IKN readers know what this is!A short piece cobbled together for part of the latest edition of The IKN Weekly, IKN446:
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Garibaldi (GGI.v): A final comment
“A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.”
Franz Kafka
I was going to let the whole issue of Garibaldi Resources (GGI.v) and its self-proclaimed discovery at E&L Nickel Mountain drop after my quick word in this space last week, but it just so happens that since then I’ve done something I rarely do these days; I’ve paid attention to the chatrooms and bullboards of GGI and spent the week reading them closely (NB: no writing on them, I gave that up long ago). Due to that (this section is called ‘Market Watching’ after all) a few words here because even among the world of juniors this stock has gone off-scale in the number and nature of its True Believers.
Bullboards tend to be cruddy places at the best of times, either slagfests between people with opposite views (“you are only long/short this stock because your mother slept with the postman”) or circlejerks that provide all the bias confirmation you’ll ever need to stop you selling out of your mistakes. However, the evangelical tone and sheer weight of ignorancebeing propounded by those who would be your thought leaders regarding GGI is a whole different league. There is no debate and there’s no argument possible, nothing will change the unshakeable belief (of people who are obviously already bought in and have no arsenal left except words) and constant verbal onslaught that this is the next Voisey’s Bay or whatever else. There are many examples of the constructs and lines of attack being used but perhaps the best is the elevation of the consulting geologist to GGI to Godlike status, as the words of Dr. Peter Lightfoot are now revered as holy scripture and that any other geological opinion aside from his is to be immediately discarded. People, he’s a consulting geologist! I’ve met and talked with a dozen of them, of course they’ve forgotten more than I know about their specialist subject but for crying out loud they have a job to do, a paycheck to pick up!
The fervour and tone of True Believers about GGI, a company that uses classic marketing, photos of core to whip people into a frenzy before making them wait months for real assays (that then fall short on several counts (
25)), run by people with a proven track record of hype-then-disappointment with a need to raise capital and with a carefully considered plan to use the Northern winter season as an excuse in order to play out the promotion as long as possible (plenty of time for placement buyers to sell) stacks up to red flag after red flag. Yes, of course the next drill hole may turn this speculation into something more solid (it’s not called The Truth Machine after all) but even after considering the normal odds on world class discoveries, chances aren’t great. Add in the BELIEF stoking an outsized market cap and the risk/reward balance for anyone thinking of getting in now is nastily skewed. And believe me, Dr. Peter Lightfoot will continue to be a world-class nickel geol without a blemish on his name no matter how this story plays out, his reputational hit if GGI withers and dies will be plain straight zero. He’s a geologist, not a market mover-maker-shaker, he doesn’t give a fig about how much money you lose and neither do his peers.
And that’s it for GGI, except to say that while searching the Google machine for the exact wording of the Kafka quote I also came across something Carl Sagan once said on the same subject. It struck me as uncommonly wise (as was Sagan of course) so it gets to be the end of this little note.
“People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.”
Words from which I can learn something. It also reminded me of bullboards again; look if you must, but don’t touch.
There will be no more on GGI in The IKN Weekly.