Right, there's so much going on in in the market today.
We, we sat down, we started writing out our show notes to
the usual weekly wrap style of episode.
And I got AI got a message on WhatsApp from our good friend
Ferg, Ferg Cullen, trader Ferg, as he might be known.
And I, I turned to you and I was like, should we just call Ferg
and see if he wants to join us for and we'll just have a chin
wag about a whole range of stuff.
And he said, yeah, let's do it. Called Ferg.
He said, Yep, 3 hours later, this is what's happening where
we, we had brought Fergie in and money miners.
I hope you enjoy it. It's not the usual week.
We wrapped a bit more broad, but I just just, it was kind of the
conversation that I felt like we all needed to, to have an ear
out And I tried to figure he's always so thoughtful about
things. He says things simply and I, I'm
drawn to him. Let's jump to it.
I'm so I was so glad to get your message this, this morning
because, yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean, like the, the, the China
R&B thing. I almost feel like, you know,
speak speaking into a, an empty room.
But everyone acknowledges that this is a an important thing,
important thing to talk about, but everyone's too scared to
actually say it themselves. But you, you might, you're
unrestrained. You don't work for anyone.
You're happy to, you're happy to put your controversial opinions
out there into the abuse as well, which which is why I was
excited to get your message. But I technically work for a
little guy downstairs and nappies.
And my wife, she's got pretty, pretty high expectations.
Yeah. What were you thinking like?
What were you thinking? Like just just reading the news
of the last few days mate? Oh, I don't know, I'm like, so
I'm so like glad to see some stuff start to work and then I'm
so confused when I see other stuff fly like it's has this
like for craziness. Like I've obviously been a
uranium bull for a while and I was just looking at URA.
Did you know nearly 1/4 of that entire index.
This is just the what is it? What's that new startup is that?
Oclo. OCLO is 20% of the entire ETF.
So that thing is a $21 billion market cap US.
It's marching. It's like it's, it's marching
towards Kamiko. Like, yeah, that's, yeah,
remarkable. Yes, so you've got this like the
then you can Oh God, you can. I get hate every time I mention
it, but you've got like USUEC and like Energy Fuels and like,
it's fine if someone's playing that game, but like energy
Fuels, like just what? Just over a hundred 100,000 lbs.
It's trading nearly 8 billion market cap.
We're in such a weird time where there's this like, and then and
then I get like, yeah, there's the whole like everyone's lined
up for the next MP materials deal.
And yeah, I'm just like happy I'm making money.
But I'm so confused and so like kind of scatty with so, so much
of the stuff I'm saying ripping. I'm like God, like this could
all. There's a whole lot of bugs
heading towards like a big, I guess you call like inflationary
windshield. Like there's a whole lot of
stuff that doesn't make sense. The, the FOMO feeling around
this market is really interesting.
I'm not sure about you guys, but it it's not actually not
terrible, terribly bad inside of me because I, I do feel like
I've missed out on some stuff, but all the other crap that I'm
holding is, is kind of doing well as well.
So it, you know, it sort of ways off and you come out of that
like, oh, you know, the, you know, those things like perhaps
in the tin world going really well, a whole bunch of names
there. And you know, I don't, I don't
hold any of them at the moment and I'm not actually too gutted
about it because all this other stuff like all the gold names
are just ripping tremendously. Are you guys feeling the sort of
same? Yeah, I feel, I feel, I feel
you, you know, you know, that that bull market thing that
happens, it's like the more, the more prices go up, the more
conviction you have when you should have the other way around
like you should be. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I definitely
am noticing that in myself at the moment.
So a tricky a tricky 1 to contend with.
Yeah, there's My Portfolio. Like I kind of joke like exactly
what you just said, JD. Like I've I've had a whole lot
of kind of like mistakes that I've just like hidden away in
the corner of the portfolio. And now I've like actually had
the sort of the RIP to go and clean up a lot of the weeds that
I'm like embarrassed, like looking at some of these junior
miners that I've thrown a few K on.
And now I can kind of make for the exit with sort of break even
after watching just a horrific draw down the last two years.
Whereas other stuff I'm like, yeah, really, really comfortable
just having super heavy positions and like like actual
physical commodities, like I'm having like a like, I think
since I last came on with you boys, like I went really heavy,
like platinum and rhodium. Yeah.
And that just keeps like taking up more and more crowd and
everything else out in the portfolio and, and everyone like
it's probably the most common message I get.
Is it time to trim? Is it time to trim?
Like people send me photos of Subarnier or even just physical
platinum and I'm always like sell to buy.
What? Like, I agree if you're going
to, if you're going to dump it and you're going to go into
some, I don't know, some heated corner of like oil or coal.
But if you're just freaking out because it's starting to run
like some of the gold, like I think gold's still cheap, but
everyone, yeah, everyone's like freaking out at the chart going
vertical. Yeah, we don't know, like we
don't know what to do when when something goes up like, you
know, 3-4, five, 100% because, because, yeah, for like 15 years
I've been convinced that that those are those are not actual
paradigm shifts or, or, you know, like they're just, they're
just commodity cycles, but. But that stuff we just bitch
about because that happens in the tech world, but it doesn't
actually happen in in the mining space.
So it's a bit sort of hard to, to grapple with.
I'm, I'm keen to jump into a whole bunch of different names,
but why don't we talk a bit about China first?
Because I think that sort of creates the setting.
And, and Trev, you did a bit of a write up on what's happening
with, with BHB and Ferg. You've, you've written about a
similar type dynamic with regards to Russia and and China
sort of settling trades in RnB. So why don't we kick it off
there? Yeah, mate.
Well, I think like the the, the context for, for the case I
wrote this week was sitting the scene a few a few months back.
Word is they put out this short piece about so-called, you know,
commercial dispute between BHP and China Mineral Resources
Group or CMIG, China's new state backed iron ore buyer.
At the time the issue was said to be over Jimmy bar fines
specific to to that one product. A commercial dispute about the
blend, the pricing differentials, impurities,
etcetera. Like that kind of framing of a,
of a of a tug of war, nothing political, just just business
right. And then late September,
Bloomberg reported that the Chinese mills had been told to
stop buying BHP cargoes all together, or at least the ones
under the influence of CMRG. So the the commercial dispute
was at that point starting to look like a freeze out, I
thought. And, and yeah, like my
interpretation of this was, was sort of evolving.
I, I found it like fascinating. We spoke about on the podcast.
I remember making a statement like, it's going to be
interesting to see who caves here.
My, my, my theory about who that would be.
But for two weeks, like, you know, there was, there was
nothing, nothing in the public domain.
No, like the story just kind of vanished.
Like Friday afternoon. We'd just gone single Industry
wire article, you know, pops up in steel orbits says that BHP
has agreed to a, to a new arrangement, effectively
settling 30% of its spot iron ore sales to China in RMB
instead of U.S. dollars. And that was it.
There was, you know, that Industry Wire kind of briefly
did the rounds on, on Twitter. I remember it just getting a bit
of a spotlight there. So I thought not I see, I see it
on Twitter over the weekend. I'm thinking this is this is a
big deal. And we come into the office on
Monday, JD, and like, one of the things we do every weekday is we
compile, you know, the big stories into a daily note.
And I'm I'm looking everywhere and they're like the mainstream
press for for an article about this.
Like, where's the coverage from Reuters or Bloomberg or the
Finn? Nothing.
All that's out there is still this like this steel Orbis
industry wire, like the, you know, everyone's absent on it.
And so we put the steel obvious link in there in the director
special. Yeah.
And and I think we're just like then reflecting on like, why is
there no coverage of this? What the hell is going on?
Putting a few kind of like, yeah, like having a few
conversations with a few different people with different
insights in in there. I've become, I became like just
over the next few hours after that, just increasingly
convinced that there was something here like first
verified. But this is true.
It's not just like a, a, a rogue, you know, industry wire
thing. So verified it is true.
And then verified that like no one's got any appetite to write
about it or it's getting suppressed by verification
channels. And I just thought I've got to
put my, my, my words and my thinking out there into the
abyss about what, what I think this means.
Because I think it's, I think it's seismic.
I think this is, this is, this is a big, big, big deal.
But I'll I'll pause there. Yeah, I think he nailed it,
Trev. Like the my first observation
was exactly yours. I was like, this is a seismic
shift because it's going to start the dominoes.
If they can get an agreement like that with BHP, then that's
going to be held up with all the other large miners.
And why isn't this all over Bloomberg, Reuters like it was
it was that happened what 5 days ago?
And there's Reuters has even published pieces since then that
sort of almost like just dismiss it like they're saying no, the,
the few shipments that have changed hands have still been
USD like that. That wasn't whatever the third
paragraph of it. And yeah, as you say, when you
just Google it like you can read the first 2 pages and there's
not one mention of it on any large media outlet.
And I just find that mind boggling of how important this
is. This is a real game changer when
you consider like I, I've been really paying attention to this
since someone I follow really closely and I think everyone
should is Louis Vincent Garb's work.
And he's he was the first one that kind of pointed out to me
that the US dollar has been largely the bottleneck to let
Asian growth. When you consider that they have
to run surpluses so that they have the dollars to buy the
energy and the commodities they need.
And when you kind of understand that this is moving away from
that and how much growth this could unleash through Asia, if
they can trade with their own energy, with their own
commodities and their own currencies, which they can then
print. It's a complete like up in the
entire system that we've come accustomed to for the last 30-40
years. And for it to get no coverage by
the mainstream media, it's it's bananas to me.
But I think there's, yeah, there's a lot of information and
the fact that it's not getting touched.
And yeah, I'm happy to dive down any of those rabbit holes you
want, but I think it's seriously important, yeah.
So I've got a really interesting thing to to add to what you just
said there, Ferg, in in doing a bit of reading before we just
jumped on this call. Now I came across another, you
know, another newswire service. It's not like a, a Bloomberg or
a Financial Times or anything like these pretty sort of under
the radar type stuff. And they wrote up that Indian
oil purchases from Russia are now going to be settled in Yuan
as well. Now this was flirted with in in
2023 and late 22 on on the back end of right after the the
Russia Ukraine conflict started, but it didn't kind of go
anywhere. And now it's kicked up again
because it's, it's kind of the easiest currency to to do that
in to make that R&B into rubles transaction.
And that is a, that is a huge win for the, the Chinese, right?
For for them to have India, a country of a billion plus people
buying yuan to to settle their energy transactions is enormous.
And again, I don't think it's a coincidence coming in the same
kind of few weeks that we're talking about this with, with
BHBI mean it. It just can't be.
Yeah, that's and that's like I mean there's there's you know
Saudi Arabia selling oil in in yuan on on the other side of the
the the Ledger on the borrowing side, you know, can you got a
massive discount on interest for for denominating in in yuan very
recently. There's there's there's
Fortescue borrowing in in yuan like we're seeing like in front
of us. Yeah, the the rewriting of the
financial architecture in favour of if you are not like I, I
titled my piece that, you know, the iron dollar crack PHP is
quite surrender to the yuan. And that might seem hyperbolic.
And, and, and some people point out that that, you know, this is
just 30% of spot sales. It's not long term sales.
You know what, this is a newsworthy blah, blah, blah.
But if you think this is where things start, I think you're
delusional. I think you're asleep at the
wheel. Like I think this is, this is a
well trodden playbook. And, and like, it's a crack, but
my God, like a, you know, a crack grows in it.
It splits open the whole system. Yeah.
I, I, I, I can't like understate how, how like fundamentally
like, you know, important. I think this, this, this, this
is because it was, it was actually, it's funny, it's PHP
as well, because it was, it was Meyer's cloppers 15 years ago
that that helped anchor the, the the trading of iron ore, two US
dollars in the first place at the like, yes, they were
settling in U.S. dollars. But, but, but what, what, what,
you know, what, what, what he did with, with, with pinning it
to the, the dollar based spot indexes like that was that that
basically served to ensure it was U.S. dollar settled for, for
the, for the, for the following like 15 years.
And, and now it's now it's BHP seating ground on that.
And you know, copper's legacy might be kind of unwritten in
front of our eyes. And where does like, where does
the power lie here? Right?
Like it was like it's kind of obvious.
It's it's so obvious it's a commercial position for BHP to
to seed there because they need they need China way more than
the other way around. And we're kidding ourselves
everything differently. That's a pretty big goal.
I yeah, I mean, I, I don't think the, the change of this, we undo
cloppers and the work you did back in, back in the day, right?
Because they have had decades of unbelievable profit, just like
mouth watering kind of profit that you don't, you don't see
hang around for, for too kind of long.
But I think you're, you're spot on in the power shifting and and
the shift that we're seeing underway right now, like the,
the power has firmly been with Valet, Rio Tinto, BHP and to a
slightly lesser extent FMG over the past 2020 plus years.
But bit by bit that that kind of changes.
And I disagree with that framing.
And so I don't think the the power's ever been with them.
I think the power has been with the US dollar.
And like, and I'll give you an example of like, like
SO2020112012. There's a phenomenal kind of
case case study that articulates the power.
China has always had to flex their muscle here.
Between 2008 and 2012, Bali spent $4 billion on on building
out these like extra large iron ore, iron ore ships called Valet
Max. They built like 30 of these big
ships and they thought they could save like like 4-3 to
$4.00 U.S. dollars per tonne with these, you know, big, big
carry ships. And so they get built.
And then what happens in early 2012 China, they institute this
ban forbidding dry bulk vessels over 300,000 tonnes.
So just these ships are no longer allowed at any of the
ports, right And they the stated reasons at the beginning of that
ban were safety important infrastructure concerns like.
What year did that happen? So 2012, yeah, 2012, but you
know, sound from, you know, like there's a it's a commercial
misunderstanding to start with. And eventually what happens?
What did Valley have to do? They sell the entire fleet not
for 4 billion for 1.4 billion, mostly to Costco, not Costco
Costco, which is a China shipping and and it was a sale
and leaseback. So China got the long term
leases of Viola using these ships to go to their ports.
Like like, you know, the ban, the ban disappears.
And So what I bring that story up because both episodes the
exact same choreography. Step one dispute, like, you
know, dispute narrative gives Beijing room to act without
admitting political intent. Step 2.
The pressure escalates. Step 3, the foreign miner
resolves it seeding the structural ground violate
selling the ships to to Costco BHP by settling cargoes in R&B.
Don't for a second think BHP can bully China.
It's the other way around. And always like the, the, the
buyer has the power here. I think it's always been that
way. It's just the unit of
denomination. The power, you know, the power
between the the East and West is, is changing in front of our
eyes thanks to some own goals. Yeah, I, I see, I see your
point. I, I, I don't agree at all.
I think Rio and BHB have had far more of the power and that's why
we saw from 2003 to 2006 prices increase from from 30 bucks a
tonne to like 200 odd bucks a ton, because there was so much
more demand outweighed by that. And the like the, the Chinese
have been angry about this for, for decades.
And that is why they, they built this group, China Minerals
Resources Group, because they wanted to bring together the
power, the buying power of the, the steel mill so that they
could weigh in with their buying heft and, and try and counteract
that. But yeah, we'll, we'll sort of
see where that goes. What?
Do you?
It's interesting you, you mentioned, you mentioned that
aggregation of power as a way to mitigate like, like to
consolidate the power. Yeah, here's like, here's a
hypothetical. Could, could, could we, could we
have a CMIG of Australia aggregate the buying aggregate
the selling power of, you know, the iron ore out of Australia.
That's that's like, you know, if you're, it'd be it'd be a
political nightmare, but and a very antagonistic thing to do.
But you know, like and anti competitive in so many ways.
But that's like that's that's the only way you actually get
leverage here, because otherwise otherwise what happens here is
this 30% it gets becomes more and more you build liquidity in
the spot market. All of a sudden, long term, like
every every other company like Thalas, Rio Tinto, Fortescue,
everyone gets like pushed a little bit and a little bit and
a little bit and before you know it like and being our new
standard, but. Bring them all into the fold.
Let's create an OPEC of of Australia plus Brazil and China
will be coming to our door again.
Yeah. What do you reckon, Ferg?
I, I just think you got to think a lot bigger than this because I
think this is, this is all of Asia wanting to essentially
increase their, their growth. And they, they know that US
dollar's being weaponized against them.
And they're like, if I don't know how closely you've been
following India lately, if you follow Modi on Twitter, he's
been posting pics of him catching up with, with Putin,
like going for rides. They're all having dinners like
that. There was a seven-year gap
between Modi even going to China meeting with and the fact that
they're actually all buddies. When you've got China, that's
got all the commodities. You've sorry, you've got Russia,
it's got all the commodities and it's willing to obviously do
these deals left, right and center and currencies net
settled in gold. You've got China, which has got
all the manufacturing and crazy cheap capital, which this point
I'll come back to because there's, there's really
interesting sort of parallel with that.
And you've got India with see monster population really under
the utilized labour and they're all starting to work together.
I think like the last Bloomberg article I read when I was trying
to find a Bloomberg article on this BHP sort of yon settlement
was it was almost a argument saying that China's overplaying
its hand because they can pivot to Indian growth.
And I was like, this is like a a unified front.
You're kind of completely missing what's happening here.
It's similar to you. You read the articles of the US
trying to pressure Saudis like the there was a point, I think
it was 2000, early 2002 thousand and three.
I think that US was 2020 odd percent of Saudi oil exports.
And now it's 3/3 and 1/2 and China is 2021% of so it's the
they they get to name the terms when they're the a majority
buyer. And that's that's what's
happened here, there. And, and a lot of this has been
spent on goals. A lot of this is really
accelerated since the seizure of the Russian assets.
And that's just, it's only going to accelerate from here.
Like I've read a few articles just before coming on, I was
like trying to see all the different viewpoints.
And a lot of it was like, but the payment rails won't be able
to handle it. There isn't enough swaps.
Or like if anything you learn with the Chinese, like they can
innovate like you did they take EVs with like mass like joking
about the EV, the Chinese EV industry a few years ago.
He's not laughing now with what BYD has achieved.
And I think you're going to see a similar setup with Huawei
verse NVIDIA and long enough runway.
Like don't don't underestimate when they they put their sort of
all their focus behind something just how how quickly they can
innovate and gain market share. And where I was going with the
sort of the cheap money parallel was again, this is Louis Vincent
Garv pointing out this is like a parallel of the post GFC in the
US. It was this great David Tipper
interview when he went out. I don't think he went on.
I don't know what it was seeing CNN or some channel and they
were asking what did he think of the stock market?
He said, oh, you just, you got to buy because now the Fed's got
your back. You've obviously just had a real
estate bust. There's going to be cheap money
pumped into the system if the market goes down, the federal
pump more in and inflation is low.
And that's just going to be an epic bull market from here.
And Louis, Louis Garve was drawing the same analogy with of
China in particular, that's how cheap Chinese equities, in
particular Chinese tickers that you've now got the PBOC behind
it. You've got very like non
existent inflation. You've got lots of cheap money,
which I see here in Indonesia. There's you can buy BYD here for
years interest free and you've got the entire sort of Asian
market to grow, which is all climbing up the rest curve and
and yeah, the PBOC just standing by to inject more stimulus into
the system. They're coming off the back of a
real estate bust. Like the parallels are really
interesting when you view it like that and just how bearish
everyone is on the market. Like even if you look at FX I
the Chinese large cap, 50% of that float is short.
You're K web where I think nearly 1/4 of that shortest
float, that float is short. And I just, yeah, I think this
is the start of like a mega trend and no one wants to see it
because everyone's too busy chasing, chasing what's going on
in the US with lots of financial engineering and a lot of stuff
that doesn't make sense, honestly to me.
I really like your thinking there.
The, the question that comes to mind is we, we had a pretty
prominent fund manager here in Perth by a lot of Russian
equities cheap, you know, telco energy, all these sorts of
things. So I'm really curious how you
think about the the tail risk with with placing your money in
in China? Yeah.
So that's like don't own AD Rs to start with.
Like the the the fact that you could wake up to U.S. citizens
not being able to own Chinese equities.
I think I really doubt it would happen.
But that is obviously a tail risk you just don't want to
position for. So if you're going to buy
something, buy something ideally on like Hong Kong exchanges or
yeah, there's, there's plenty of vehicles that you can buy it
that you don't have to go through sort of ADR and have
that risk. But overall, like the I don't
think the US can function without China.
Like I don't know if you've ever seen this, this amazing chart
that the, the US sort of in dash.
I think it's the yeah, I think it's the the Air Force and just
how ingrained Chinese companies are with the vast majority of
them have at least like two or three Chinese suppliers in their
supply chain. And they got asked could they
disentangle from the Chinese? And he's just like, we can de
risk, but we can't, we can't. Like it's too entangled.
We can't remove ourselves from the Chinese companies.
So the idea that like Russia, they could sanction I China at
all, there'll just be far too much damage done to the US
economy if they fully sanction them.
And I actually just posted a piece out in Ferg's finds
yesterday. That was a lot of the way the US
actually calculates its, its manufacturing base doesn't take
into account what percentage is manufactured from foreign parts,
which is just ludicrous when you think about it.
So it's just like sales receipts on the end, like for cars half
imported parts, it still just takes it as American made on the
final sale of the vehicle. And there's lots more examples
like that that US has hauled itself out so badly.
And yeah, I think if they did really try and sanction China,
like the fallout in the US would be absolutely massive.
So I honestly don't think they can.
Yeah, it's AI mean it despite all of that, we've we've heard a
lot about it the the last kind of six months and and again it
just kicked up over over the weekend, right.
And it's, it's so remarkable because I think a lot about the
the amount of money we hear governments talking about with
regards to to critical minerals and all these sorts of things.
And we speak about it a bunch, you know, a billion dollar
stockpile here, $2 billion there.
But that little trade spat wiped off nearly 4 1/2 trillion
dollars in, in one day off of the S&P, which is kind of
remarkable to think about. It puts it puts the the industry
in which we play predominantly into a lot of context, I kind of
think. Totally, Yeah, the, the and the
market's weird as a result of it, right.
Like I, it's funny you mentioned David Tepper is like banging the
table, like, you know, by the market, because he was also
doing the exact same thing like 8 months ago by Chinese tech, by
China. Yeah, he was.
Yeah, yeah, it makes good sense at certain times.
But then everyone in our everyone in our neck of the
woods in our world is just instead of being drawn to the to
the, to the maybe the beaten up bargain that, that you're
inherently drawn to Ferg. They they love the unobtainium,
the Trump box, the yeah, the rare earth, you know, the the
anointed administration deals that just yeah, mint shareholder
value into existence. Yeah, it's difficult with that
because there's I think we're talking before how you can have
a faces that you think sound and then there's just a whole lot of
turds in with the raisins. Like if you look at URA with
going over only 20% of that's just one SMR startup now, which
is just, it's got no revenue. No, it's just running on hype
and you've got like, yeah, before you even add in a few of
the other SMRS. I think I think over 1/3 of it's
like just between SMRS and maybe a bit of was it's the interest
as well. It's just, yeah, you're not
getting the fundamental. And then you can, you can even
go further and dig into the likes of like the UEC was nearly
8 billion market cap Now on what did it produce like 100,000 lbs?
Try and explain that cash flow to me.
And I don't know, they'll hold up the nameplate of 12 million,
but I'd be, I'd be amazed if they have even hit 20% of that.
So, yeah, it's, it's a weird market, honestly.
It's, I'm finding myself increasingly trying to hide out
and physical and yeah, really, really trying to stay away from
the hype. But it's difficult, yeah.
And it's obviously nice to see stuff working as well.
But yeah, I don't like don't feel comfortable when I see so
much just crazy stuff flying at the same time.
What are the physicals you most draw into at the moment, Ferg?
So I got a big chunk of My Portfolio and PGMS.
So I have what was that cost? It was like over 10% of My
Portfolio is just rhodium and platinum, have another 5% was
physical uranium. And what else have I got?
I've been kind of got kind of like a dollar cost average where
I put it in a vault with physical gold and a bit of
platinum. So yeah, I kind of always liked
the sort of non recourse side of it as well, having been on the
other side of right at the start of my career, had my brokerage
go bust. So that was a kind of a career
defining. I don't want to ever have to
start from zero again. Was that Opus Prime just by the
way? That was BBY, yeah, Yeah.
Good to learn that lesson early. Yeah, he was getting an
instruction from A and she was like astrologer or something.
Came out later. Just maybe, maybe Grimace.
The worst thing was I actually got, I actually got the payout.
I got like maybe 2/3 of it back. But it was like a year or two
ago and I was like, thanks. I'm like, I don't really need
the money now. Like I would have been when I
was like on the bones of my ass. And yeah, over whatever it was
over a decade ago, yeah, I really needed it at the end.
I don't give it to me now. It's not very helpful.
Yeah. Wow, nasty.
That is, that's pretty remarkable.
Came to unpack, yeah, a few of those medals and just sort of,
yeah, maybe go around the table and share what we're kind of
thinking. PGMS is the one I'm most keen to
start with because yeah, like we sort of said, it's really
started to work. So both Platts and Palladium
about 1000 US bucks an ounce maybe 6 odd months ago.
Now they're 17 and 1600 respectively.
Rhodium as well kind of group group it in I think from 4 1/2
thousand ish level now to to 7 odd 1000 bucks and they're yeah,
rhodium sort of held at that level for for quite some time.
But has your, has your thinking changed given this, this sort of
run up with with how you're positioning at all in across the
the sort of space there? No, not really.
I'm honest. Like it's, it's nice to see the
faces validated, but I think it's kind of a long way to run
because you've still got, I think if you bunch all the PGMS
and in South Africa, they're only just starting to kind of
approach sort of like kind of incentive price where they could
consider bringing on additional supply.
And then as we all know, there's a big lag with with that like it
doesn't it's not going to turn on tomorrow.
And you've also seen one that not many people's mention is non
nickel, which is a big chunk of the PGMS out of Russia that's
keep pushing back a big expansion and that's looking
probably not going to come on until late 2028.
Now that was supposed to add 7% to the overall space and that
was supposed to help offset the decline in South African supply.
So yeah, it's one of those sectors that yeah, it's shot the
lights out, but I honestly, maybe you can have a decent pull
back. Like nothing goes straight up in
the line like platinum has forever what, a 1020% even 30%
pull back. Be healthy, sure, but I'm not
worried because I'm playing this for the next 5 years.
Like I, I want stuff that I can sleep if I wake up in the
markets like Trump's gone full retard and we get like a
liberation day on steroids. Like if I've got a portfolio
full of sort of physical platinum, rhodium, uranium off
sleep just fine and I'll know that the reaction function, if
anything, will be to print more money because you can't have a
just the where US finds itself like it's, it's all so
financialized that if the market rolls over, they need to the tax
receipts will roll over and the whole thing becomes harder to
finance. So they'll have to pump money in
to try and get it up. I think inflation will run
hotter. And that all just leads back to
to a lot of the sort of, if you're based in like and hard
assets, particularly ones where you see a really big sort of
supply demand gap, then you'll you'll do really well.
And other areas where I think it's you might not be able to
partake in the the physical, but you're paying so little to play
the game with the miners with like the likes of 10.
That's probably my favorite right here.
And also coal like you're just not paying much and history is
anything to go by. They're often some of the better
outperformers when inflation does show up because you kind of
if you have all the like the the shit coins and the non
profitable ticker one end of the long duration curve, like your
shortest shortest duration you can get as like a a commodity
trading in a few times cash flow, selling into spot.
That's the shortest duration you can get.
So you they generally really shoot the lights out on their
outcome. So yeah, between physical really
well priced commodity producers and then if I'm going to look
for torque, I'm like sort of with uranium, I don't really
like any of the producers. So I just want to sit on guys
are sitting on big pounds that haven't sort of signed any
contracts because I see, yeah, future price has been an awful
lot higher. I think we're all in alignment
that real assets do pretty well in this environment.
It's it's always hard to to look at a look at look at 60% up year
to date or 80% up year to date in certain commodity prices and
think I think this trend continues.
But but the P the PGM the way to play it like like I love your
way of thinking about risk haven't probably been on the
receiving end of mine is that have have torched torched money
along the way. I I yeah, when like thinking
about expressing the same the same view on on that commodity
ourselves like I remember the analogue I remember clearly is
is remember when bauxite shut the lights out the tail end of
last year and the two kind of like ways to play bauxite on on
ASX. There was Metro mining and then
there was Canyon Canyon the undeveloped, you know, yeah,
like sexy development project could be, could be phenomenal,
needs, needs funding, blah, blah, blah.
And then Metro like producing already turn around story Canyon
absolutely monstered the monstered like Metro.
Our performance was was enormous.
So I think like I think and I think about that often when
you've got these these sharp yeah, like commodity move
dynamics, is it better to be in the minor or is it better to be
in the development story that is like, you know, blue, like blue
sky, yada yada. And I often think it's the
development story. And the good thing about the
development story as well is you're less like, you're less
prone to an operational screw up because because it's not
nothing's operational at the moment you.
Can't let the mining get in the way and actually ruin the
narrative. I actually think, I actually
think there's risk mitigation and more upside in owning the
development story. And yeah.
How do you think about that with PGMS?
So we we bought some, we bought some Southern Palladium like
development story that that thing's just gone bonkers.
Unfortunately, we didn't capture the whole move, but we also just
I think we, I think like like we were talking about this, we just
buy a portfolio of producers and like you know, I think we
bought, we bought Zimplats as well, bought Zimplats.
I think that's just a ripping business, great track record
feel feel comfortable owning that and comfortable that you
know returns to shareholders will endure.
But if you go back in time, by the way, and capture all of the
ASX mining, no, actually all of the listed mining companies from
I think it's 2002 to today, Fortescue returns #1 simplatz #2
total shareholder return, really.
Yeah, wow. Really.
Yep, I mean like, I mean there's not many like miners that are
still on the same list of 2002. Business Today, a lot of turn
over there. But it's, it's a, it's a, it's
a, you know, like, I think it's evidence of I've got shareholder
value alignment, like, you know, returns to shareholders
evidence. So I feel pretty comfortable
there. And then I like we didn't, we
didn't buy it, but I think I think Teresa is actually pretty
interesting too. We're like enough to visit that
operation in South Africa. I'm kind of interested in that,
that like the, I remember pitching it to you, Ferg, after
we even visited it. I've never owned it.
I don't want to pitch it to you, but I was like, but, but, but
again, like 40, I think it's like 40% owned by, you know,
family. Like great track record of
actually, you know, reinvesting for, for growth, generating more
profits from that reinvestment. You've just got good alignment
with with, with, with what's going on there going underground
now. So costs are going to go higher,
but, but you know, going to face that sooner rather than later.
And yeah, it's like 1 operation now.
The big upside there, there's two, there's two catalysts I
think like can can make things really interesting for Theresa.
One is migrating off the LSE and two is our Caro growth project.
But even exclude, exclude Caro, exclude LSE and they're trading
substantially less than the NAV today.
And what we we know from these like plant reef mining is like
they, you know, NAV never captures the right thing.
That's why it's implants has been the story.
It is because you go deeper, expand, you know, like, yeah,
yeah. Yeah, it was, it was super cool
to see the, like you said, the, the, the investment they've done
in the project, you could see like plant one, plant 2, plant
3, as they just get enough cash, they expand it by building
another plant and then they can sort of have more output.
That was, it was pretty cool to see.
We also sort of went by a a bit of Sibanye's operation and Ferg,
I know you've done a write up on on Sibanye in the past and and
toyed with the idea. Have you actually held that one
or you're holding it at the moment?
Yeah, yeah. No, I've I've got it, Yeah.
How do you kind of think about that now?
Oh. So yeah, I'm happy to share with
like how I set it up because I, so I essentially bought 5%
physical rhodium, 5% physical platinum, 3% and plates and 2%
Sabania. And my thinking there was
Sabania and, and plates were the talked plays.
But you're investing in South African miners.
So you're playing, playing with fire.
Like you can wake up and they do something dumb like any day of
the week. So the ratio was kind of
important because if anything happened, I don't know, you wake
up to some crazy news like that South African governments trying
to nationalize them or something.
Then between and plants is 3035 odd percent of global rhodium
production and I think Sibanya is somewhere around quarter,
then you're going to get a pretty crazy price reaction and
the commodity. So it's kind of like a hedging
strategy. Like if anything went too wrong
with the miners, they were such a big, such a big amount of the
global production that I'd make out like a band on the bandit on
the physical. And that was how I kind of how I
positioned the portfolio and largely been kind of happy with
how it played out. Also think like with Rhodium,
people really underestimate just how violent the moves and that
have been historically. It's a, it's a by product.
So when people require it, they can't, there's no real way to
increase the the supply and a lot of the additional supply
coming on in the next few years. Kind of like what I mentioned
with no nickel, it doesn't actually have much rhodium at
all. It's very Palladium heavy.
Some plants are supposed to add a decent amount to the overall
PGM market and that's all Palladium heavy.
So very low rhodium split and even within, even within South
Africa, it's all moving up to sort of the northern Bush field
and that's all more Palladium heavy.
Whereas historically like the the splits that have been super
high rhodium, like 9% rhodium, that's just been in one
particular area in the Bush belt.
Yeah. Also the there's one other
element and I know you kind of touched on it, but I think it's
kind of more prevalent than ever that they, they have operations
in the US that they, you know, retrenched half of or something
earlier this year, maybe late last year.
So I'm kind of curious to see if, if the US government starts
handing out money and they, they might look at that, but not
something to sort of pin any hopes on.
But I'm, I'm kind of curious about that one there with a
whole bunch of jobs in, in Montana there.
Should we, should we move this on and, and talk about silver?
Trev, I know you did a bit of thinking about silver and
there's a lot of talk about the, the squeeze going on this week.
Talk about yeah, you mentioned earlier JD, like seeing seeing
big returns in in corners of the market.
You can't be across everything and like, you know, but but
Silver's one just I've watched the set up right in front of us,
just watched, watched the like, watched everything play out and
been like. You you told me when I sold one
of these that I'm an idiot that's going to whatever triple
or something. I.
Forgot about that. Yeah, right.
I actually forgot about that. You are an idiot.
I had that on my actually, I'm an idiot too, because I had that
same stock of my to buy list and I never bought it.
Yeah, so. We've all been there.
Anyway, opportunity cost, the exact same thing as real.
Yeah, both opportunity cost like silver, silver and gold, both
all time highs. Yeah, the silver bulls feel
vindicated silver squeeze playing out it's it's remarkable
like where the the silver lovers don't know where they live most
of the time, but they they come out in absolute spades like when
when silver gets when it gets bid and my God, there's a lot of
them out there. Stocks are flying especially
like we're just more acquainted with the ASX stocks, which are
much lower quality silver names, but even those silver names are
just absolutely gone ballistic. Is, is this one of those, one of
those like derivatives of the same theme like, you know,
transition to real assets, precious metals in vogue,
etcetera, etcetera that you've just let go by to the keeper as
well, Ferg? Yeah.
Well, this is just, yeah. I just see it as one big theme
and like it's yeah, running across the board like whether
you've really played it via gold, silver, platinum, it's all
capturing. Yeah.
What has been like it's been fascinating seen just how kind
of capital star this got with crypto.
Like I saw it, crypto did take up a lot of like the speculative
fever, especially in like the more juniors like I've, I don't
know, don't earn any silver, but I do own gold juniors and just
seen that go from just massive outflows even when gold was
running was just absurd to me. And to see that finally getting
inflows now it's starting retails only just starting to
pay attention to it. So I always kind of smile when I
get emails now with people like, you know, time to sort of head
for the exits because some of the stuff is getting
overextended. And I just feel whether it's
gold, silver, platinum, like, sure, if you want to kind of
trade it for a small pullback like be my guess, but I'm just
closing my eyes and kind of looking at where the sort of
stuff will all be in five years time.
I just think this is this is like the trade you kind of want
to benchmark your rest of your portfolio against and at the
very least have absent, absent physical.
Yeah, which whichever one it is, is 1 you can get your head
around. This is kind of why I went after
platinum so heavily is because I all the PGM space more in
particular, it's because I thought I could get my head
around the sector. It's quite simple really when
you consider it's only a few South African miners, non nickel
and and whereas silver's a bit more complex and yeah.
It's interesting when you mentioned like, yeah, part of
your your buy thesis for for rhodium was the fact it's this
byproduct. I always, I always like
struggled to get over the line on being really interested in
silver just because of the huge volumes of of Co production
involved in it. But you know, like bull markets
to bull market things. And yeah, sure, it makes it does
make sense that silver's gone crazy.
Like bull market few interesting deals this week silver wise.
I can't I just can't believe the numbers associated with some of
the cap raisers. So Boab Metals ASX listed, they
raised 50 million bucks. Why is that such a big number?
Because like 3 months ago their market cap was 50 million bucks.
Like it's just crazy. It's utterly crazy.
I just, yeah, I had to pinch myself when I saw saw that.
And then this will be interesting if it comes to
market. It's like a standalone vehicle.
I doubt it. It'll probably just be be go to
an alternative company to sell process.
But S 32 revealed to be divesting Cannington.
Yeah, that'll be that'll be that'll be really interesting
asset to see standalone on its own 2 feet on its own 2 feet.
And there'll be an interesting silver vehicle associated with
it if it if it does find its way to be a standalone ASX company.
I'll be intrigued. Funny thing about S 82 agreeing
to divest Cannington. I noticed the first time it
popped up in in the Australian, they got the banker wrong.
And then and then like a week later, same article pops up.
Oh, no, it's actually, it's, it's not that cap that's
selling, that's selling Cannington.
It's Baron Joey and JP Morgan. JP Morgan.
Yeah, so they, they completely cooked it.
But you know what? You know what all three of those
investment banks absolutely do know to do when it comes to a
sale process, mate, enlighten me.
They will use interlinks as the virtual data room.
Interlinks. Interlinks.
Back in my banking days, there was no alternative.
You used interlinks because I mean you're talking about
billions of dollars here like the deal mechanics have to be on
point. Everything about that entire
process can be managed with absolute ease.
When it comes to like interlinks entire like deal suite, big
interlinks, fan use interlinks. They also sponsor us, if you
can't tell, because this is an ad for Interlinks.
Interlinks. Details in the show notes.
Ferg, we couldn't have you on and not talk about energy.
I think Trev and I have both been pretty entranced with, with
the energy space as we kind of just scavenge around looking for
value again. And I might add the, the
offshore and other services type players to that conversation as
well, because I think I think they're one of the, the, the
lesser sort of pockets now in, in the areas that we look that
actually shows some some really kind of compelling value.
And I know you've, you've thought about it a lot.
I know you've held some of these names for for quite some time,
But are you, are you more attracted to this space given
everything else is kind of moving in recent times and than
you have been say a year ago or even longer when you started
writing about these sorts of parts of the market?
Yeah, well, my problem was I went heavy in it like a year ago
and so I've just round tripped back anything I made.
So yeah, you're talking some quite a sort of sunk cost in it.
But no, I, I, I think it's going to have it stay in the sun just
as everyone sort of hated metals a few years ago.
And once it starts to move, it drags sediment with it.
I think the same is going to happen across the energy space.
And historically it has been the case as well.
When you consider it's, it's almost logical that like miners
will always look the best when they're sort of input costs the
lowest. And then when energy spikes,
squeezes margins and then everyone inflation is goes hand
in hand with energy. So once inflation picks up, the
miners aren't as attractive. And anyway, everyone sort of
foams of the mouth and piles into energy as a hedge for
inflation and, and yeah, the miners having their margin
squeeze. So you can look at a lot of
historic sort of examples of that.
I've got more bullish on energy just because of how how much
pain has gone through. Like you were mentioning sort of
the particularly the offshore drillers.
I thought we were seeing the cycle start to inflict about a
year ago. And since then we've just seen a
whole lot more drills, drill ships and sort of even see me
subscript. So the whole sector, if you
will, has got even more consolidated.
You've got had oil prices come down and yet there's no kind of
getting around the fact that is the future of oil growth.
It's over 70% of future oil growth is going to have to come
from offshore. That's just, it's the facts of
where where the future supply lies.
And yet the the sector itself is getting more and more condensed.
And this is kind of what you see in cyclical sectors is before
you get to that inflection point, it's just been so capital
starved that a small amount of capital coming into it will just
have a really outsized result. And yeah, I just, I think we're
probably always, I thought that probably going to see
utilisations start to really bite probably mid next year.
I think a lot of the, the IEA is obviously they're just horribly
wrong with most their projections over time.
I kind of have a head of name where they nailed their, their
bearish take on oil and it was like a stormtrooper like
actually hitting someone. And it was just a, just a one
off like if you know their actual track record, they've
pretty much been wrong continually from more than a
decade. But yeah, they did, they were
right last year. And I, I just think there's a
lot less spare capacity around And well, everyone's kind of
foaming at the mouth on medals running.
I think probably the energy space is where the best value
is. And there's been some of my most
recent purchases have been just like in what, what, what does
someone think will never move again?
Like what's the absolute epitome of like cyclical?
And that's where I found myself. Quite a few of the companies
have bought recently have been like seismic offshore, like the
companies actually search for oil offshore.
And that that's probably the one space that had an even more
brutal time than the offshore drillers.
The offshore drillers obviously all went bankrupt.
But with seismic, if you take it from it was like the peak in
2013 and like 70% went, got taken over, closed down, merged.
And yeah. And they're actually quite good
companies, if you will. They were just capital staff.
Like they're quite tech focused. They're quite conservative.
They've got a lot of cash on the balance sheet.
And they just just hate it because who would invest in in
growing the oil supply when supposedly we can just turn on
share whenever we need and the world's going to run on
windmills and solar in another decade.
I'm sorry with you on the yeah, on the, on the like risk return
dynamics of, of being like, yeah, value hunting in energy
right now. Like we, we interviewed Rob
Mullins episode there earlier this week.
I got it. Oh, it's wicked.
And it makes a compelling thesis for for some, some of these like
stupidly cheap on, on a, on a valuation basis, you know,
established European. Yeah, like oil companies even
even like the, the more known ones, like they think of BP,
right? Like they've, they've completely
backtracked now that BPS about oil again.
And they were the most psychotically pro like, you
know, renewables of the, of the oil and gas.
They've the biggest identity crisis of everyone.
They've completely flipped. They've like, you know, in very
recent history. And now they're, they find
themselves sort of like, you know, vulnerable activists are
involved. They're like Shell is rumoured
to be, you know, trying to consolidate there.
So like you can get, you can get, yeah, you can pay super
reasonable multiples for, for, you know, businesses that have
been around 100 of years and will be around for for hundreds
more. At least their assets will be
with tremendous cash flow and and ride the the wave of tide
turning to kind of be pro shareholder return instead of
instead of don't know what you'd call the other stuff wasn't
shareholder return. You know, my my favorite way of
just I always like to try and come up a way of just expressing
like how cheap something it is and I like playing around with
ratios and I put it in one of my first fines, probably a mouthful
to a guy, I guess. And I was just looking at the
ratios of other NASDAQ first like sectors.
And when I was like, use the forget what minor, there's like
a sector ETF for mining and it was like just took the ratio
from the peak in 2012 thirteen to now and what it would need to
do to get back to that peak. And it was like a it's like a 9X
for miners across the board. And then did it with with
energy. And that was the broad energy
producers. And that was more or less the
same. If it was an 80X gold was a
little bit less. I think it was like 7X gold
producers, but then oil services granted I used equal weight,
which I probably should have used market cap, but it was that
was 62 times to get back to its 2013 peak.
And so I think you just can't, I can't express how like hated and
how much capital destruction has been in oil services and how
much runway there is, especially, especially if you
kind of tie some of these trends I've talked about to give it
like if one of my favorite hunting ground is small Asian
micro cap oil services. Like a my biggest, I think my
biggest position in like a individual company is actually a
yeah, is a little, a little OSB company.
And yeah, that's trading on the Singapore Exchange.
And yeah, that's been bankrupt twice, which is, and yeah,
Frame, when I first bought it, reached out.
He's like, how can you put that much money into a little noodle
company? It's hated unhated.
Jada, you come into work the other day and you're like, like
talk to allocate to energy. How do you think about Yeah, I
don't know, like like placing bets.
There's a lot. There's a lot of different ways
oil services could be, yeah, it could be the tech, it could be,
it could be the actual producers like.
Yeah, I'm not going to be as creative as as Ferg with
Singaporean listed micro cap offshore services plays.
And I don't think there's that many people we have the
privilege of speaking about those sorts of companies with.
But I, I just think it's a, a basket approach because exactly
like you said there Ferg, the, the whole complex has been
starved of capital. And that is from the, the oil
companies through to the, the services makers.
And yeah, I mean, the services makers in particular have had a
tough time with, with all the bankruptcies and everything.
But as you know, you've, you've sort of elaborated on better
than anyone, Ferg, that leaves them in, in good kind of
financial health now. And there's been a pick up from
the real doldrums that we saw a long time ago.
And then with the, the actual producers, you're getting paid
to wait. So even if it's going to take a
while to come around, if you're a bit sort of selective, we're
talking like a 10% dividend yield, like it's, it's crazy.
We're talking free cash flow yields of 2030 odd percent even
north of that in, in some kind of cases.
So it doesn't feel super, super onerous.
It doesn't feel like you're, you're waiting on a day that
that might never come because you're, you're being pretty well
compensated, you know, with, with risks to it as well given
jurisdiction and stuff where, where you might be.
But I, I, I don't feel any sort of reservations about putting a
decent portion of my kind of money there.
I mean how you kind of think about it is there is there
differences in in thought there? I I wish I had more knowledge,
like more specialized knowledge to have like a more thoughtful
yeah allocation. I think, yeah, I think like
rising tide will lift all boats, everyone will do really well.
But I think you can have like there'll be some killer returns
in very specific like you know, when if permitting changes or if
or if it may just starts like spending a lot of money in a
certain area and there's some small cap that really benefits
from that like this. Yeah, to to to that point.
And one thing you perhaps haven't touched on as as much
Ferg, is the the Aussie environment, specifically on the
the East Coast of Australia. But I think there's going to be
over the next five years a lot of opportunities there with, you
know, perhaps led by policy changes and, and they sorts of
things. And the, the, the really, you
know, rubbing your face in the challenges that are going to
come in places like Victoria and NSW with, with energy prices
already on a, you know, very, very sort of sharply upturning
trend. That's, that's not going to go
away until it's really kind of felt unfortunately.
And there are going to be a number of winners at the back
end of that. You know the way the way I like
to come at it is 11 company that just had in mind as you've been
talking about this is a European well, what's the service company
energy service company Saiping and it's had this massive recap,
but now paying nearly double digit dividend.
It's going to merge with another massive Norwegian oil service
company. And what I always love to do
like is this function coifen where you can look at all the
analysts and their forward average Ford estimates for the
next. Some of it usually goes out five
years and you can just see what are they actually thinking this
company's capable of? And they they literally won't
even give it like sales growth. I think it was 2% growth over
the next five years in sales. And I think it's I think it's
earnings with negative. And this was sub C7.
It was even worse. It was like they fought over the
next five years its earnings were going to be I think it was
down, down 12%. And you compare this to
something like I competed at the time to NVIDIA and they just see
it by 2027 already at whatever it is now. 4.5 trillion still
has to grow its grow its sales another 120%.
And China's just told them to fuck off.
Like get out, we're not buying any shit anymore.
I I remember reading that my jaw was on the floor.
The, the growth that that was consensus, the growth that
everyone had factored in was astounding.
It was. It was, yeah, just jaw-dropping
sort of stuff. Yeah.
And so you just want like, you want stuff that you don't have
to, you don't want to make it too hard for yourself to make
money. Like if it just, I feel like
that could be a company and it's a big lesson in My Portfolio.
I wish I'd gone to more of those where it was just wasn't such a
narrative trade. It was just off everyone's
radar. Whereas with some of the more
offshore stuff, it was, it was in a lot more people's
portfolio. It was like the real name to
play it. And so you get more volatility,
whereas some of some of these names are just kind of
essentially forgotten about. Like you can look at 5:00 PM and
it's been since, since the big recap, it doesn't experience
nearly the volatility and anyone that's interested in options has
got really long option market. So you can kind of joke that's
like if I did want to create like a future dividend
portfolio, just have a lot of these sort of at the money call
options that I'd exercise and he'd go out sort of for four
years with the option market and then exercise and then and start
collecting. Hopefully it's still sort of,
I'm guessing it's going to be a pretty healthy dividend in four
years time with where I see the market going.
So I love and I've got to play similar to that and seismic as
well. Like I love flows like and then
that one you can go right out to 2000, December 2029.
So you can really take bits whatever.
How many years at 4 1/2 now? Yeah, I love those plays.
I like it, got some some digging to do there.
Tin, tin, tin Why is the market? Why is the market sleeping on
tin? It always comes back to tin.
I love tin. I think tin is one of those tiny
little markets where no one cares because it's too small.
But there's literally every bit of information that's coming out
is bullish when you consider why am I?
Everyone kind of thinks it can ramp back up.
They started issuing the license and then it's just been a slow
trickle. And my take on that is they
pretty much hydrated all the easy stuff and now they have to
go underground and it's such a mess here that they're not going
to be able to do it. Ramp up a complex mining
operation quickly. Indonesia has been a massive
crackdown. They've really, really come down
heavily on a lot of the legal mining operations.
Granted, in typical Indonesian fashion, they kind of size them
more than head them over to a company which was bound to have
some political connections. But that, all of this is just
great icing on the cake in what was already kind of a sector and
supply deficit. And if you look like last year
before, the only thing that saved it was demand came in weak
as supply came in weak. It was kind of like a set up
where supply came in sort of three 4% deficit and then demand
took a similar hit. And so market balanced and now
the only thing kind of I've been really keeping a close eye on is
inventories and inventories are really drawing down rapidly.
So with the LMA is at kind of record lows.
So don't that's at the point where it's pretty much near
Brock bottom. And the one to watch is the the
Shanghai Metals Exchange or Shanghai.
It is chefy. Yeah, yeah.
What is it if if it's if it's H, if E and that that's drawing
down has been drawing down like 8% week on week.
And if you just mapped in against it.
That's why we're seeing like 10 just keep gaining more traction
because if they're not they're drawing working through their
inventory and and they're not getting more coming in from my
MA like then Tim price is going to have to keep trying to
incentivize more 10 and I'm just there.
I don't think that's going to come on quickly.
And then like you're not paying up for like my favorite vehicles
still Middle East Middlesex don't really like the DRC and
the fact that they're I've been off on this, like trying to
acquire green tech hasn't really worked out.
Maybe that cash, maybe they get lucky with green tech, who
knows, but doesn't look like it now.
And at some point that cash will hopefully start finding its way
into buybacks when it's already looking cheap.
Or maybe they'll buy a few more 10 juniors.
I don't know. Either way, it's not it's not
terrible. And I just think more and more
and more people are going to catch on to the faces as time
goes on. Yeah, Ding, Ding, Ding, like
like like it Yeah, I actually think, I actually think about
expressing the tin jade even even further down the yeah, the
curve now, like going, going for yeah, some of the marginal stuff
that becomes economic and and riding that wave out.
But the I think coppers, the other one where like the supply
story's so good right now. And yeah, it's just like that
transition period from the supply shocks.
There's been multiple of them just like depleting inventories
and then being reflected in in the price, although the price is
moving substantially as well. But again, of course produces
the beneficiaries of them. But anything with a very near
term production story like that's a developer capture, so
much, so much upside, especially if it's like a somewhat marginal
project. Yeah, And the only other thing I
think I forgot mails eggs as well was OK, as I was talking
about before there's there's two analysts that cover it and
they're both bearish as well. Bring that up.
They expect, I think, I think it's hard to remember what it
was. I, I had a look at it.
I think the sales were down like 1/4 over the next five years and
I think they expect its earnings to get cut in half.
I'd love to see you there. There's.
No benefit. There's no benefit covering
Middlesex because you're like, and they're never going to do a
deal, they're never going to raise equity.
So it's like. Yeah, true.
They get they get like one hour every month.
Awesome Ferg, been great chatting and picking your brain
as as always, always good to sort of hear about what you're,
what you're thinking, what you're looking at.
And yeah, there's just so much interesting stuff in the market
right now. So I love just picking through
it or with with people that think about it kind of
differently. So it's been awesome having you
on again mate. Always a pleasure, always love
chatting to you boys, yeah? Thank you mate.
Always awesome to chat with Ferg.
Love the way he thinks about markets, about the world, about
trolling for hated stuff. Almost as much as I love our
partners. Mate, a big thank you to focus
platform by market tech Sandvik ground support.
I mark the conference is coming up very soon, next week
actually, we're going to be in Sydney, so check that one out.
And last but not least, interlinks who to root.
Who to root? Now remember, I'm an idiot.
JD is an idiot. If you thought any of this was
anything other than entertainment, you're an idiot
and you need to read out a disclaimer.