Over 20 different CEO and executive interviews, my first 1 on 1 segment with the audience and the best parts of the VRIC all wrapped up into one audio experience. Behind Success episode 24 is unlike no other. Listen now to hear everything you need to know about the markets and where your money should be right now.
The other week, my partner, Lucas and I attended the VRIC. All in all, it was a great experience and I had a blast meeting all the people I met there. We would like to thank Jay Martin and Cambridge house for hosting the conference. It was a wonderful experience. We would also like to thank Coppercorp, Goldline Resources, Canstar resources, metallum resources, galantis gold, discovery group, Fidelity minerals, fortune bay, aguila copper, aston bay, altaley mining, radisson mining resources, aris gold, atico mining corp, liberty gold, western exploration, standard uranium, discovery silver and hot chili limited for giving us the opportunity to speak with them.
If there’s one piece of advice about being successful in the mining industry, what would it be? This is a question I asked all the people I interviewed. (Must listen to hear these answers)
Overall, the speakers were amazing. Guys like Robert Kiyosaki, Stephen Harper and so on.. All were fantastic to hear. However, personally I enjoyed Rick Rule, Tavi Costa, Jamie Keech and Amir Adnani share their knowledge.
You can tell Rick was always meant to be a successful guy when you hear him speak. He’s passionate, he knows what he wants to say and how to say it correctly. The leadership qualities are very present when he speaks.
He opened his speech with the following remarks.
“Things that are unpopular are often good, things that are popular from a financial perspective are almost always bad. Warren Buffett says that he became a billionaire by being brave when others are afraid, and being afraid when others are brave. Take that to heart. People look for a sure thing which is ok but there aren’t any, life is a series of probabilities. So if what you’re waiting for is a sure thing, you adopt an investing methodology that goes like this: ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, at some point in time you must fire in order to buy low so you can sell high. When the majority of the probability is on your side, you need to act and if the majority is an overwhelming majority, as Buffett says, don’t just bet, bet big. There is no certainty. The search for certainty is procrastination.”
He then proceeded to advocate for silver throughout his speech.
Shortly after, I attended Jamie and Tavi’s speaker hall with Jay Martin to hear some of their favorite picks.
Jamie started by sharing some of his investment principles and what has made Inventa so successful.
“Really nobody cared about mining stocks, nobody cared about gold, copper or lithium. We allocated I think about $20 million that year and the deals that we did that year were are biggest returns ever and that was because it was in a market where everyone was hating stocks. I’m seeing us back there for the first since then and the best opportunities we’ve seen over the last 2 or 3 years. What I’m excited about to a degree I’m a little bit commodity agnostic. Were in gold, were in lithium, were in copper, were in uranium. What we look for are really talented, proven management teams. People that have done exactly what they say they are going to do on multiple occasions. We look for good assets, typically we stay away from super grassroots exploration. We’re looking for a real asset that underpins their valuation. Were seeing a lot of that right now. Assets that are known, sometimes proven, and are getting no love from the markets. And more than ever today, we are looking at companies that have cash in the bank. Probably if you guys are invested in junior exploration companies, you’ve seen your portfolios hit between 20-40, maybe negative 50%. A lot of those companies will not have money right now. A lot of them are going to have to go back to the market and a lot of them are going to be doing very diluted financings. When we are repositioning cash in our portfolio right now, we are repositioning in names that we don't anticipate will have to be doing a financing. At least in the next 6 months, preferably in the next 12 months.”
Tavi Costa then proceeded to explain what Crescat capital is doing with their portfolio right now.
“Part of our portfolio is in inflationary assets, so we own a very large portion of metals, exploration assets is a very large portion of that, energy is a big one as well, uranium as well. But I think the large ones have to do with capital allocation that is happening through this under investment thesis that I think everyone is starting to catch on. Really most of the flows have been from chasing those sexy software names, so we’ve been shorting a lot of those names right now. Our goal is to find the most asymmetric bets in the commodity space, intangible assets as a way of also hedging the other side of it being short on equity markets. We’re low on the dollar, below it or not, vs the chinese yuan and the hongkong dollar. That’s been a great way to create some funding for us and re-allocate that capital into precious metals mostly. We think precious metals continue to be very attractive. The thesis is intact, everything is great about gold and silver. Things have not unfolded just yet. If you think about the same thesis for energy since 12 months ago it was just as strong as it is right now. I think we’re going to see an exploration age where the majors are going to need to replenish their production lines and they will be looking for high quality assets. So most of our capital is chasing those assets.”
It was obvious walking into the VRIC, that most people would be boasting about how investing in resources is your best bet right now. That didn’t come as a surprise. However, one of the metals that I didn’t realize that the majority of people had a bullish outlook on was uranium.
Amir Adnani, CEO and founder of Uranium Energy corp was one of the most intelligent people I listened to at the conference. Rick Rule had also vouched saying that he was one of the people he’s betting on. Hearing him voice his opinions in a way where you are almost forced to agree with him. He was on the speaker panel alongside David Garofalo and Alastair Still and shared why he is the biggest uranium fan. Many others advocated for uranium as well throughout the conference.
“We’re not diversified, I repeat, we are not diversified. That’s probably bad because every investment advisor would tell you to be diversified but it’s difficult to be that as an entrepreneur. My largest holdings are right up here on this panel with gold royalties with gold mining with uranium energy and uranium royalty. I’m not making it up when I say I’m a big believer in the two yellow metals but I also see the greatest value there. As David talked about this inflationary environment that we’re in. I never once was attracted to the idea of investing in crypto currency because I believe in hard assets and I can’t think of a more strategic asset class to own than uranium, its a depleting commodity, its being used for electricity generation that’s emission free and the uranium price its still trading below incentive price levels. That’s an asset class that’s going to go up in value.”
Of course, Robert Kiyosaki was a must listen to. Jay was getting to the bottom of it and asked him what his portfolio looks like right now.
“I own no stocks or bonds because after I took that company public, that little chinese company public on the Toronto stock exchange. As they say, once you see how the make sausage, you don’t eat sausage. I’m completely a hard asset guy, I own oil wells. When people look at inflation, the economy runs on energy, so I own oil wells.
To wrap up my favorite parts of the speeches I attended, the first one I listened to with Rick Rule, Brent Cook and Jeff Clark got interesting at the end when Jay asked them how to stay in the venture game in both bear and bull markets.
Rick opened and said, “bear markets are sales, bull markets are traps. You make money buying low and selling high. You can’t buy low in a bull market, you can’t sell high in a bear market. Take your instinct and do exactly the opposite. Have the guts to be brave when others are afraid, and for christ sakes be afraid when others are brave.”
Jeff then proceeded to say, “Cash. If you have lots of cash, you can whether through something. The issue for me is that, is the bull market really over? I’m looking at the big picture, if it’s still intact I just look at low prices as low prices. Buying opportunities.”
Lastly, Brent said, “If your thesis is such and such, and that starts to go wrong, bail. Get out of these junior exploration stocks. When your thesis goes from X to hope, you’ve 9 out of 10 times lost your money. By sticking with an investment thesis and understanding what a company is looking for, or what it needs to progress their thesis is really key to making money in this sector. When to sell, when to add to it, that’s been key to me.”
From what I attended, that was what I found the most interesting parts. I hope you enjoyed this short-style type of episode where I do a 1 on 1. Probably won’t be doing too many of these but thought it would be a good way to wrap up the VRIC and what I learned. As many of these investors advocated, buying under appreciated assets is your best bet. To hear the stories of multiple juniors, just keep listening, you may notice something attractive. All interviews were done by me, and are short and easy to listen to. Hope you enjoy. Thanks again for listening. (Must listen to hear other interviews)
Thanks again Cambridge House and Jay Martin.
To listen https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/behind-success/id1515072872?i=1000565425600
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