I toured the floor. Saw a few friends. Had a few chats. Looked at Goliath’s very impressive core. Left.
The bull pictured above was in the back of the hall. Other years it was the focal point of a constellation of booths belonging to Zimtu (ZC.V) affiliated companies and each sporting a bright cylinder of light with their name. Clever because the cylinder was just an Ikea standing lamp with a vinyl shade.
At later conferences, as you came in you hit the Yukon Gultch with the couple of dozen Yukon exploration and mining companies taking pride of place. But after the collapse of the heap at Victoria Gold’s Eagle mine the Yukon gov’t is scrambling for money. So, while Tara Christie manned her Banyan Gold (BYN.V) booth, the Yukon government was notable for its absence.
From what I could see, attendance was solid this year. Lots of people looking for investment opportunities and plenty of people happy to listen to “experts” on everything from selling puts to the geopolitical macros which influence the junior market in subtle ways. And there were plenty of junior, and not so junior, companies with booths.
Yes, the VRIC audience remains primarily male and “older”. These are not your crypto dudes or tech bros. And they are the most patient, optimistic, people on the planet. They have to be. Here’s the Venture Exchange for the last 20 years:
Since 2011 the Venture has just bumped along the bottom while precious and base metal prices have risen significantly.
The disconnect between the price of various metals and the share prices of junior resource companies is huge and growing. Why? Will there ever be a reconnect?
A very nice, and remarkably tall, young chap at the Goliath (GOT.V) booth was keen to pitch me on the virtues of the company. He patiently explained that they had just got assays back on a set of holes on their Golddigger Property located in BC’s Golden Triangle. And he showed me a piece of core wonderfully peppered with grains of visible gold.
After I asked he did allow that their drill season ran from the end of June until, if they were lucky, October. But they were planning on running six drills. All flown in and serviced by helicopter. The share price popped $0.30 on the news and there was more news to come as they are waiting for assay results on 89 of 105 holes drilled last season.
Well worth taking a look at. Significant shareholders include Crescat Capital, Mr. Eric Sprott, Mr. Rob McEwen and a Global Commodity Group based in Singapore; Dr. Quinton Hennigh is a technical advisor. Sure, the project is in the back of beyond but there is a surprising amount of infrastructure left over from the days when Kitsault was a significant moly play. There is even a high voltage line which crosses the property.
Which is, I suppose, the point of conferences like VRIC. The trouble is separating the wheat from the chaff. The well-earned excitement around GOT meant that people crowded around the booth and that, in turn, meant people who had never heard of GOT gathered round too.
Part of the frustration of conferences like VRIC is that while you can shake the CEO’s hand, he or she can only discuss what has already been released to the public. An extreme form of that was my breakfast with my friend Graeme O’Neill of Bayhorse Silver (BHS.V). Because we talk often by phone I am aware of a lot of activity in the background which, until it is press released, Graeme cannot discuss directly. Or, even more frustratingly, indirectly. He could not tell me what the geos logging the core and sending it for assay were seeing. If the core was XRFed Graeme was certainly not going to share those results without a press release. Big players interested? O’Neill could neither confirm nor deny. Which is a microcosm of the entire conference routine. (It was, however, an excellent breakfast.)
A couple of people I spoke with referred to cycles and capital flows and catalysts which I have been hearing about for years. My sense is that analysis is pretty much over. What will move the junior market off the bottom is when the general market realizes that there are actual shortages of physical copper, silver, tin, zinc and that gold production and availability is under stress.
For a long time the markets for physical metals have been muffled by the existence of the “paper” markets where actually delivering the metal rarely happens. Until it does. Back in 2021 the London Metals Exchange effectively ran out of tin. It was not a financial manoeuvre, it was an actual absence of tin with no supply in the offing. The price of tin went through the proverbial roof and my lovely wife made a bit of a killing in her TFSA with an obscure tin development stock. Now, to be fair, the tin market is tiny and thinly traded. But so is the silver market and, indeed, the gold market.
The tin squeeze was not widely reported and it certainly didn’t bring many eyes to the junior market. A silver squeeze or a zinc shortage might be significant enough for the general market to pay attention.
(Disclaimer: I hold shares in Bayhorse Silver and Banyan Gold. I am looking seriously at Goliath. This is not investment advice. Do your own due diligence. Call the CEO.)