Contributor driven miner and explorer list

The contributor driven miner and explorer list goes back nearly a decade, but only few of the original contributor picks have been maintained throughout that period.

Selecting Precious Metal Miners and Explorers

Searching for excellence

Precious metal explorers as investment vehicles have a long standing track record of extreme volatility. As Rick Rule of Sprot Asset Mgt. USA uses to formulate it: “We have known both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”.

It is obvious that the success of precious metal explorers goes together with both the exploration talent of a small team of geologists and with their broader management skills. Add just a grain of luck in picking among the promising geological anomalies the successful drilling locations. To end this introduction with another quote of Rick Rule: “Profitable miners ultimately will see their share price reflect increased cash flows from mining operations, but you can’t count on a gold bull market to bail you out of a dumb decision on an explorer investment.”

Oban Mining to become Osisko 2.0

Anyone familiar to the gold mining business knows about the acquisition of mid-tier producer Osisko Mining by Agnico Eagle and Yamana Gold. Excess working capital of Osisko was pooled in a new gold streamer named Osisko Royalties.

Explorer shake out coming

Several illustrous precious metal mining gurus have been warning for it: an explorer shake out is coming.

As Rick Rule uses to phrase it: "Many explorers will inevitably tend towards their intrinsic value: zero", qualifying the typical ill managed nano-cap as "would-be explorers lead by butchers, bakers and candle stick makers".

Pretium Resources: slide justified?

Pretium came with very decent drilling results lately (and was rewarded with a sell off). Last week, I saw some article pointing to PVG dropping below its 200 dma. This may also have triggered some additional selling spree on Friday, September 7.

No mercy for gold explorers

A gold explorer ETF

Early October 2011, I pointed to the poor performance of junior gold stocks and of explorers in particular. With GLDX, the Global X Gold Explorer ETF, we have a suitable benchmark for that market segment. How has the situation evolved ever since? Let's first have a look at the GLDX graph since October 2011:

Global X gold explorer ETF (GLDX) the last 9 months

Doesn't look very nice, but then again: miners have been in a terrible slump, largely underperforming gold bullion over more than a year now. Are you off worse with explorers, as was the case in October?
We did witness a recovery of GLDX early 2012 and after the mid May disastreous swoon, a swift recovery followed. Yamana Gold bidding for Extorre added some spice to the rally. (GLDX has Extorre among its holdings; but on the flip side Yamana will acquire Extorre on the cheap as compared to what it quoted like a year ago).

Selecting explorers and junior miners

Searching for excellence

Precious metal explorers as investment vehicles have a long standing track record of extreme volatility. As Rick Rule of Sprot Asset Mgt. USA uses to formulate it: “We have known both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”.

Miners' performance relative to precious metals

Abstract
The focus of this article is on the gold and silver miners from a tactical point of view: how do PM miners perform relative to the price of gold or silver. Data used are 2012 Jan 10.
Special attention is paid to the miners covered by the database 'Canadian gold and silver mining', for which a capital weighted index of gold- and silver miners is calculated. Aggregated performance is one thing, it's also very illustrative that miner and explorer performance has been diverging from outperforming the metals by a wide margin to losing ground completely.

Seabridge Gold

Seabridge Gold (website) is a gold exploration company. Seabridge Gold’s resource base of gold, copper and silver is one of the world’s largest. The principal projects are located in Canada. Their objective is to grow resource and reserve ownership per share. Their risk-reducing strategy: acquire North American deposits; expand them through exploration; move them to reserves through engineering; and sell or joint venture them to established producers for mine construction and operation. Seabridge gold quotes both on the NYSE in USD (Ticker SA) and on Toronto-TSX in CAD (Ticker SEA.TO)

Novagold

This page contains links to press releases and articles on NOVAGOLD (company website).

Becoming a Pure Gold Play Focused on Donlin Gold

NOVAGOLD offers an unrivaled opportunity for investors seeking leverage to gold. The Donlin Gold project is a uniquely attractive asset which in terms of size, grade, exploration potential, production profile, and jurisdictional safety, is quite possibly the most important project in the world today. NOVAGOLD is well-funded with a cash balance of approximately US$206 million as of August 31, 2013, sufficient to fulfill all of its current financial obligations as well as fund the advancement of Donlin Gold through the permitting process.