My most controversial view is I think they should go back for
the year hold. I think all the exchanges that
say, look, if you're going to get warrant coverage, you at
least have to be able to hold the stock for a year.
And a year is going off that long period of time, especially
when you're getting some sort of warrant coverage.
Jeff Phillips, he's been financing and backing resource
companies for more than 30 years, sat on both sides of the
table, broker, funder, investor through every mining cycle.
No spotting serious teams early, walking away from bad paper even
faster. You've Jeff, you've been behind
a bunch of a bunch of names that have gone on to have great
shareholder success. Almadex, Riverside, Headwater,
those are those are the North American names and, and down
under. I'm sure we'll explore some of
the ones you've been involved in too.
But in short, you're a bit of a seasoned sector insider who
invests your own money. You tell it straight and you
understand how value actually gets created.
And the challenging small cap junior mining end of the
business. Jeff, thanks for joining us on
Money and Mine. Thank you for having me guys.
Really appreciate it. I am thrilled to, to kind of
peel into your, your brain, Jeff, on, on some of the things
that are just part of your, your investing DNA or, or part of
your screening process. And they can't be erased.
And I'm talking about things like like alignment management,
alignment, capital, capital structure, like, what are these
things like mean to you? Because you know, I, I know that
without them, it doesn't matter how good the rocks are.
It's it's just a no. Yeah.
Basically I look for two things, share structure and people.
When I say share structure, you said capital align and that's a
good way of putting it. I like to see that management
has what some people call skin in the game.
I like to make sure that they don't have skin in the game, but
they're fully reporting. You guys are different in
Australia because you can see all the shareholders, but in the
Canadian markets, you know, unless you're fully reporting,
you can do what you want with your shares.
So I like to see management that's got a sizable position
that's fully reporting. That means they're reporting to
Cedar in the Canadian markets or the equivalent in the US
markets, their position and you're going to know if they
decide to sell stock or, or you know, and so forth.
So the other thing I like to see with shareholder alignment, and
I think that's a great term, is I like to know who the other
shareholders are. You know, a lot of these, it's
the same in Australia, although I'm more focused on the North
American markets, but obviously there's crossover.
I like to see that the other shareholders are like minded to
me that they're, they're in the, you know, investing in a company
for a period of years, not months.
So, you know, the development and exploration business is very
difficult. So here in the Canadian markets,
you know, it used to be back when I first came in the
business in the 90s and, and had quite a bit of success when you
did a private place when you had to hold the stock for a year.
That's why you got some warrant coverage.
When I retired after selling an oil and gas company off of the
NASDAQ, I came back in the business in 2004, 2003, started
financing companies in 2007. I was astounded to learn that
the whole period was down to four months.
I don't know what you guys do in Australia, but but even now, you
know, there's these life financings in Canada which are
no hold and they still get warrants.
So you, you get a lot of warrant collectors.
I want to make sure that management is, is, you know, I
like to use a boat analogy. I'm getting on a lake to get to
the other side in a boat. Now I want to make sure
management's going to row all the way to the other side and
they're not jumping out when I don't know it.
And I want to make sure the other shareholders are also
pulling the Ords. You know, I want to know
everybody's in that boat trying to get to the other side.
So that's, that's share structure.
And obviously having good people who have a track record of of
growing companies, growing market caps or are the ultimate
thing selling an asset to another company is, is what I'm
looking for. You you'd be disappointed to
hear that people can flog their stock within about a day of
getting it here in in Australia once the racing's done.
But we don't have, we don't have, we don't have the yeah,
like the prevalence of like attaching warrants and warrant
collectors that. Nowhere near as as strong as it
sounds in in North America and Canada in the resource market,
yeah. Well, look there, there may be,
there's slight differences obviously, but at the end of the
day, the resource market is is not really investing.
It's educated, speculating and and again, you know, whenever
you have things that can go up and become billion dollar assets
in any type of market, you get the people that aren't
necessarily the long term shareholders or people trying to
do what's best for the group. So.
Jeff, I'm really curious, like what Trev said to peel into your
investing framework and, and in particular your, your
psychology, because having done a bit of digging, the the way
you sort of frame it is, is, is simple, but simply an investing
is often the hardest thing to do.
Being patient and hanging in the name for for two to three years
at a time. But you don't seem to, you don't
seem to have a an awful lot of trouble sort of doing that.
You, you, you seem pretty sort of down, down to earth about all
of it. Do you, do you still feel you
have that internal struggle, you know, holding on to things,
being patient, checking the boxes?
Or do you think over time you've just become quite at ease with
it all? I think you've become more at
ease with it over time and you learn from past mistakes.
You know, I've been doing this for a long time and it just
depends on what you're trying to do.
People have different goals. If my goal was to make the most
money possible, there's ways to do that, that I can make a lot
more money. Part of my joy.
And still, again, I'm essentially retired working full
time right now, but because it's because I enjoy it.
I mean, I, I, I, I enjoy working with management teams.
I enjoy the, the hunt. I enjoy, you know, as long as
we're looking for something meaningful, you know, I, I enjoy
that. And, and more so than making
money on a great deal, it's being part of a team that makes
money and, and, and having that connection.
And some of the people we talked about earlier, like Michael
Hudson, you know, we've been friends now for 15 years and
we've had some great wins together.
And I'm sure we'll have some more in the future.
He's a great Australian geologist.
But at the end of the day, the friendship and the camaraderie
and the, and the past experiences are what really make
it fun. So.
This is. Yeah, this is an interesting
feature of like the part of the market that you focus on.
I think Canadians like it's even more prevalent than maybe
Australia, but we, we all like both, both mining centres have,
yeah, these like kind of individual high net worth
financiers who have like a, they might have like a mining house
or, or, or a bunch of kind of relationships with geologists.
And it's the, the kind of like tying the geologists with the
individual with their own connections that can, that can
maybe, you know, seed some, some new project in a, in a, in a
public vehicle with, with some kind of story.
And it's like, wrapped around it.
I'm, I'm kind of just like curious how all of that comes
together? Like, how do you, how do you
actually like identify, like, I identify a project worthy of,
worthy of, of investing in the 1st place.
Be be kind of cultivate a network of finances alongside
you who you know are like motivated to be there for the
same duration and and see understand the opportunity.
Well, over time, you build that network up, you know, again,
and, and sometimes people fall out of your network because
they're not exactly what you, you thought they'd be.
I, I don't you again, I'm not Canadian.
I'm, I'm based here in San Diego, CA, not a mining Mecca of
the world, although obviously Rick rules operation was based
here for a long time. And but, but, but again, you
build up that network of people and you build up teams and
there's all kinds of, you know, I liken this to, I think I'm
used to analogy. I don't know if you guys have
fantasy, fantasy sports there, but all my friends here play
fantasy football and they're, they're on teams and they pick
their teams and they're every weekend, they spend all weekend
talking about their teams. I play football and I enjoy the
sport, but I don't play fantasy football cause all week long I
have fantasy resource stocks in the market.
I have friends and teammates. And you know, again, it's like
you said, it's a shareholder, you know, capital alignment and
you know, but again, there's lots of good groups, you know,
even here in North America, America and Canada that, you
know, do great jobs and I respect them, but I don't
necessarily work with them because I have my own network.
If, if I like think more deeply about the the point on on
alignment, just just one small like if you, if you like, if you
see ACEO that has like AI don't know like a three $300,000 per
year salary or $350,000 per year salary and they own like less
than 1% of the stock. And it's like a, you know, 5 to
$10 million market cap. What does that tell you?
Oh it. Tells me I probably don't want
to look at the company anymore. I look at, you know, like deals
today. You know, there are some cases
where it's a young guy that's been brought in and he doesn't
have a lot of money and, you know, so he doesn't have a lot.
But again, you know, but again, if you tell me that same
company, the CEO owns 2%, he's a younger guy, but they have, you
know, two other directors at each own 15% fully reporting.
And then you tell me that, you know, they've got several funds
that own fully reporting and it's 50% of the stock is owned
by, is owned by fully reporting shareholders.
I know those people are trying to build something because
they're not being able to flip their stock.
And you know, we're into a market now, which it makes it
even harder. You know, we're, we're in a bull
market. So, so again, you know, the
hardest thing is if you've been in the business a long time is
you see the stocks go up and you have to remind yourself what a
bull market looks like. Because again, otherwise it's
kind of like, well, Gee, are these things really worth 4
times what they were 12 months ago?
But the fact is in a bull market, and the last one I saw
was the 2008 to 2011 bull market, which really was just a
continuation of the 2003 to 2007 with the real estate bubble in
between. You know, it's pretty amazing in
a bull market. So I think this is going to be a
really big bull market. And I think, you know, a lot of
the people that are short term players, they're going to be
real happy they're finally getting bailed out or going to
get out early. And I think they're going to
find this thing has a long way to go.
How to to sort of further Trav's question there, how do you think
about options, performance rights and these things?
Do you kind of comb through them quite carefully and and make
sure everything is sort of on side with how you think about
alignment? Yeah, well, mostly options to
management are fully reporting, so I can see what that is.
And you have the problem that, you know, when those are
expiring, sometimes they have to exercise those and sell some for
tax purposes. So I do keep an eye on that all
the time and talk to those companies.
I typically have half a dozen companies.
I'm a large shareholder and I have, I own more companies, but
I mean very large shareholdings and I also consult for those
companies. So yeah, I'm monitoring all
that. But again, most of my companies
have anywhere from 30 to 50% fully reporting insider
ownership. Their main goal is to make those
shares worth money and they're not able to sell those shares
unless they transact, which means they sell the business or
they get into a wild bull market.
Again, if I own a stock that's up $0.50 stock, and this has
happened many times over 30 years, and we get into a bull
market, it goes to $15.00. It may not get sold it, you
know, again, it's got something real, but I'm going to take some
profit off the table and anybody should in that situation.
I'm not, I'm probably taking it off the table at 4:00 and 5:00
and 8:00 and $10.00. But, but again, I think we're in
that situation where it gets very hard.
If you're been in the business a long time and you have evaluated
lots of companies, I think this the bull markets always skew,
you know, you tend to be too smart for your own good.
I had a famous, one of my mentors, I've had a number of
them was Jim Dines. You wrote the Dines letter for
63 years here in the United States.
Very famous gold bug, Internet bug, first marijuana bug.
He had lots of things. He claimed that he was the first
in and he was. But one of his things was, you
know, look, don't think. And he was referring to charts
that, you know, again, if something's in a bullish trend,
just because you think it's gone up a lot, you know, don't think
too much in a bull market, you know, So I think we're heading
into a market where, you know, I have to remember to look and not
think because if I think too much, I'm going to go, Gee, I
remember the last 15 years and and it wasn't this market, so.
Rains can be the enemy of gains in a bull market, but the.
Absolutely. That's a great way of putting
it. Yeah, but it's funny because
some of the things that do that they end up, you know, going all
the way back down again. And I I'm, I'm certain you've,
you've written a few of those in your in your tenure.
Jeff absolutely. Yeah.
I, I, I always joke. I sell, I sell some of it too
early. I sell some of it perfectly and
I hold some just because I think it might go higher and I still
have it lower. So, you know, again, you, you
never, you know, I mean, the best deal is the deal that sells
at, at, at a record, which is very seldom.
But you know, and I've had those where a deal sold to another
company and it's sold at the highest price the shares ever
traded at. And it doesn't get any better
than that. I just had a deal that I
financed, I was in the financing called Horizon Copper and it was
bought out by Royal Royal Gold, the royalty company and and all
cash offer. That's kind of a no brainer.
It was bought out at the highest price it ever traded at and that
was great. So you, you seem to really
analyze the, the people, the people behind businesses, the
people aspect of bull markets. How does the exuberance where
we're feeling right now, which is sort of flushed on quite
quickly compared to 2007, call it 2011, 96 ish before BREEX,
these sorts of things. You know, I was, I was probably
your guy's age and, and during breaks I came in the market.
I actually indirectly worked for Rick Roll and we were pretty
successful and, but had less capital.
So that was a crazy market from, I mean, I started investing in
the resource stocks right out of college.
So that must have been 92 or three or something like that.
I mean, it was a really crazy market.
It's hard for me to remember. You know, I'll give you an
example that I can remember, you know, in a bull market.
I had a company in the rare earth boom, the first boom back
in 2008, and before people knew what rare earths were, they
weren't even talked about. I'd financed the company at
$0.75. Then the real estate crisis hit
and there were no bidders for stocks and the resource sector
and I was calling another high net worth individual and we were
playing every other day who was going to buy the stock at $0.26.
The bull market took off and where it's got, you know, going
and, and all the commodities were doing good.
No 9:00 and 10:00. And we ended up financing the
company after we couldn't find buyers and bought them places
shares. We did another financing at a
dollar. A month later we financed it at
$1.50 and a month after that we financed it at $3.
We never sold any of that stock. It was a bull market.
The stock eventually went to $1819 a share.
You know, it was trading its entire float two years later
every day. So again, from that, that's a
bull market from three years where nobody wants to buy the
stock to three years later. It's on CNBC here in the States
and they're talking about this little company that you couldn't
get anyone to buy three years before.
So we're, we're in early innings of a bull market.
That doesn't mean there won't be some hiccups.
You know, I think there's going to be, you know, again, we'll,
we'll get some of the, the, the, the people that are short term
players selling out stocks and you know, it'll be healthy for
gold to have a sell off and, and build a new base and then go to
new highs. So, you know, but I, I think
we're in early innings of a, a major bull market.
Yeah, it it sounds like you're pretty, pretty attuned to just
the impact that low float or or tight float can have just in in
share price dynamics. I think in, you know, in this
bull market, even even my observations on some of the some
of the stocks that are most volatile to the upside there,
there's absolutely kind of a a low float dynamic to what's
going on. Combine that with with a bit of
retail energy and it doesn't take much to have just yeah,
very outside smooths. That comes back to share
structure again too. And, and that's why it's
important because you want to have a lower float, you want to
have people that are committed longer term, because when you go
to raise money again, remember most of these companies, whether
in Australia or Canada, aren't making any money.
They, they're spending money exploring and developing a
project. So I want to make sure that when
they raise money in the future, that the capital costs are
higher, which is good for me as a shareholder, less dilution.
And, and a lot has to go. You know, we can use an example
of an Australian company later if you want that again, I, I
requested a year hold on the stock, even though it was only,
or you can do a no hold, but not even a four month.
I said, you know, everybody's holding their stock, It's locked
up for a year. It gives the company more room
to run. It gives the company and the
ability to build out their assets and raise capital at
higher prices. So that's why we did that and.
What might that stock be? Kincora Copper, it's actually
dualist and it's in the, it's on your exchange there in Australia
and it's in on the TSTSXV in Canada.
It's a prospect generator which you guys don't have a lot of in
Australia. In the United States, we have,
you know, more of those. It's a type of model and and
it's a model that Rick Rule really pioneered 30 years ago
and it increases your odds of success and making a discovery
with less dilution. Dilution is the the enemy of a
of a junior trying to make a discovery.
And it's, it's unavoidable when you've got yeah, like a, a small
market cap and a very capital intensive, you know, binary kind
of outcome on, on, on continuing exploration fund.
So the prospect generator model, you try and farm it out to other
parties to spend the exploration and, and you maintain a very,
very low kind of spend at the head code itself.
Like why, why is this like this this like a like more prevalent
in in North America than it is in Australia from from your
perspective and. Yeah, I can't answer that
question why you do that, except that maybe Australians like the
the thrill of the chase even more.
I mean, you still get that with a prospect generator.
But the difference is instead of raising money to drill your
property, which you know, again doesn't always go the way you
want it to and can take time, you're like, it's kind of like
you said, you're joint venturing your property out, properties
out to other people. And again, it's all about the
people running the company. Just because you're a prospect
generator model doesn't mean you're executing it properly.
Using Concord as an example again, you know, two of their
projects are, yeah, two of their projects are joint ventured out
to Anglo, a major mining company that's, you know, spending a lot
of money on these that you would be a lot of dilution.
But at the end of the day, they're giving up a big piece of
the property if there's a discovery to that joint venture
partner. But being that Concord is
looking for buried copper, gold porcheries, which can take time,
it's great to have someone like Anglo with deep pockets who as a
potential spender and into those projects of, you know,
$90,000,000 or something like that.
And they have several other projects joint ventured out with
other companies. So next year they're going to
see, you know, 345 properties drilled that aren't going to
dilute me as a shareholder. And what's great about Kincora
is that it's also very unique for an Australian listed
company. It's only got about 42,000,000
shares outstanding. We cleaned up the structure, you
know 30% of that's owned by reporting insiders, people on
the board or management. And then like I said, Rick and I
and a number of other North American investors that that
have experience in this space, you know provided a four, $4
million of capital to them to and we put a year hold on our
stock. So you have a float that's, you
know, very tight, you have management and board that's
aligned with a long term goal and you have a lot of drilling
getting done next year that you know, again, there's no
guarantee you're going to find something.
But again, in Concordance case, their technical teams, bar none.
I mean, you're talking about guys discovered Katie, as you're
talking about guys that were high up at New Crest before they
were brought by Newmont. They know your backyard, they're
Australian and they know in the Macquarie arc.
So again, it's a great speculation, but I'm not making
stock recommendations. I don't have a newsletter.
I don't sell anything. I'm a professional investor and.
You know, I tell everybody in interviews that, you know, and I
don't know how this pertains to your Australian markets, but I
see it here in the North American markets that, you know,
I try to have a position of, you know, roughly 12 stocks that I
have a large position in. And again, I have other ones
because I know people and I do do financings, but 12 companies
that are my my core holdings and make up a bulk of my money
that's in that space. If you have too few companies,
you know, again, you run the risk of there's still Mother
Nature, there's luck, there's the overall markets.
You know, you're not always in a bull market, so you want to have
enough companies that you have multiple shots to win.
I'm on the other hand, I see so many investors here that I meet
at conferences that asked me to look at their portfolio and
there's 90 stocks in their portfolio that they put it up
for their brokerage firm. Well, if you have a stock go
from $0.15 to $20, that's great. But if you have 90 of those
things, it's not going to affect your portfolio unless you know
again, so, but a bull market does change that.
But I like to follow a model where you don't have too many
stocks so and, and you lower your risk.
So I don't know if this is helping you but.
How? How do you spread your bets
amongst those sort of 12 core names across commodities?
Well, again, you know, if you're a, a retailer investor or not a
professional, you want to get good advice from a broker or a a
third party newsletter writer or show like yourselves, you want
to, you know, we've got the Internet now.
My daughter likes to tell me when I try to remember things
and forget to lick it up on the Internet.
But you can research a lot of this stuff.
Do your research. And as far as you know,
everybody you know, again, your your natural resource.
Polio should be a slice of your pie.
It's not your whole pie and it's only, it really is for people
that know what they're doing. That's why, again, I'm saying
you shouldn't listen to me per SE.
Well, you should do your own research.
But I personally like to have a basket of companies in different
commodities. I like to, you know, I say 25%
and I probably have because I'm a professional, I probably have
16 companies right now. And plus I think we're into a
bull market. But 25% of those are prospect
generators, which are again, are farming out their projects.
And just because something's a prospect generator doesn't make
it a good deal. It's how you format your
projects. Who are your partners?
What is the spend on those projects?
So there's, you know, out of probably 50-60 prospect
generators, I know there's six or seven of them that I think
you're making meaningful deals that that increase my odds
because there's more money being spent on those projects.
I also then I then I have the drill hole play.
I still like to be terrified. Then I'd go out and and drill
something and, and you know, and usually it's a brownfields type
project I'm looking for again with a good share structure and
good management that has a past track record of success.
So, you know, again, right now I have 3 or 4 companies that are
looking for copper, gold. I've got a uranium company, I've
got a worth company. I've got, you know, 4-4 or five
prospect generators, probably four.
One of them is not really a prospect generator, Mark, but
that that's My Portfolio. But just because it's My
Portfolio doesn't mean it's the right portfolio for someone
else. Sometimes when the prospect
generated, when things go right, they pivot and they become not a
prospect generator anymore. And yeah, the it's like, you
know, it's about the the discovery that was had.
But when does a prospect? And I actually, I'm sorry, I
didn't mean to catch. You that's OK.
Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll let you finish, but I was just going to
add when does a prospect generator go wrong?
To the contrary. Well, I, I, I typically like
what I call the hybrid prospect generator model, which is a
company that's got a number of projects generated out, that's
got companies spending, but they do spend some of their own money
exploring their, you know, improving some of their 100% own
properties. And if they are lucky enough to
make discovery, then they focus on that property.
But again, I, I like the balance.
I, I, I kind of like the hybrid and Concord is kind of like
that, even though they've got most of their projects available
for joint venture, they have their gold project which they're
keeping 100% and they're going to advance that a little bit
further down the food chain, do some of their own drilling.
You know, and normally a prospect generator does the
early work and, you know, brings the company in to do the
drilling. So in that case, Cancora is a,
you know why I have several companies, Cancora Headwater
gold, that's a prospect generator here in Nevada.
And again, they're joint ventured out Headwater with
Newmont, They've got Oceana gold on other projects.
They've got Sentara as a 9% shareholder, their producer, but
they have several projects that they're going to advance a
little bit further. So Concor and Headwater are two
companies that are hybrid prospect generators.
Get the best in both worlds. The the the to kind of like, you
know, peel it, peel it back a little bit when you see when you
see like the market retail enter more liquidity, a lot more
volume in the lower end of town. What are your like?
What are your instincts tell you to kind of lean in or to lean
back, Lean out. Well, right now I I think the
time is to finance companies with good people and good share
structure. I think this thing's got a lot
further to run, although I think there'll be some pretty good
hiccups along the way where people get scared out.
Again, there's a whole different mentality of investing in junior
resource stocks. If you're investing $5000 to
make $10,000 and that's your goal, again, you can do that and
you don't have to follow necessarily shear structure.
It's when you have bigger positions that you're not going
to be able to trade and stuff. So in this market, I think, you
know, it's a speculative market. I think things are going to keep
going higher. You know, some of the stuff I
would never want to own 9% of the company like I do in some of
my companies. You know, doesn't mean they're
not going to go up five fold than someone buying $10,000
worth. It just depends on what your
goal is, and I guess you have to figure that out for yourself.
Well, you often, you know, almost always encourage a a
transaction, a corporate outcome.
Is that the easiest way for for you to get at or do you sort of
see plenty of the time you you managed to sell down as the
company just grows into itself? Well, on a bull market you
managed to sell down or you know, there's been bull market.
I mean, I say there hasn't been a bull market for 15 years, but
obviously there was a lithium bull market.
There's been different bull markets in that time.
And commodities, the lithium stocks did really, really well
from, you know, I don't know, up until two years ago.
So four years ago, I guess 4 1/2 years ago, you know, the lithium
stocks boomed. And like we talked about, I
financed a company called Patriot Battery Metals at $0.16.
Later some Australian guys that, you know, came in and financed
it up $0.40. And, and I was also involved in
that financing. But that stock eventually went
to $16.00 on a major discovery with a management team that's
built a lithium company before. And I took profits along the way
because again at $0.16, you know, I think I sold stock at
$2.00 all the way up. But, you know, again, but I was
still selling stock at, you know, 12 and 14.
So yeah, it wasn't a transaction.
It's still, it's a tremendous asset.
Lithium prices came back 90%. So the stock came all the way
back to 250. Now it's starting to move back
up with the lithium prices. And if lithium continues to
improve, it'll probably be a $16.00 stock again.
But, but again, yeah, it's not always a transaction.
And but I'd like to see a transaction because the other
thing I don't like is when guys are good developers or good
exploration geologists try to put something into production
and become mine guys. The transition obviously doesn't
always work. So you, you really play by
these, these kind of rules. Jeff, I'm, I'm curious to hear
if you, if you look back in your career, when did you sort of
land on this kind of model coming out the 90s into that
bull run into to the 2000s? Have you been, you know, playing
by the same sort of script since then?
Or how did it all come about? Well, I think it comes about
over learning over time. I've always tried to, you know,
but you can say this, but I, you guys don't know me, but here in
the North American market, especially in Canada, I have a,
you know, pretty good reputation of following through on what I
say I'm going to do, being a good team player.
And, and again, that's what's important to me.
It's not who makes the most money in the business, it's
having a good reputation and also making money along the way.
Obviously that's part of the fun.
But so I've learned from experience, you know, when I
first came in the market, I was 26 years old and it was a bull
market. It was 1994 or something like
that. And I thought I found, you know,
I didn't know why I went to college.
I thought, hey, I don't need to go to college.
Everything I buy double S in three weeks.
I thought I found a broken slot machine.
I didn't realize I was in a bull market.
So I, you know, I learned and I got lucky that, you know, my
partner and I ended up starting an oil and gas company with AI.
Don't know, a $20 million market cap When we took it public and
we sold it 99 for 480 million. There was a lot of luck involved
in that too. So I but again, I I thought it
was a broken slot machine. I didn't know that the resource
market didn't always act that way.
So what, what, what, what? Was the sort of play there, was
it just sort of picking up a bunch of land and then the the
cycle kind of changed? Or how did it sort of play out
in your favor? The play in my oil and gas
company or the play in the the reversible market?
The oil and gas play well. Well, that was funny that, you
know, we, we were working with a company that was actually one of
the most successful companies listed in, in over time, I think
the stock went from originally $0.75 to $10 back to $0.75
because of all the, you know, I learned that, that a lot of the
people that are big shareholders, even when the
assets were incredible, they sold their stock and, and tried
to joint venture assets out to their own benefit to their other
companies. But eventually that company went
back from 10 to $0.75. The new management came in
because the assets were uncountable and went to $200 a
share. And because of that company,
over a 10 year period, because of that company, we got wind of
another oil and gas plant in Wyoming.
And we were young. I mean, we were 2829 years old.
And we ended up staking as much ground on that hiring land.
And you know, it's a bad episode of a cable, you know, which
staked everything because we realized these two NASDAQ
companies were and we leveraged ourselves to the tilt.
You know, we had so much land. We didn't, you know, you know,
and luckily we brought management in it.
I mean, the board was a bunch of friends and that, you know,
again, we learned through experience, but we brought
management and it would actually run a, a, a NASDAQ public
company and retired. But he'd looked at what we had
and said, this is pretty incredible.
And it was really those guys that 2 1/2 years later were able
to sell the company through development for, for, you know,
$18.00 a share or something. So again, it wasn't total skill,
it was a learning experience at 29 years old.
And at that time I thought, wow, I'm going to retire.
We were the largest shareholders of the company, but again you
get bit by the bug and here I am but 30 years later still doing
this. That's awesome.
Jeff, last question for you. What's your your your most your
most controversial view in the resource speculating sector?
My most controversial view? I have a lot of controversial
views. You want me to rank my most
controversial? You can just give me one.
I don't know the people's names would be involved in that, you
know, you know, you know, my most controversial view is if
you're really trying to develop an, a, a, a junior resource
company that you know, and, and you really are that's, you know,
if you're not just playing the, and really this, this hasn't
changed since the gold rush. And I don't know your Australian
history, but the gold rush here in California that built San
Francisco. I mean, you know, Mark Twain has
the famous quote, you know, gold mines, a hole in the ground with
a liar standing over it. What a lot of people don't tell
you is Mark Twain actually sold mining claims before he came up
with that quote and and ended up writing for the newspaper.
But yeah, I mean, the bottom line is the Wild West, this
stuff. So if I my most controversial
view is I think they should go back to the year hold, I think
all the exchanges and say, look, if you're going to get warrant
coverage, you at least have to be able to hold the stock for a
year. I mean, it would take the entire
Mickey Mouse speculation out of it and you'd actually have
people having to make smart decisions.
And the year is really not that long a period of time,
especially when you're getting some sort of warrant coverage.
So that would be very controversial because most
people in the Canadian markets or the Australian markets don't
want to be locked up so. I love it.
That's that's one I think we are very well aligned on.
Jeff, really appreciate you coming on the show sharing how
you think about the markets, how you think about investing in the
junior space. And yeah, thank you for for
sharing that with our audience. Well, I hope this is somewhat
helpful. And again, just to reiterate,
I'm not giving investment advice.
Any companies I mentioned or companies that have a large
shareholder in and I probably consult for you should do your
own due diligence. Look at stuff and and really
soak as much information as you can from shows like yourselves
and realize that you know you're you're at you're investing, is
investing in, in, in earnings and dividends.
This is educated speculation, so make sure you educate yourself.
Beautiful. Thanks so much, Jeff.
Love the way he thinks about markets, about the world almost
as much as I love our partners. Mate, a big thank you to focus
the 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, Intralinks.
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
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