With gold surging to a new all-time high above $2,200/oz, it was definitely time for an update conversation with 321gold founder Bob Moriarty. Bob begins by asking me about my take on gold’s relentless rally and we proceed to discuss the unique market sentiment backdrop. Simply put, there is no historical analog for today’s gold, and gold mining sector market environment. Bob believes that sentiment on gold miners is at historical lows, meaning that the sector could see a ferocious rally. We also delve into the US elections, and some junior miners that are worth putting on the radar in 2024. Without further ado, Energy & Gold’s March 2024 conversation with Bob Moriarty!
Goldfinger:
Bob, it’s been a few months since we last spoke. I felt this was a really important time for us to have another conversation to delve into some of the opportunities out there. There is so much going on right now and it feels like a momentous time for gold and miners.
Bob Moriarty:
Great to speak with you. Typically you ask me questions, but today I want to ask you questions. What is going on?
Goldfinger:
What’s going on with what? With gold?
Bob Moriarty:
We’ve got gold going up $150/oz and nobody cares. I want you to tell me what’s going on with gold?
Goldfinger:
I’ll say that it’s one of the most unusual situations I have seen in my life. It might be the most unusual market, when you think about how extreme the move in Nvidia has been since the beginning of the year, to a more than $2 trillion market cap. NVDA has gained over $1 trillion in market cap in a few months. That is pretty obscene. I haven’t seen that before. I don’t think anybody has.
In terms of gold, I’m definitely not omniscient, but there is a lot of buying coming from China, and not just from the PBoC, but also from Chinese consumers. And I have a feeling that the market is very smart. The market is smarter than either you or I, and it is sensing what is to come.
And what is to come is a lot of monetary policy easing and QE, not just from the Fed, but other central banks such as the ECB and BoE. In addition to a very messy US presidential election 7-8 months from now. So that’s my guess, but the price action says the gold price is going up and the data continues to illustrate that nobody owns gold. In fact, I think more people own bitcoin today than own gold.
Bob Moriarty:
Strange enough. I think you’re right. Do you follow Jesse Felder?
Goldfinger:
Yes, I read some of his stuff.
Bob Moriarty:
He showed a chart recently that shows the flip side of the extreme bullish sentiment towards tech stocks today can be seen in extreme bearish sentiment towards commodities.
Now he’s got a chart that says 75% of advisors have little to no exposure to gold. And he’s got a chart of the price of gold compared to the total assets in gold ETFs and they’re going in opposite directions.
So I’m tempted to say that something big is going on.
Goldfinger:
Yeah, something’s going on. And we’ve been trained to see gold as an inverse of the US interest rate. And I think that thinking is wrong. I think it’s right during certain times, certain market structures, but it’s wrong during other times. And I wasn’t really alive in the 70s, but you were. And interest rates were a hell of a lot higher in the 70s when gold had a 2000% rally. So the fed funds rate can stay at 5% and gold can keep going up just like it did in the factors that are driving the price shift. The correlations shift. And we see markets shift correlations all the time. And most people get stuck in the past and, oh, it has to be that way. But it doesn’t stay that way forever.
Bob Moriarty:
Yeah, I agree. But the ratio of gold stocks to gold is for the third time in 1980, 2015. And now the sentiment against gold stocks is the lowest it’s been in 50 years. And I’ll tell you something that’s interesting because you followed the DSI. Have you watched the DSI lately on gold?
Goldfinger:
I haven’t watched it every day, but I’ve watched it every week. And yeah, I’ve noticed it stayed around 60 to 70 for an extended period.
Bob Moriarty:
Well, it did, but here we had that $40 move a week ago and the DSI shot up to 81 and it’s only 83 now. So I have said, I’m on record as saying I think we’re in for a big rally, and I think everything I see tells me it’s true.
Goldfinger:
Yeah, markets have changed a lot over the last 20 years since I got in the game. And in my opinion, one of the best sentiment indicators is Twitter, which is now called X. And especially if you have a highly followed account like I do, where if I tweet something, I get 20 comments in ten minutes and I get a lot of responses very quickly so I can test the waters in real time. And I’ve been surprised in the last couple of weeks how negative people continue to be, not only on gold, but especially on gold miners. And even last week, gold miners were up 2x the price of gold. The GDX was up almost 9% and gold was up 4.5%, which is a standard performance. If gold miners as a sector do 2x the price of gold, that’s a pretty good correlation.
But I’ve noticed that many investors are stuck in the past and they’re not able to adjust to the fact that this might be a new bull move and they’re not participating. I really don’t think anybody has any meaningful exposure to the gold mining sector, aside from maybe you and I.
Bob Moriarty:
Well, I think that’s wonderful. This is what’s called climbing the wall of worry. And the more negative it is and the longer it is, the higher gold will go.
Stocks are going to go up. But to the extent that, are the Chinese correct in assuming chaos is ahead? I think so, yes. This election cycle has already gone beyond insanity. The fiasco in Georgia is just unbelievable.
Goldfinger:
I would like to speak a little bit about what might transpire in the election later in the conversation. But first, can you search your memory and find any historical analog to what we have today, which is gold breaking out to all time highs, up $150 an ounce in a few days. Meanwhile, everybody hates the gold miners. And the gold miner to gold ratio is basically at or very close to the lowest it’s ever been.
Gold (Weekly)
Bob Moriarty:
No, there is no analog. I literally have been searching for it, and there is none. I was watching the market in the 1970s, we have never seen anything like this. But the fact that everybody hates gold stocks means that there are going to be a lot of stocks up 500% and a fair number of stocks up 1000%.
Goldfinger:
If you are a contrarian investor and you look at the cover of Barron’s this morning, literally this morning as we speak, the cover of Barron’s has a bull with two horns sticking up saying, stick with the bull. Stocks can keep rallying, stick with the tech sector. So Barron’s is telling you what the herd is thinking and how the herd is positioned. And essentially Barron’s is telling you what has happened already. The tech sector has gone up, everybody is aware of it. It’s obvious the valuations are astronomical. Yet the complete opposite of Nvidia and the magnificent seven is the mining sector, where it’s completely unloved. Valuations are at record lows, yet the metal is breaking out. It’s a surreal situation.
Bob Moriarty:
Strange enough, and I have seen that cover of Barron’s. In March of 2000, inmates in a jail in Baltimore were holding stock picking contests. And I told everybody that I knew, this is it, this is the top. I’ll tell you one better. Okay. Barron’s just came out with that. Did you follow Nvidia yesterday?
Goldfinger:
Yeah, I definitely did. That was quite a bearish reversal session.
Bob Moriarty:
Okay. It was down 12%. You got a $2 trillion stock, 12%. That is $240 billion.
Goldfinger:
It’s $240,000,000,000. And I’ll give you one better. The amount of market cap that Nvidia lost from its high yesterday in a few hours is actually more than the total market capitalization of the global gold mining industry.
Bob Moriarty:
That’s a really good analogy. And I wrote a piece a week ago and said that was going to happen. And the really strange thing is bitcoin is next, and I think when that happens there’s going to be a lot of money going into gold.
Goldfinger:
It’s interesting with bitcoin, because my brother messaged me telling me he bought a new Bitcoin ETF a week ago. He is a smart guy, he’s a world champion poker player, but he really likes crypto. And he is showing me his portfolio yesterday with the bitcoin ETF that he bought last week and how much it’s up. And I told him that it’s a contrarian indicator that you’re sending me that. But he thinks Bitcoin is going to $100,000 this year. So we have a little friendly wager as to whether that’s going to happen, I’ve got the under on $100,000 in 2024.
Bob Moriarty:
Of course, if you go back to the 22nd of February bitcoin was $51,000 and it went up to $69,000 yesterday, that is a 38% move. That is a sign of FOMO.
Goldfinger:
Okay, so let’s talk about the election. It’s funny because when Trump was getting kicked out office at the end of 2020, he said, watch, Biden’s going to crash the stock market. He’s going to be the worst president for the economy. And really, he couldn’t have been much more wrong. I mean, we can argue about, what has caused the stock market to go up, but at the end of the day, if I had Nvidia in my portfolio, I’d be a lot richer than I am today. And a lot of people made a lot of money on the stock market the last couple of years. Now, it might have been Biden’s dumb luck, but the fact is the stock market has done well with him.
With the election coming up and we are stuck, it seems, with the same two old men as candidates. Which president do you think is better for the stock market and which president is better for gold?
Bob Moriarty:
I don’t think that’s something that I’m qualified to talk about because I don’t make those kind of predictions. I think that gold is going to go up because of sentiment, and I think that the stock market fundamentals are the weakest I’ve ever seen. And I was in the market in the late 60s and 70s. We had the Nifty 50. We don’t even have the Nifty 50 now. Two weeks ago, they were talking about the Nifty-7, and that’s down to the Nifty-5. The stock market is on a banana peel and it has one foot in the grave. But that’s based on sentiment. Nvidia says somebody just flushed the toilet.
Goldfinger:
It’ll be interesting to see Monday what the market does and if Nvidia continues to go lower, because that would be a hell of a top signal, especially with the Barons covered this weekend. Every time there’s a bearish Friday, everybody says, oh, it’s going to be black Monday, 1987 all over again. It hasn’t been in 35 years, but one day it will be. And the setup is pretty good this time when you’re so overbought and you’re just coming off of an extreme overbought high and your leadership stocks are completely parabolic, insane valuations. The market could drop a lot in a very short period of time.
Bob Moriarty:
You haven’t mentioned yet there is something else except important happening Monday. Do you know what it is?
Goldfinger:
March 11th? No.
Bob Moriarty:
Yeah, March 11. Something bad is going to happen.
Goldfinger:
Something bad is going to happen where?
Bob Moriarty:
The Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) is ending.
Goldfinger:
Ah yes, that’s right. That’s the special purpose vehicle they put in place last March when they had the banking crisis.
Bob Moriarty:
Yeah. When they had last year’s banking crisis. You haven’t talked about this year’s banking crisis. I think it’s starting at 1am on Monday.
Goldfinger:
And that could also be part of what’s been driving gold. It’s possible, but, yeah, let’s talk about Trump and Biden and the absurdity. You’ve been consistent since we’ve been speaking years ago that this is the end of empire in the US. And I couldn’t think of a better example of end of empire than having these two stooges go at each other again for president. What do you make of it?
Bob Moriarty:
Well, strange, you know, you just said the whole thing. You could not have a better example. Now, here’s where I stand politically. I don’t like Trump. Okay? I think he’s a horrible person. Some of the things about the president I was okay with, like the border thing, but Biden is beyond corrupt. I mean, he’s so dirty. Hunter Biden is the perfect poster boy for the Biden empire. Hunter Biden’s picture belongs on the side of every milk carton and represents the Biden Campaign. That guy is just absolutely disgusting. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anybody as dirty. He was playing around with his brother’s former wife and he screwed around and he got a hooker pregnant. When he was out screwing around and buying his cocaine who was protecting him?
Goldfinger:
The secret service,
Bob Moriarty:
Of course, the amazing thing is, well, let’s talk about the border crisis, and that is a crisis. And I will make a prediction there. The idea of bringing in 20 or 25 million illegal immigrants is probably the dumbest thing I have ever seen any country do, much less the United States. So the Biden administration has taken a lot of flak. So they decided the way to get around the flak was not to talk about how many illegal immigrants were crossing every day. They flew 312,000 immigrants, illegal immigrants, into the United States. I’m just thinking, Jesus Christ, if I wrote this in a book, if I tried to make it into a movie, people would laugh at me, say, you’re being ridiculous.
So we’ve got Trump, we’ve got the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, the prosecutor in Georgia, the prosecutor in Washington, DC, using the legal system to bounce Trump out of the election. Now, we’ve talked about the 2020 election, and there’s lots of information out. Trump won the 2020 election. Now, I don’t care, but it was a stolen election. And that is obvious now where you can’t fix it when your FBI is totally corrupt. You can’t.
Goldfinger:
I agree with everything you said, including that I don’t like Trump, except for 2020 was not stolen. And I’ll tell you why. I voted for Trump in 2016, and he won. I voted for Biden in 2020, and he won. So the president I vote for is the one that wins. So I know it wasn’t stolen because I voted for Biden.
Bob Moriarty:
Who are you voting for?
Goldfinger:
I think I’m voting for Trump, but I don’t like it. But I think the illegal immigration and the catastrophe at the border, in the sanctuary cities has pushed me over the edge. And I have to vote against Biden because we need to restore some semblance of law and order. Some semblance of law and order. And what concerns me so much is we need immigration. It’s a country of immigration. My great grandfather got off the boat at Ellis Island in 1892, and he was an immigrant from Germany. It’s important, but it needs to happen with a structured legal process. It cannot be illegal from the get go, because then you have a context of illegal activity, of cheating, of stealing. There’s no respect for law and order. And so that’s what’s happening in this country.
The respect for law and order, of the rule of law is being lost. And that is the end of a great country. That is the end of a government. All the countries that are a mess today, look at Haiti. Even Ukraine had a lot of corruption. And unfortunately Ukraine is paying a very dear price for that. You cannot have corruption in the government rampant, and unfortunately that’s where the US is heading.
Bob Moriarty:
You’re dead wrong. It’s far worse than that, okay? You just barely touched on it. Do you know, in the Spanish civil war, the term was “the fourth column.”
Goldfinger:
I vaguely recall that it was a sabotage group.
Bob Moriarty:
Yes, that’s very much it. It’s people who snuck into a town with the intent of doing harm, and the fourth column was saboteurs and terrorists, as it were.
I spent six years in the Marine Corps. I spent almost two years in Vietnam. I was in a lot of combat. You’ve got ten or 20 million illegal immigrants who have money and cell phones now. That would be the easiest thing in the world to organize. Okay. And somebody’s going to do it.
Goldfinger:
Somebody’s going to do what?
Bob Moriarty:
Somebody’s going to organize the illegal immigrants and they’re going to turn them into terrorists. The illegals were brought into the country with the intent to destroy the US and what better way than to create fifty or a hundred thousand terrorists.
Goldfinger:
It was very concerning, I don’t know if you saw, but Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan both interviewed the same guy in recent weeks. His name is Brett Weinstein, and he was talking about the border crossings in Panama from South America to Central America. And it’s a very well planned out journey that starts in Ecuador, and the Chinese have separate camps from the rest of the people making the journey through Central America. And it’s very well thought out, very premeditated. It’s an invasion of the United States at the southern border. Most concerning is that these are not people who aspire to American ideals, who want to adopt the American culture, who respect American history and the US government. They are here for other reasons, and we can only suspect what those reasons are.
Bob Moriarty:
No, we know what the reasons are. You know what the mayor of New York wants to do?
Goldfinger:
What does he want to do? I don’t even know what he wants to do.
Bob Moriarty:
He wants to give all the illegal immigrants $10,000 cash.
Goldfinger:
(laughs hysterically)
Bob Moriarty:
It’s not funny, okay? He pointed out that if he gives all these illegal immigrants $10,000 cash, they’ll spend it on the local economy.
Goldfinger:
Yeah, but where does the money come from?
Bob Moriarty:
Oh, shit. You had to ask that.
Goldfinger:
Yeah. It’s a redistribution of wealth. We are really moving to full-blown socialism and communism. It is this sort of thinking and mindset that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. It led to famines in so many countries throughout history. It’s wealth redistribution that damages and destroys the fabric of society. It’s been proven to not work.
Bob Moriarty:
Yes.
Goldfinger:
It’s been proven to not work. I was talking with a friend of mine about the Bolshevik revolution, 1917, and about how they did a reeducation program in the schools. And I feel like the university system in the United States has undergone the same reeducation program in the last ten years, where the liberal ideology is just infested, like these students at Harvard, they support Hamas.
Bob Moriarty:
I’m going to correct you there. There is a difference between supporting Palestinians and supporting Hamas. And clearly, what has happened in Gaza is horrible.
Goldfinger:
It’s horrible on all accounts. And it’s an extension of a no win losing situation, period. Since 1917, I guess. Right. The Balfour declaration. But, I think some of them support Hamas. It’s not just supporting Palestinians and the right to life. They support terrorism on Israelis because they view them as colonizers and settlers.
Bob Moriarty:
Well, to the extent that everything we’re being told about the conflict is a lie. Now, while I do not support the attack on October 7, it was perfectly legal. According to the law and the Geneva Convention, when you are holding people in a concentration camp, they have a right to resist. Now, some of the things that were being told, such as Israel has a right of self defense. The International Court of Justice ruled ten years ago that as an occupying power, Israel does not have a right of self defense because what is happening because of their behavior. Now, the largest newspaper in Israel came out on October 8 of it. I’m going to read this to you, came out on October eighth. Haaretz, Israel’s most respected newspaper, straight out stated that the Israeli government is solely responsible for what happened, for denying the rights of Palestinians. And that’s correct. So I regret the fact that 1200 people lost their lives, but at the same time, it was perfectly legal from an international Geneva convention point of view.
Goldfinger:
And you could say that a lot of countries are occupying territory that’s not theirs. Right? Obviously. Look at Russia. They’re occupying territory that’s not theirs right now. But the Hamas terrorist attacks on women and children, the raping, these are barbarians and they have to be eliminated And so I think Israel is doing what they have to do for their country to survive. You cannot negotiate with terrorists, and the terrorists are still holding Israeli hostages.
Bob Moriarty:
Yeah, but that’s the key.
Do you remember the provision in the Balfour document about the right of the non-Jews?
Goldfinger:
No.
Bob Moriarty:
Okay. The Balfour document says that the right of the inhabitants of Palestine were not to be infringed. Okay. The United Nations in 1947 said that there will be two independent countries Israel has raped, looted and plundered for almost 80 years.
And strange enough, what you’re talking about, on October 7, most of the people who were killed on October 7, were actually killed by the IDF under the Hannibal doctrine, Hamas had no intent whatsoever of going out killing a lot of people. What Hamas wanted to do was take hostages. Do you have any idea, and you need to know this if you’re going to argue this, how many hostages Israel is holding?
Goldfinger:
Oh, I’m sure thousands.
Bob Moriarty:
9.000. Okay, so Hamas wanted hostages. They didn’t want to kill people. The people who were killed on October 7, the Jews that were killed by tanks, and they were killed by attack helicopters. And I feel terrible for them.
Goldfinger:
There are videos of barbaric acts, raping women, killing elderly. I think it’s ridiculous to state that Hamas didn’t want to kill people on October 7th. There are certainly a lot of flashpoints in the world today. No shortage of them.
But I do want to transition here, I do want to talk about junior mining before we wrap up the conversation. One of the most prominent themes that I see for the next decade are metals, and specifically the only two metals we need – the red metal and the yellow metal. The yellow metal is gold, as a timeless store of value, as a wealth preservation tool. And then the red metal, copper, which is something that is the metal of human progress. It’s the metal of the EV revolution. It’s the metal of electricity transmission. It’s used in everything from aerospace to automobiles to transmission lines, plumbing, and houses. Copper is essential to life.
I don’t know if you’ve seen my presentation from the January Metals Investor Forum in Vancouver, it lays out why I believe the bullish case for copper and gold are extremely compelling. Some of these slides that I highlighted show the tremendous copper deficit that the world is facing over the coming years. And actually, 2024 was supposed to be a year of surplus in copper. However, because Cobre Panama was shuttered, the big copper porphyry mine in Panama, was shut down by the government, it swung copper into deficit. Cobre Panama’s annual production was basically 2% of global copper supply, and that was taken offline with that one mine. There have been several other mines that have had shortfalls and been put out of operation in recent months. So we’re at a roughly 500,000 metric tonne deficit in 2024. In 2025, that’s going to go to 700,000 metric tonnes, and it will continue to expand for the rest of the decade.
To put that into perspective for readers, 700,000 metric tonnes of copper is basically $7 billion worth of copper. There’s not many mines in the world that can come close to that kind of scale. So we’re going to need multiple mega mines to come online in the coming years to even come close to addressing this deficit. So one of my themes absolutely, in junior mining is copper. Copper exploration companies that are hunting for these big copper porphyries, and especially in North America, Canada and the US, where at least we still seem to have some rule of law. And the government’s put a priority on copper and other metals that are, quote unquote, critical for the energy transition. So I was wondering if you had any copper juniors at the top of your head that you’re excited about that you own in your portfolio today.
Bob Moriarty:
Well, you’ve highlighted some very good copper stocks in some of your recent presentation at the Metals Investor Forum. But I’ll say I think the best polymetallic project in the world today (zinc, silver, lead, tin, copper etc.) is Eloro Resources (TSX-V:ELO, OTC:ELRRF) with its Iska Iska Project in Bolivia. And I should point out, I’m glad you brought up Panama. Mexico, Panama, Peru and Ecuador have gotten pretty stupid lately. Bolivia is actually one of the better places to do business now. But Eloro has a two billion tonne project and they recently published some drill results including 136 meters grading 57.62 g/t silver, 1.26% zinc, 0.94% lead and 0.12% tin. So I think there are some good projects in the works and we will need mega-deposits like Iska Iska to meet the demand.
A better pure copper play might be Libero Copper (TSX-V:LBC, OTC:LBCMF) in Colombia. Frank Giustra just took 19.2% of the company and is bringing in new management. They have a good copper story with a current resource of 635 million tonnes of 0.45% Cu Eq. It’s big but low grade and if you like the future price of copper you want the leverage a lower grade deposit gives you. Libero has a tiny market cap.
Libero Copper (Daily)
People are beginning to wake up to the fact that we’ve been sold a bill of goods as far as the energy transition, and electric vehicles. Electric vehicles don’t work. They pollute more. The electricity most of the time comes from fossil fuels. They’re expensive, and they don’t work in summertime because there’s not enough electricity because of the heat. They don’t work in wintertime because of the cold.
So many of the things that people have been operating on for the last five to ten years are absolute fiction. It is fiction that there is a climate change emergency. They used to call it global cooling, and then they turned it to global warming. Then they turned it into climate change. How can you argue with climate change? Well, the climate has been changing for four and a half billion years, and it’s going to continue to change. But we’ve been sold a bill of goods by the globalists who literally want to take control of the useless eaters. That’s you and me. And by 2030, we will own nothing and we will be happy. That’s the definition of a slave.
Goldfinger:
Yeah, I agree with you. There’s a difference between climate change and global warming. And, I mean, obviously there’s always climate change. There’s always been climate change. But going back to copper, and the energy metals theme. I like Eloro for its scale potential, absolutely, that’s a good one. But that’s more polymetallic, where you have silver, lead, zinc, tin, copper, you have a broad suite of metals at Iska Iska. A new discovery was made in Idaho last year, October 2023, at the Hercules project in southwestern Idaho. It caught the attention of major mining firms, and Barrick Gold (NYSE:GOLD, TSX:ABX) jumped on this one and invested $30 million in a junior called Hercules Silver (TSX-V:BIG, OTC:BADEF). This project, Hercules, had formerly been a silver primary project with sniffs of copper in soils. But it turns out the silver, the near surface silver, was an extension of the deeper porphyry system.
Before 2022, nobody had figured that out what Hercules was able to uncover with a 3D IP survey that was able to see deeper down and see this chargeability anomaly. In 2022, Hercules did an IP survey over a smaller portion of the property and that’s what they used to guide their deeper drilling that led to the discovery hole in 2023.
A property-wide 3D IP survey was completed to depths of nearly 1,000 meters in 2023, and as it turns out it’s a much more expansive system than was previously understood. Hercules is going to be hunting for the early mineral porphyry core in 2024 drilling. So they’re going to get started drilling in a couple of months there in Idaho with three or four diamond drill rigs, and they’re going to be drilling some pretty deep holes targeting this porphyry system.
And actually, if you pull up the company news from February, they published some silver intercepts from the end of their 2023 program, and there are some really high grade silver intercepts there (HER-23-17: 11.3 Meters of 1,660 g/t silver, 0.7% lead, 1.75% zinc). So you have this multi-kilo silver in certain parts of the system at shallower depths, between surface and about 200 meters depth.
Deeper down they have this bornite enriched portion where the copper grades go up to as high as 2%. In the discovery hole 23-05, they intercepted 45 meters grading 1.94% copper, 111ppm molybdenum, and 8.2 g/t silver. That was what got everybody excited last year, 2% copper grades in a porphyry system are pretty special, and especially in Idaho!
As a longtime reader of 32gold, I remember you talking about Bayhorse Silver (TSX-V:BHS, OTC:BHSIF) a while ago. And what’s interesting about Bayhorse is they’re across the border, the state border. There’s a state border there between Idaho and Oregon, separated by the Snake River. Bayhorse has what could be a portion of the extension of this new porphyry trend. Maybe this is the beginning of a whole new copper porphyry belt in the US. Previously we thought that all the copper porphyries had been found by now in the US, obviously in Utah, in Arizona.
But this could be a new belt, and there is a land rush underway. Bayhorse even added come claims on the Idaho side of the Snake River in December, and recently announced some encouraging geophysical survey results.
This is a really exciting time, and I think this new American copper belt story is an important one to follow this year.
Bob Moriarty:
Let me point something out. I’m looking at a chart of Hercules, and Hercules went from $.25 to $1.62 in a few months. Now it has dropped back down, but that happens every year.
BIG.V (Daily)
And the strange thing is, I own a lot of Bayhorse here, and I was going to mention there’s a fair chance, I’m not going to say a good chance there. It’s a fair chance that Bayhorse has the same kind of potential as Hercules.
Goldfinger:
Hercules is definitely the first mover at the center of the action, but this is going to be something that takes several years to play out. A lot of exploration work has to be done to really get a better understanding of this system, including the age dating of the rocks and correlation the geochemistry with the geophysics. Barrick is helping Hercules with some of this age dating, and modeling. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s similar age to some of the other porphyries in that trend that goes up to BC. As a 15% shareholder of Hercules, Barrick is very much aligned with Hercules and they have seconded several of their top porphyry geos to Hercules for this drilling season.
Bob Moriarty:
There’s a lot of potential there. But what I’ll say is, across the board, there’s more opportunity now in commodities and natural resources than I’ve seen in 30 years.
Goldfinger:
Is that because of the valuations or because of the technology that’s being put to work to make new discoveries?
Bob Moriarty:
Well, technology is important, but we have seen the biggest sentiment indicator I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s going to be a bull market that literally goes on for years and it’s going to include all commodities. You were talking about copper, zinc is not nearly as important, but the fact is it’s in big time shortage, too.
Goldfinger:
Yeah, because I don’t think anybody’s making money at a $1.10 zinc price. As we know, the cure for low prices is low prices. And we could also talk about platinum and palladium, and we’re seeing many mines get shut down in South Africa and Australia. That will help to rebalance the PGMs market. It’s one of the hardest metals to mine at a profit. But from an investment standpoint, I think platinum at $900 is a pretty solid bet long term.
Bob Moriarty:
Well, short term, medium term and long term, platinum at $900 is a gimme.
Goldfinger:
I’ve been a buyer of physical platinum recently. Palladium is a bit trickier, and physical premiums for palladium are usually larger. Bob, thanks so much for your time and insights today, until next time!
Disclosure: Author owns shares of Eloro Resources and Hercules Silver Corp. at the time of publishing this interview and may choose to buy or sell at any time without notice. For a list of sponsors of 321gold click here.
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Disclaimer
The article is for informational purposes only and is neither a solicitation for the purchase of securities nor an offer of securities. Readers of the article are expressly cautioned to seek the advice of a registered investment advisor and other professional advisors, as applicable, regarding the appropriateness of investing in any securities or any investment strategies, including those discussed above. The companies mentioned in this article are high-risk venture stocks and not suitable for most investors. Consult company’s SEDAR profiles for important risk disclosures.
EnergyandGold.com, EnergyandGold Publishing LTD, its writers and principals are not registered investment advisors and advice you to do your own due diligence with a licensed investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.
This article contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation (collectively “forward-looking statements”). Certain information contained herein constitutes “forward-looking information” under Canadian securities legislation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “expects”, “believes”, “aims to”, “plans to” or “intends to” or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results “will” occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, standard transaction risks; impact of the transaction on the parties; and risks relating to financings; regulatory approvals; foreign country operations and volatile share prices. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. The views expressed in this publication and on the EnergyandGold website do not necessarily reflect the views of Energy and Gold Publishing LTD, publisher of EnergyandGold.com. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that are incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws. Always thoroughly do your own due diligence and talk to a licensed investment adviser prior to making any investment decisions. Junior resource companies can easily lose 100% of their value so read company profiles on www.SEDAR.com for important risk disclosures. It’s your money and your responsibility.