um I’m heavily involved in a situation or more I guess not heavily but more actively involved involved in a situation where where we’re we’ve got a world class one of the top five
Undeveloped projects in the world trading at an Institue value of copper of one cent per pound so you’ve got it same story you got copper around 38390 and you’re picking it up in the ground already drilled out resource one penny right one penny so that represents value you take and then of course
Uh taking a look at uh you know the same story with nickel like I have have a situation I’m aware of in the nickel space where you know the valuations are so outrageously cheap that um um you know it’s it’s pretty laughable you’ve got drilled up resources to International standards and
Market caps half a one half a two-thirds and nothing and you know I noticed um you know recently we had a junior Here I won’t name the name but it just had a a monster run to 400 million market cap on one little drill result which was you
Know not followed up following that but um here here you have an instance in three cases I’ve just given you where we’ve got drilled up resources trading it pennies pennies on the dollar and um it’s incredibly incredibly cheap and so um when you take a look at it uh that
One graph I mentioned I did between the GL Goldman Sachs resource index versus the S&P 500 and solois has been in over half a century I’m seeing it on the ground real world super duper cheap stuff and uh it’s uh pretty outrageously cheap frankly so there’s tremendous
Upside if uh if the market turns for us yeah certainly opportunities out there if you know where to look David uh what about yourself which Commodities are you currently uh watching that you think present an attract AC of opportunity here in 2024 and Beyond hydrocarbons I think are
Compelling in that they are the most hated uh of the commodity complex uh and also uh prone to bottlenecks gas and the perian getting produced as a matter of fact uh and being almost a waste product uh so interesting opportunities disparities between European markets and US markets for gas
For instance where the gas is stranded and it’s difficult to get a tell on Jeep ports I like Warren think metallurgical coal is actually one of the most interesting uh Commodities in the world right now it has unfortunately been painted with the thermal coal brush even though it is along with copper nickel
And Cobalt maybe one of the most com important commodities for society’s State a desire to transition to new forms of energy uh and as a result uh you you have the uh the industry uh stretched across the rack by NOS unable to get bank loans in most countries uh
Other than uh from China and um I guess uh they’re still financing coal mines that of uh out of uh Australia uh but it’s it’s really really difficult to get uh financing for a met coal development at the moment nonetheless the assets when they trade bhp’s Assets in Queen Queensland to
White Haven or uh the tech sale to glenor these assets trade for billions and and billions of dollars so uh that’s one example of a commodity that I think is is viewed by industry participants and by that I mean the steel companies as being in Supply distress already viewed by investors it’s a
No-go so uh there are other examples I’m bullish of almost all heart assets at at at the moment but that would be uh the one that is most unfairly uh that has all the odds stacked against it in in in a completely uh nonsensical Manner and what does it take to bring
Investors and serious investment Capital into these sectors that are so hated for ESG reasons um painted with a broad brush is just being bad for Humanity off you mentioned hydrocarbons there I completely agree with you on the oil and gas space um what does it take because sometimes we see these incredible
Valuations and the stocks don’t move because not enough investment is going into them um do you think that’s going to take a shift in the Zeitgeist regarding the whole ESG Nar narrative that um perhaps the pendulum will swing that will fall apart people will realize that you know we need Commodities to to
Advance as a as a civilization and um David I’ll go to you first on this one and then get your thoughts Warren inflation persistent inflation it’s already happening you can see all of these governments in Scandinavia the Netherlands Germany at the local level France all swinging to the right and this is
Merely a reflection of an increase in the cost of living there’s some other nasty factors going on out there related to immigration the war in the Middle East but for all intents and purposes when voters have to pay more for gasoline and food they throw at the government and Warren your thoughts well
Investors are I’ve generally found investors are are at the end of the the day they’re very greedy and I see if they eventually start seeing their buddies making lots of money in a certain sector they’re all going to Pile in right so for us to do that we just
Need we need possibly higher commodity price we need something where um somebody looks at the returns earned in um in in resources and people you know that’s a place we should be looking at we just uh you know Tech’s not doing too great doesn’t look like it’s got much
Upside from here let’s take a look at resources they tell their kids in the analytical Department Hey kids take a look at some of these resource stocks and find out the sectors to invest in and and uh um to give you an example too right when you look at the last 13 years
Seven of those years the uh the worst performing sector of seven of the last 13 years is the resource sector right so it’s been just pummeled and there’s no reason for any sane individual to jump into the resource sector having looked at the last 13 years but as as a lot of
The old-timers and I’m pretty pretty freaking old but there are some older people than me one war you know the longer we go where resources are out of favor specifically mining um you know the bigger the bull run we’re going to have and so we’ve been going a fair fair
Amount of time here where resource stocks have been really out of favor and um so when we get a tick up uh start getting a ticks up in commodity prices that’ll be um and people start making some money uh it’ll be like a bean pile everybody will jump in and say all right
Let’s do it and I remember the last run we had you know kind of throw in some optimism here like the the Run we had from 2000 to 2008 or 2010 12 range whatever you want to call the end date it was wild it was amazing and uh you
Could you could be pretty much an idiot and make a ton of money in the resource space and U you know I was also involved in the in some pretty good runs back in the 90s the bullmark in the resource sector in the 90s so uh we haven’t seen
One of those in a very long time and we’re definitely do and uh certainly there’s not a lot of downside here because valuations are so so damn cheap so and how can your average oh go ahead David yeah sorry Warren’s exactly right and I would add uh we’re seeing short
Bull markets now in Commodities not not the not the long markets that we saw in the 90s and the one that sort of persisted off of the 1999 or 2000 NASDAQ crash it went fairly uninterrupted until the global financial crisis and then continued to 2011 but if
You bought anything related to oil and gas in April of 2020 you made a fortune you could throw a dart and uh we didn’t have a the continuation of the energy bull market in the last year but people uh investors who bought turmaline for
Instance of $7 a share watch it go to 80 of had 1314 of capital return to them already so uh and then when you look at the bull market we had in Gold equities off of the co bottom gold equities went parabolic from let’s say may of that
Year until there was an announc announcement of of a vaccine uh and they’ve been in a long decline ever since but I mean many of the gold companies doubled in price in just a few short months so my expectation going forward are that we will continue to
Have these short sharp movements up uh there will be often year yearslong long retracements but we won’t give up all the gains uh and all this will resolve itself with a monster bu Market at some point but I don’t know when that one turns out and how can your average retail
Investor kind of wrap their head around the space obviously most people should should probably not be picking individual equities um I think the type of people that come to the Vancouver resource investment conference and watch a channel like this are the type of people who are likely to try and pick
Equities so for for such people who have the inclination who have the time uh and and who who have the resolve to actually educate themselves what do you think are the most important factors that they need to take into consideration when evaluating uh mining stocks and Warren
I’ll start with you okay we want to specifically look at um the Juniors right we will skip we’ll skip the majors sure and just just before we get into that one important thing I’ve obviously noticed and David touched on a little bit is what we’ve seen here recently is
Kind of unusual and that we’ve had uh we’ve had the hype on Cobalt Cobalt ramped collapsed we had hype on lithium lithium ramped collapsed we’ve had the hype on you know they seem to be doing a bullet approach uh rifle approach to the sector going let’s jump in this commodity everybody piles in
They run it up they sell collapses and there hasn’t been the big Broad Run yet and it’s fascinating right now I’m seeing it in the in uranium where we right now have 85 million pounds in you know sput and um and yellow cake and then I just was
Reading over the weekend where uh 50 hedge funds have in addition to that 50 hedge funds in addition to that already have funds in um in uranium stored converdy right so every the uranium Market is not that big so when you’re taking like 85 million pounds which is you know uh annual
Productions around 135 140 million pounds you’re taking more than half a Year’s production out of the market just in two two vehicles so that’s obviously the next one in the crosshairs right so they’re going to ramp that up how far it goes who knows when it collapses who
Knows so it’s been very much a boom boom boom boom boom now as far as back back to your original question uh and um let’s taking a look at how you analyze a company I think recently I’ve come across a company which is a good little case study if you’re just starting the
Business what I would do is take a look at this company make your own conclusions don’t take my conclusions but take a look at let’s say premium nickel okay so if you do a top down You Go premium nickel one of the top mining jurisdictions in Africa Botswana you
Look at locally uh local support for mining there have been mines in the past people have worked in the past I’ve been there myself and people locals are looking for jobs in mining people know the prosperity of Mining and you go boom boom boom all the way down the line you
Go well um you know is there infrastructure there’s infrastructure there’s U there’s hydr power rail everything you need to build a mine and then you go well do you have a deposit well you do we have some infra significant underground infrastructure and well grade do you
Have grade well we have grade and you have in intercepts and we do have intercepts we have tons we have you know there’s historical tons you just go boom boom boom right right from the top down and then you find out well okay well seems like there’s a lot of things um
With respect to support locally uh federally uh it’s great jurisdiction they already have a m permit so you don’t worry about any that permitting issue there’s no indigenous issues you’ve got support of the US government through their strategic medals group and you go boom boom boom through all that
And then you then you go okay well uh you will have gone through every single major thing that could screw up a junior where you know we’re looking right now at let’s say the top Panama while they’re screwing up Co Cobra Panama is getting destroyed you look at
Locals well the locals aren’t burning down buildings and setting tires on fire on the roads and you you go well permitting well permit they’ve already got a permit so there’s no permitting issues you’re not going to delay the project another 3 to 5 years to get a permit and infrastructure well we’re not
Building this thing in the Arctic you know so it it’s an interesting case study because what it does is it goes through every single factor that could hang up a mining project and um and uh it’s it’s a very one interesting One-Stop place you could take a look at all the key
Factors and um one by one you could judge where they are and I’ll leave it up to the investors to do it that that would be a really good case study for a for a to take a look at and uh just go through the whole process and everything
That could screw up a project and and see how you know the premium nickel is dealing with that those issues and how how it differs from any you know moves past your metal company up in the Arctic somewhere which is got quite a number of different challenges like everything
From First Nations to environment to infrastructure to global warming with respect to the lack of ice roads and things like that so that would be a good good place to start great and David uh any sort of words of wisdom you might have for somebody wanting to approach the sector in terms
Of evaluating individual equities well I think we’re sort of in a golden time for retail investors in the commodity space because there’s so little competition and uh this interesting intersection between the sort of Horrid bare Market in Capital availability for natural resources and uh the Creator economy uh and and and all these
Multimedia platforms that are available on the internet so uh I think it’s fantastic that Warren has giving away all these fantastic ideas for nothing and you can go back and look at the original article that Tommy humph wrote uh on Warren’s Ranch about NextGen and I
Think NextGen was a 5050 Cent stock back then and uh and Warren laid at the case for it and uh and it was uh really really a success driven by retail uh Brick by Brick as investors started to pile into that stock led by thought leaders like Warren who are making their ideas
Available for nothing and that’s just where the industry’s gotten to you used to get up on Monday morning and see a run in a stock and and then go and see you know who had published a letter on Sunday night was it Brent cook or Eric
Coffin who dropped an idea but it was too late because the stock had run that day stocks don’t run anymore when industry experts go on YouTube or publish a letter and recommend the name and uh so it’s very easy frankly right now to find quality names because the
Experts in the industry are not valued by retail or institutional investors and as a result they’re adding as much value as they can uh through social media uh in order merely to attract followers and I mean this is not the case for Warren obviously but I’ve benefited tremendously from Warren’s ideas which
He’s made public including clo of coal and NextGen uh and uh and so I I think I think right now uh there’s never been a better time to go into resource small caps it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of work to be done but the information has never really been more
Available uh and uh and and historical comps are are you know pretty pretty compelling yeah I completely agree with you social media as well obviously can all be a double-edged sword but using it as a complement to your own due diligence as opposed to the source of
Your due diligence I think is a great way to just add an extra layer of evaluation onto companies you’re looking at I mean you can look up the the cash tags on Twitter sometimes I I I ventured into the uh very obscure world of oil
Tanker stocks and and I got a lot of help on due diligence from some some accounts on Twitter um very so there there’s definitely more information than ever out there um as long as you you know where to look and and you have a strong fundamental case based on work
You’ve put in yourself first uh I want to get both your thoughts on gold here because obviously reaching all-time highs nominal highs as as Rick R corrected me last time I talked to him um you know a lot of people are kind of sentiment went went back down again when
When the gold price went back down but now we’re looking at Gold $2,000 as a support level for gold which I think puts it in a very good position particularly in the face of real positive interest rates which is a situation where gold tends to under perform um despite the performance of
The medal itself the miners have seemed to languish uh a lot of people expecting them to perform much better so talk to us about both gold’s price action and your view on gold equities at present and Warren I’ll throw this to you first yeah I have an interesting
Relationship with gold um my I’ve made most of my money in my career investing in gold and oddly right now I have virtually zero gold on my books so I’m just not finding things super interesting to get involved in on in the junior space at the present time I
Remember last one of the last ones I looked at was AR susman’s New Deal in um in in Colombia and um I go AR’s a good guy I’ve known him uh for years and he looks like he’s got a good team a good project I look at it Go Columbia you
Know do I really need to deal with that again I’m just getting too old for this stuff so I just I pass passing that deal but you know the Stock’s done well but you know I’m just there’s so it just gets tiring after a while to see the
Same themes with respect to uh you know um the the difficulty in getting you know Minds moving forward and uh and um so I for whatever reason I have not found a good gold name for me to put my name behind and get behind in in a big
Way uh I view gold is a just a long-term store of value not a way to to speculate and make a ton of money and it’s been that way for quite a number of years there’s there’s been some runs intermittently like the early 80s you
Could have run up ran up again they ran up to 800 bucks collapsed down to a couple hundred bucks there are some money made there but generally where I’ve done well is uh in the gold bullion sense is I just buy gold bullion park it
Away and forget about it and uh it has this trend line that you know follows the the printing of money in general and you’re above and below that trend line based on speculators right some people you know they like to run the price of gold above that trend line and then it
Gets then you get the Indians will will take some of their gold and sell it take it back down to the trend line or below it and the Indians are really good at buying it cheap and then they’ll run it right back up and sell it at sell it
Above the trend line again so um I think it’s just got a nice nice trajectory along with the money printing machines and it’s a good place good place to be but uh it’s been difficult for me personally to find good gold names and um so that’s why I really don’t have
Many on the on board I am looking and uh but uh to find you know the things like we talked about with that premium nickel you know a good country that’s not going to take your property away it’s not going to give you problems supportive local people no and you know no ngos
Trying to screw screw you up no indigenous people trying to screw you up with infrastructure with you know support of local people and you take a look at all those things and you know even the chance of getting permitted right so by the time you go through that
There’s not many companies that that make that and it’s it is quite quite a difficult place right now and uh I’m I’m absent from it because I just see these see tremendous value in other places where we’ve got drilled up resources at super cheap prices so I’m hoping to get
Back into the gold market um so we’ll see what happens I’m going to continue to look at look at gold Junior’s so and David your thoughts on gold and where the you see the equities positioned at present and I’d also like to get your thoughts on royalties if you
Think that’s an area that that presents a compelling value proposition you know I ironically we saw Franco Nevada stock kind of crater due to their exposure to the the mine in Panama where you know the whole point of investing in a royalty company is supposed to be so you
Spread the risk out but they add like 17% or something of all their royalties in Cobra pan Pama which in hindsight may have been a mistake so I’m wondering what you think about that situation in particular uh and gold equities and and perhaps uh touch on the royalties and
Then Warren I’d like to get your thoughts on on the royalties as well sure well I start with royalties I think that that is the one area in the precious metals Market that is over served by investment Capital there is a No Lack of capital available for Franco Nevada Wheaten precious Royal gold
Uh in investors uh sorry promoters could see that lineup of investors trying diff you know hard to get into to those equities taking the pees and the multiples to cash flow up to 30 to 50 times and uh so a couple of years ago they created a whole bunch of new
Royalty companies Mavericks and matala uh triple flag uh there were a whole host of Junior resource or Junior wealthy companies that followed in the wake of that that didn’t quite make it across the line and so for a brief moment there was this interesting Market where you had mid-tier royalty
Companies that were incredibly well valued and uh and and the big guys and and really uh not much else mavrick is now gone Nomad which was created during that period is is now gone and uh the pure the investor passion around small royalty companies has for the moment
Subsided I I think that that will change going forward I think for instance Mattel’s acquisition of Nova royalty was actually quite smart and and uh and and when investors re regain their enthusiasm for junior mid-tier royalty companies I think uh some of them will will perform quite well gold overall the
Gold equities are a tricky Market everyone seems to have missed the incredible move in Gold equities from the beginning of covid until the announcement of the vaccine if you blinked I suppose uh you could have missed it uh but it was the move that Drew the generalist into the space oil
Looked like it would trade for nothing for years as we stayed in lockdown and gold looked like it could go to the Moon as we printed money in order to keep people in uh food and Necessities while they were locked down and then very very abruptly that narrative changed and a
Lot of en’s money got stranded in that move and uh it has been clawing and scratching its way out of that market ever since along the way the gold Majors have been consolidating and putting inventory on the market as Newmont has now after taking over new Crest and
Reducing the number of competitors for projects and that isn’t a big problem because there aren’t a lot of great projects out there I can think of five or six really fantastic discoveries right now all of of of those discoveries have their issues but that’s about it there’s a quarter trillion dollars worth
Of market cap in in the gold producers some portion of that at least 25% of that in my view will be made available to refill the project pipeline you can already see it happening now with murders like uh caliber taking over marathon gold or uh the guys at Asino
Throwing in the towel and selling Twin Hills to uh to Dundee precious uh and uh and some of the gold Juniors some of the developing companies like I guess Nighthawk and Manita merging or Millennial and and Integra merging so uh I think that’s a very interesting market
And I think ultimately if we’re going into Decades of persistent inflation gold is a great investment and the gold equities have a a major bounce coming at some point but of course timing is always the tricky part right well Warren I’ll get your thoughts on the royalty space when it
Comes to Precious medals then let’s wrap things up so let us know your thoughts on on the royalties here and then um let the viewers know where they can find you online if they want to hear more from you okay well the best plac is for me is
On Twitter um on the gold royalties it’s been a it’s been a like I remember historically back in the 90s we had big us institutions playing the junior resource market and they had their heads handed to them so I think they’ve learned from that lesson and they they
Find that probably the U the safest way to play it is through the royalty companies that being said you know you know Franco made a a very rare misstep with or if it was their fault at all having too much exposure to COBRA Panama but in general the the royalties have
Have performed very well for you know big institutions that just don’t have the specialty to get to do the Deep Dives and it’s been a good performing part of the sector it’s safe it’s liquid so for a lot of a lot of players um it’s
Not a bad place to be so um for me it’s there’s not enough risk in it for me to uh to get too excited but it’s been a really good place for a lot of people and uh so I don’t really have a knock on them and I think in the future it’ll
It’ll continue to be a reasonably Safe Haven liquid safe and uh reasonably decent performance but if we have a rock and roll um bull market as David and I expect is overdue here at some point um I think uh the people are taking the higher risk will be the ones that make
The most money but royalties aren’t a bad spot to be they’re nice and they’re they’re generally reasonably safe perform reasonably well so for a lot of people that works for them great and Twitter is it’s Warren Irwin I will put a link to that in the description below
Uh David for people who want to hear more from you where’s the best place to go online no place well right here on the VC Channel perfect we’ve got the exclusive exclusive uh access this is it Jesse now I don’t I don’t have an online
Presence and uh and uh I I’m full of admiration for people who are willing to go out on social media and put their views out as Warren does but I would find that way too stressful so I do the odd podcast uh and uh and I’m grateful for the
Invitations yeah well it’s been an honor to have both of you on I learned a ton I know everybody watching did as well the mining space is a very tough business so getting Insight from experts such as yourself is of great help so thank you both so much for coming on the channel
And and sharing all of your knowledge