Bitterroot Resources (
TSX:V.BTT,
Stock Forum) likely will see fresh news next week. For our
TCR audience, we anticipate a double or triple of market worth IN A SHORT SPAN.
Last we checked with
CEO Mike S. Carr, the platinum group metals prospector was lining up more drilling to start on fresh Michigan parcels.
Or Mike and the tiny Bitterroot, in its 22
nd year as a company, might have consummated the purchase or optioning of further parcels in mining-friendly Michigan.
BTT raised about $1.5 million in summer 2013. The stock is tightly controlled, and I bought another 50,000 shares today. I have seen BTT quadruple and quintuple in the space of a week, or less.
Mr. Carr’s Root got buried in October 2013 after 530 meters or so of drilling in Michigan turned out to be a bust.
See: Chris Parry’s article in Stockhouse.
The shares lost half their value in less than a day.
Mike is a geologist and the lowest-key CEO in the mining biz I know. He hails from, where else, Vancouver, Canada. When the stock got assaulted in the autumn, he told me the entry point looked pretty darn good at 4 cents Canadian.
In December,
Toll Cross Securities was the main buyer on a whack of cheap BTT shares. Toll Cross was involved in the August 2013 PP and has been a long-term supporter of BTT.
For a company with 125 million shares out there, BTT is not easy to purchase. We here at home own almost 200,000 shares. The stock could move to 6 to 9 cents Canadian next week.
The
hot tub referenced is my Strawberry health club’s tub.
This week, everyone in the California pool was talking biotech, and how much money they were making: the lady who bought
Acadia Pharma (
NASDAQ:ACAD,
Stock Forum) and made 150 percent in the blink of an eyedropper; the folks marveling at
Intercept Therapeutics (
NASDAQ:ICPT,
Stock Forum) the other day (billions of dollars riding on non-alcoholic liver drug and up 700%+ this week); everyone from our local Marin County who is printing money with
BioMarin (
NASDAQ:BMRN,
Stock Forum).
The simple view from me, a simpleton who used to cover the industry for newspapers and wire services, is that this chatter tells us that individuals speculating in turbulent biotechnology right now -- as groundbreaking as some fresh clinical trials are -- might be under water when the bubbles stop.
Still, I have exposure here:
BioCryst Pharma (
NASDAQ:BCRX,
Stock Forum), which almost surely will reach into the mid-teens on the promise of a nifty portfolio of developing drugs: leukemia, influenza, gout, angioedema and so on.
I still own a little
Inovio Pharma (
AMX:INO,
Stock Forum), which develops synthetic DNA for treatments and vaccines that might treat cancer, infectious diseases and other ailments.
Next week, the three annual San Francisco health care conferences make downtown travel worse than a case of influenza. Our interest is in
Biotech Showcase, the smaller companies in the hot tub.
As everyone from the original
TCR and the
MarketWatch days knows, I was fortunate enough to be early, and large, in
Illumina (
NASDAQ:ILMN,
Stock Forum), a genomics tools company from the San Diego, California, area. In the past, before my attention turned to resources, our biggest wins – millions of dollars – came from heart-drug companies, brain-drug companies and one or two other biotechs.
The only new one I am looking at with the view of testing the waters (hot tub) is
Neuralstem (
AMX:CUR,
Stock Forum), on a prompt from David Banister in New England. This company just raised $20 million at a cheaper stock price, with warrants, for its work on ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Reading assignment: One of our two
TCR preferred publishing partners offers a look into why
niobium is nigh a rare earth revival. See
CEO.ca's
profile of Mark Smith, formerly Chevron Mining and Molycorp. You don't have to see the film "Nebraska" to get an early look at
Niocorp's (
TSX:V.NB,
Stock Forum) Elk Creek project. See:
https://ceo.ca/mark-smith/.
The article, distributed here to
TCR audience and across other venues, influenced the share price in Canada trading Friday. NB rose 23 percent.
Thanks to CEO.ca's
Tommy Humphreys in Vancouver, Canada, for adding several influential members to our
TCR family of
subscribers.
TCR Notes: I chatted briefly with the
Solvista Gold (
TSX:V.SVV,
Stock Forum) team in Medellin, Colombia, regarding our TCR 8 stock’s 83 percent gain in a day on 400,000-plus shares. I believe the company is takeover bait for the value of its Caramanta porphyry, with another property, veined deposit Guadalupe, also in Colombia, as a spinoff. KEEP AN EYE ON THE SHARES. Solvista is one of the TCR Preferred 8. I own about 200,000 shares.
Your friendly,
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