Argex Titanium | American Sands Energy | True North Gems | LD Micro | Abitibi Royalties | Prophecy Coal
-- Life is inevitable; suffering is optional.
LOS ANGELES -- Well, except in the business of resource equities.
As in all of the following:
-- Golden Valley Mines: Trading snafu of USA ticker now resolved. FINRA in the USA confirms the trading symbol “GLVMF” will be up for trading again at open of the OTC market on Tuesday.
In the category of crazy coincidences and possible attacks of shingles for V.GZZ shareholders who own the Quebec claims staker via that trading ticker, Golden Valley learned its GLVMF (a USA substitute for GZZ in Canada) was kaput at the same time a week ago when it was knee deep in the drama of its 60-percent-owned Abitibi Royalties (TSX:V.RZZ, Stock Forum - ATBYF in USA).
The conflict in that drama is a Quebec injunction served on Osisko Mining (TSX:T.OSK, Stock Forum) as Abitibi sorts out who owns what and how much it is worth at the Malartic CHL joint venture, near Val d'Or, Quebec.
The blow-by-blow thus far is here, thanks to our media partners and its marquee-display of our TCR coverage of Abitibi Royalties.
Osisko Mining in a swift response to Abitibi's injunction declares "no known resources or reserves on eight of the ten claims of the CHL Prospect that is part of an Abitibi-Osisko joint venture."
This Malartic CHL drama will continue to unfold and fold, like a shear zone. Canadian Malartic is Canada's largest gold producer. As an ATBYF and GLVMF shareholder I am F-glad that serial royalty holder Glenn Mullan at ATBYF and GLVMF knows his Net Smelter Return ABCs.
-- We include (for subscribers)
two independent reports from Frederick Lacy in southern California.
I saw Mr. Lacy on our Quebec tour of Argex Titanium and Nouveau Monde Mining. He is an investor, former investment banker and propagator of The Alexander Technique.
The two reports are for Argex Titanium (TSX:T.RGX, Stock Forum) and for an obscure China traditional medicine maker, Bohai Pharma (OBB:BOPH, Stock Forum).
I have yet to purchase shares of Argex, a developer of a titanium dioxide whose purity might disrupt the current cartel for the white-pigment additive. Think paints, coatings, food additives, pills, sunscreens -- anything that cries out for WHITE.
I am searching for an entry point in the shares. Allow me to say, against a backdrop of largely Canada quizzicals about Argex and a looming $300 million (debt) financing that the Montreal-area product is real, the pilot plant and lab are operating and the Argex chemists and metallurgists employed there and at Montreal HQ probably account for a good fifth of the talent in this business.
Mr. Lacy's Argex report has everything you need to get a handle on Argex. I am here to tell you that titanium dioxide as a pigment is inevitable in our world where WHITE is BRIGHT.
The company and its execs and workers could be on the cusp of a manufacturing dynasty.
I have no comment on Bohai, which looks intriguing but is almost as thinly traded as another highly speculative and possibly worthy name I have come across this (northern hemisphere) spring: Cabo Verde Capital. I own neither Bohai nor Cabo (WTARD - soon to see new ticker).
Those who want Fred Lacy's two reports can subscribe to our own TCR Report. They also might be available online in a search.
What is ahead: LD Micro conference and its intensive side-by-side 15-minute presentations. Chris Lahiji's LD also offer 1x1 portions at the
west LA gathering on Wednesday. I will serve up myself a bakers dozen, including Sysorex Global Holdings (OBB:SYRX, Stock Forum) and TCR 7 member Gold Standard Ventures (TSX:V.GSV, Stock Forum).
See: www.LDMicro.com.
The big LD Micro conference is in late autumn, also in Bel-Air. This one-day event Wednesday, according to Mr. Lahiji, is the best collection of 100 or so small-cap companies he ever has put together at the long-running event.
-- Ivanhoe Mines confirmed in a chest-beating collection of paragraphs that it received the government's "long-term mining right" for a platinum-group metals project in the Republic of South Africa. The Flatreef section of South Africa's Platreef shapes up as a mechanized approach to humane mining for platinum and its associated metals. I have owned the South Africa mine developer (TSX:T.IVN, Stock Forum - IVPAF in USA) for 11 long-suffering years, including as a private. The shares are near an all-time low.
Ivanhoe also operates in DRC Congo.
-- Shares of True North Gems (TSX:V.TGX, Stock Forum - TGNMF in USA) could rise later this week after a gathering of investors in Denmark. Nick Houghton's Greenland developer of a ruby deposit, with stockpiled gems ready for processing and sale, is set for production. This is another example of a company that could disrupt the market for the reds. Mr. Houghton, CEO, is an at-market buyer of his own company's shares -- a rare occurrence against a landscape of private placements and promotional shares in the resources business.
He also is a trained gemologist from northern England. Oy.
I was adding to my stake last week, after a Danish newspaper's early report of mine financing for True North Gems. Take the reds, man.
-- It just might be that carbonis in again. Or will be.
I l-o-v-e this 1916 description of diamonds and rubies, the king and queen of gems, in Brooklyn, N.Y., author Helen Bartlett Bridgman's book, GEMS.
Right now, very little is working in the land of resource equities. Even energy developers -- with the exception of Utah's American Sands Energy -- are flopping silly. Carbon, as in coal, graphite and diamonds, look attractive on the theory that the deadest (s)cat bounces the highest. No shoot. We shall see.
Our coverage at TCR of these carbon copy companies over the years include
s:
John Lee's Prophecy Coal in Mongolia, Eric Desaulniers' Nouveau Monde Mining in Quebec, Benoit Gascon's Mason Graphite in Quebec, Stellar-Diamonds in Sierra Leone and True North Gems in Greenland. I own all
but for Mason, which made us money earlier in the year, and graphite developer Nouveau Monde.
Prophecy Coal (TSX:V.PCY, Stock Forum) is working with a Mongolia government agency in its efforts to crack open the Russia border at Zeltura, next to its producing coal mine, and start improving the road into Mother-R, Mr. Lee tells me today.
Allow me to add: I never have made money in gems, let alone coal, during 30-plus-years of buying them physically and purchasing their associated equities. I am, you can ask the folks here at home, so motivated to make a bundle in gems -- give me diamonds, rubies, Colombian emeralds, hey I'll take Cambodian zircon even (photo below) -- that we agreed to name a daughter Gem(ma). This is true.
-- In addition to True North Gems on the action-able list of possible movers, we add American Sands Energy (OBB:AMSE, Stock Forum), which is outpacing most resource equities the past two months -- that is, holding onto most of its hard-won gains instead of taking a dive. Will Gibbs' and Dan Carlson's little company engineered some buying last week after two or three investor presentations.
AMSE next week will show, in Phoenix, Arizona, a pilot facility for its extraction of heavy oil from sand. The video is very good. The formula looks simple enough: no byproducts from the extraction process -- just bitumen and clean, dry sand (no water).
I own shares and look to purchase more, after making money on some earlier in the year. If pro-business Utah does not pull a fast one on us, AMSE could be extracting oil on 100 percent-owned land for as little as $50 a barrel.
Also ahead: A redesign of TCR, with a new thomcalandra.com landing page, is likely this (northern hemisphere) summer. Our reports are seeing a rapid rise in subscribers -- at the $110 level and at the add-on $20 level for TCR Blips.
We also have notched five bulk orders for strategics, as we call those who are either longstanding members of the TCR network, or in the business of special situations, resources and in some cases, biomedical technologies.
-- My entire portfolio of publicly held companies, by ticker, is listed for Stockhouse members (free) under tcalandra at the portfolio function. The function does not include position size nor level of suffering with possible shingles attacks.
-- Finally, please email me if you would like the Glass Lewis proxy analysis of board-level conflicts and salaries at Gran Colombia Gold (TSX:T.GCM, Stock Forum). I still own the shares, which will need to quadruple if I am to see a positive return on my stake in the Segovia and El Marmato gold and silver producer. Que lastima.
-- Thom Calandra