November Stock Picking Update

It’s time for the monthly mining stock picking up date. What follows is an edited version of my monthly note to our club in my capacity as Chairman.

The air in the Chairman’s Palace is currently rich with the heady scent of righteous excitement as we head into the final month of this year’s “Pick-A-Dog”competition. At least I think that’s what I can smell; my terrier’s been having digestive issues so I may have it wrong.

With so little time left, if my friends in the club were thinking of dipping in to the market to counter the inevitable impact that tax loss selling will have on their sclerotic stock pick, the cut-off for the final share price numbers is December 31^st, a Monday.

This time next month, my family holiday to the UK will inevitably find me ensconced in a warm pub in the Yorkshire Dales, perched on my regular bench in front of the crackling fire; faithful whippets at my feet and a ferret up my trousers to keep me company. I’ll be supping a flat, warmish pint of Braithwaite’s Big Bosomed Trollop while the rest of the club members lick their stock-picking wounds and search the liquor store shelves for big California reds to slake my enormous winner’s thirst.

“What are the rest of the club doing?” I’ll ask myself wistfully, as the grand father clock in the corner tick-tocks down to market close in Toronto, the dreamy sound of expensive wine bottles chinking quietly in the distance, and the regulars stopping by to pick my brains about castrating rams.

Well, thinks I, they might be basking in the post-Christmas glow. Surrounded by their loving families, they’re reading formulaic stocking-stuffer books; the latest by Michael Lewis perhaps, on the fascinating post-war economic history of goat’s cheese, all the while supping on a warming flagon of home-made mulled wine. Life’s good, they’ll be thinking as they nod off. But then they’ll wake up to a soggy trail of sleep-drool down the front of their repulsive Christmas sweaters, and they’ll remember a) they’re not a Yorkshireman and b) they lost the Hys and Lows competition yet again.

I’ll be thinking of them all as the 5^th pint slips down to celebrate my victory, and I slice off another delicious morsel of Ethel Poppleton’s home made black pudding. Finally, sated and happy, I’ll pop my flat cap and clogs back on for the short wobble home t’farm, over’t dry-stone walls and through the thick, white snedge draped seductively over the limestone landscape. Aye. Life’s grand.

But enough bucolic reverie. The response rate to my monthly email communications this year was terrible. Very few of our 25 club members bothered to email me any comments, or encouragement, not even abuse. Apparently, most of them died during the last 12 months which means my substantial RRSP investment in Bide-A-Wee Funeral Homes Ltd is about to take a nice up-tick. However, even in the face of extended radio silence, I have persisted. I have soldiered manfully on, pushing through the hurricane winds of your overwhelming apathy, that is when I’m not napping in my home office.

So down to business. Where does the Hys and Lows portfolio of 25 stocks stand at the end of November as tax-loss selling hits? Well, the reality is, only 3 -yes 3-stocks are actually left standing in positive gain territory, heads above the parapet. The rest of them have wilted like Boris Johnson’s hard-on in a brothel full of Theresa May’s clones. Ouch. Sorry about that. I realised how disturbing that visual was/is as I wrote it, and now I can’t un-see it.

My pick, Evrim is still in the lead and thrusting purposefully ahead; their incredible exploration team is still busy ferreting out world-class ore bodies wherever they can be found. Evrim’s CFO finally cashed my cheque and they’ve agreed not to publish any drill results until after December 31^st. And Evrim’s President, Paddy Nichols, recently sent me a photo of himself from the field. Here he is sighting the latest drill hole, making sure the azimuth and dip are correct. Good to see a man so hands on and on top of his game.

Talking of hitting rock bottom, our portfolio is just about at an all-time low, down just under 37% from the start of the year. We also guess where the gold price will be at the end of the year, and our gold price picks have fared even worse. Everybody went too high with their guesses, with the closest being $1,344 versus the actual spot price of about $1,220. Can we not get anything right?

Chin chin.

Chairman Ralph