The End of the Iron Age - Goldman Sachs

Goldman has a well reported note out on Iron ore where prices have been tumbling.
Rio Tinto and BHP are aggressively expanding capacity while demand has cooled. The steep cost

OT - Ramsbottom Bury Black Pudding Throwing World Championships

The second Sunday in September, of course, sees Ramsbottom, Lancashire, (currently still part of the United Kingdom) host the Black Pudding Throwing World Championships.

Denver Gold and Precious Metal Summit Companies Watchlist 2014

Stock watchlists for all the exhibitors at the Denver Gold Show and Precious Metals Summit are below the break.
Flagged D / P / D+P for shows attended.
Scrolling to the right should show performance fixed against base 10th September 2014

Global Gold Development Projects - IRR vs Cash Costs

Comparison of non-fully financed gold projects owned by non-cash flowing companies, from Red Eagle presentation basis National Bank Financial.
IRRs are recalculated to a common $1300 gold price. Clearly cash cost estimates will be dependent on levels of accuracy / conservatism in economic studies with differing levels of confidence through scoping to feasibility.
List of projects and study levels, including most of those below and others, HERE on the blog

Denver Gold Show & Precious Metals Summit

Two of the biggest precious metals conferences are in Colarado, over the next two weeks, this week at the Precious Metal Summit and next week at the more institutional Denver Gold Show.
Company attendances look high - see companies links below.
Webcasts will be available following the conferences. many companies have their presentations up on websites before the conferences.

Denver Gold Companies
Webcasts

Precious Metals Summit Companies
Webcasts

Junior Gold M&A - Agnico Eagle bid for Cayden Resources

Having recently teamed up with Yamana to buy out producer Osisko, Agnico are bidding for relatively early stage explorer Cayden Resources for $205m (approx $3.79/share - not on chart below).
Cayden's stock has been well supported for some time following high grade, near surface, discoveries at El Barqueno in Jaliso, Mexico, but the buyout is well ahead of defined mineral reserves and economic studies.
Management are large holders and support the bid so presumably have taken a view that this is not the environment to seek to add further value above $200m through continued financing for exploration success.
Morelos Sur in Guerrero is proximate to an increasingly active area with Goldcorp's Los Filos mine and developments, Torex's large advanced projects and Osisko Royalties large exploration package.

Peter Brandt - Factor Update 7th Sept 14

Full Trading Report - noting Gold and Silver risks and many other markets.

Bank of America / Merrill Lynch - 20th Annual Canada Mining Conference 2014 - & Gold Cost Curves / Breakdowns

Major mining conference in Toronto last week.

Register once to watch - not found a list of all presenters ?
- no doubt many more companies linking presentations and webcasts from their websites.

• Goldcorp - showing the strong growth profile and cost control that has supported their stock - also note nil capex after this year, although have Camino PFS due, and low debt. Having missed out on Osisko surely in the market for some big M&A. Torex proximate to Los Filos and Rubicon in Red Lake? 
• Barrick
• Royal Gold / Silver Wheaton / Franco Nevada
• Agnico Eagle
• McEwen

Gold Industry AISC - All in Sustaining Cost Curves - From Goldcorp's presentation...

Goldcorp's Cost breakdowns by region

Presumably the big differences in labour, fuel and power costs relate to open pit and underground operations aswell as pay rates in Canada vs Mexico

International Copper Study Group - World Copper Factbook 2013

World Copper Factbook 2013

Home & Monthly Updates
(Sell forecast mines and supply capacity data)

Many "large low grade" gold deposits come with considerable copper. Seabridge's KSM deposit for example has seen recent exploration highlighting more copper than gold. Potentially major base metals miners and PM streamers become involved in these projects as for example Thompson Creek and Royal Gold at Mt Milligan.

John Kaiser reviews various issues including Copper project pipeline and cost curve

Africa Down Under Conference - Sept 2014

The African continent is endowed with enormous mineral wealth but many countries continue to be seen as high risk regimes. During the last run for gold mining stocks, into 2011, many Aussie companies targeted West Africa and have now collapsed from bubble valuations while quality deposits were discovered and developed.
B2 Gold has made 2 recent African acquisitions, Volta in Burkina Faso and Papillon in Mali.
Africa Down Under Conference
Recent discussion of African Mining and discovery potential with Sprott's Chief Geologist, Andy Jackson

Junior Gold M&A - Atlantic Gold acquires Acadian from Liongold

Spur Ventures had a phosphate project in China and sat on cash and short term investments over $20m for the past 5 years as their project didn't progress.
Clearly cash is a rarity on junior balance sheets so Spur recently merged with Aussie listed Atlantic Gold who in turn have very slowly progressed a gold project in Nova Scotia. Today Atlantic announced a further acquisition of neighbouring properties, buying Acadian Mining from Singapore listed Liongold who in turn only purchased in October 2013 just after suffering a huge flash-crash in their stock from $1.56 to  20c, now trading at 6c.  Atlantic's presentation declares further acquisitive intent.

Chinese Miners Seeking $1.3bn Acquisitions

Dave Forest at Pierce Points highlights recent plans by Chinese miner Zijin to spend $1.3bn this year alone on Gold and Copper projects over 3m oz and 2bn lbs, particularly gold in Africa.

Meanwhile China Molybdenum also expressed interest in copper projects in developed countries, and countries with stable political conditions, following the example of their $820m purchase of the Australian Northparkes Copper Mine from Rio Tinto.

China Molybdenum’s chairman Li Chaochun was quoted by the South China Morning Post as saying, “We are bullish on copper over the long run. It is one of our investment priorities.”

Forest - Both announcements suggest that demand for quality mining projects from China is going to remain high. Both in established jurisdictions–and frontier economies such as in Africa. 

It will be interesting to note whether specific African jurisdictions see favour or whether good projects in more difficult regimes can be taken on with the weight of the Chinese state support where Western investors fear to tread.  

Eric Coffin Interview

Including stock discussions of Rockhaven, Constantine, Precipitate
Strategic Metals has significant holdings in these and others.(NBV focus)

Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly to the People - Foreign Affairs

The influential journal Foreign Affairs floats this balloon.... or helicopter.

Governments must do better. Rather than trying to spur private-sector spending through asset purchases or interest-rate changes, central banks, such as the Fed, should hand consumers cash directly. In practice, this policy could take the form of giving central banks the ability to hand their countries’ tax-paying households a certain amount of money. The government could distribute cash equally to all households or, even better, aim for the bottom 80 percent of households in terms of income.

But

Because they are more efficient, helicopter drops would require the banks to print much less money. By depositing the funds directly into millions of individual accounts -- spurring spending immediately -- central bankers wouldn’t need to print quantities of money equivalent to 20 percent of GDP. The transfers’ overall impact would depend on their so-called fiscal multiplier 

and fortunately

it makes no sense to worry about the solvency of central banks: after all, they can always print  more money. 

Brien Lundin Interview and Junior Stock Picks

Interview - HERE  from 13:00 on download.......notes below

Gold Mining M&A Targets - Project Comparisons

A number of analysts are pointing to a Merger and Acquisition spree as likely to follow a gold price break out. ........more......

The State of African Mining -SNL

Presentation HERE including recent feasibility studies summary of Capex & NPV
Appears to be from recent Mining on Top -Africa conference
More Conference Presentations HERE   and    HERE

Nolan Watson on Gold Streaming & Royalty Companies

Interview HERE. No mention of Brazilian mis-adventures at Colossus and Luna Gold

• With the assets, what we are looking for is robust economics. You want to ensure that the ratio of the value of the mine to CAPEX is high so that you’re not putting up a tremendous amount of capital for a small return when you do build that mine. 

• We are also looking for low-cost operations, so once they do build it, the question is whether the company is going to be able to produce at below the industry average all-in cost of production. 

• The third thing that we are looking for with a mine is exploration upside. We want to find situations where the mine life can double or triple. 

• On the company side, what we are looking for is obviously good management teams, but other things we are looking for are capital structure and balance sheets.  

• We are very sensitive to not over-stream a mine. Our goal is to ensure that their shareholders are the primary beneficiary of the cashflow of the asset. We have run into it in the past where things have been over-streamed and mining companies started losing incentive to actually extract value from the asset.

Monthly MACD for Gold - Approaching first Buy Signal since 2009

From Here
But Peter Brandt still wary of the bear.

Pierre Lassonde on Royalties and Exploration - Interview with Sprott

Interview with Pierre Lassonde at Sprott - in full

......when we create a royalty. I’m not talking about a stream; I’m talking about a royalty -- like the GoldStrike royalty or the Detour royalty. We get a free perpetual option on the discoveries made on the land by the operators, and we get a free perpetual option on the price of gold.

we need the exploration companies to get back to making discoveries. Otherwise the whole industry, particularly the gold mining industry, is going to go very flat production-wise. Even if the gold price starts to go up, it could take five or six years before production increases in response. So there’s a real need for venture capital

So do you avoid early-stage exploration stocks? Mostly, yes – though I do have people looking for the next Hemlo, or the next Voisey’s Bay. Whoever finds one of those, the premium they get to their share price will be beyond belief, because it’s been way too long since we’ve had a really significant new discovery – a Hemlo, at like 20 million ounces of gold, or a GoldStrike, with around 40 million ounces, a Voisey’s Bay or a Diamond Fields. It’s been over 20 or 25 years since we’ve had one of those discoveries. The world is just panting for one and I think it would be helpful to bring back the risk-taking attitude that’s completely gone from that sector. But those companies I look at are 1 in a 1,000. You can look at 999 dogs before you find one. It’s very difficult. 

 

Brent Cook - Telling Right from Wrong in Exploration

Identifying Exploration Companies

Exploration is a tough business, making a discovery is much tougher, and advancing a real deposit through the hurdles of geology, politics, and the stock market is the hardest test and is rarely successful.

......We should move ‘down the food chain’ into companies with stellar, early-stage projects that have yet to be tested—a process also much easier said than done. You can always find a reason not to buy. 

Paradigm Capital Gold Developers - 20 Takeover Targets

Report
Research Coverage

Rick Rule Interview

at SmallCapPower site

• Saucer shaped recovery,no spike sell off, so no hockey stick rebound.
• Feasibility / PFS stage M&A will be first movers 50-70% gains
• Entering beginnings of discovery cycle.
• Tiny-caps with good teams will be 10-baggers later as market develops
• Risks muted. Those who survived fairly decent. Top quartile. Past success. Current endeavour in similar circumstance.
• Capital / access to capital to stay alive until tide lifts all ships
• Nobody dreams about small deposits. Rewards commensurate with risk - size.
• Gold & silver M&A this year.
• 2-3 year horizon  industries in liquidation with prices below cost of production. Plat/Palladium. Uranium, Zinc, Nickel, Lead, Potash / Ag minerals. Longer horizon coal sector. First time since 2001 gold & silver reasonably priced.
• Prospect generators
• Optionality stocks - big deposits , price sensitive, very large capital. See much more upside. $40-50m caps vs $400m 3 years ago.

British Columbia Mining - Mt Polley Disaster

The catastrophic breach of the tailings dam has seen huge concern in Canada - reported with videos at IKN

Jack Caldwell at I Think Mining (see blogroll) has this from correspondents.

The cost to other mining aspirants of delayed projects, additional tailings facility features, and so on is, in a sense, incalculable.   As one private correspondent said to me today: “This sets mining in Canada back for at least ten years.”  Another private correspondent said: “Nobody will permit a new mine in BC for at least ten years.”

Very Junior Gold M&A

Some of the smaller juniors becoming extinct through M&A in the very junior gold space over recent months. List Below

Diggers & Dealers - Australia 2014

The premier Aussie Mining event kicked off in Kalgoorlie today

Presenting Companies and Exhibitors
Review at Mining Australia

Mervyn King former governor of the Bank of England gave the opening address.

"We need to have these changes in the world economy, supply side reforms and changes to real exchange rates in order to boost the real incomes of countries that previously had large trade surpluses, and they will need to spend that on consumption and reduce their trade surpluses."

Brent Cook - Discovery Panel with Tim Coughlin, Eira Thomas & Miles Thompson

Discussion of the Discovery Process chaired by Brent Cook at the Sprott Symposium

Marginal Producers

The marginal producers clearly offer great risks to investors during periods of metal price weakness, a number of business failures have occurred during this down-cycle. If we are entering a period of increasing prices the marginal producers who survived may offer great leverage, and sooner than the explorers or developers as they will control increasing cashflow.

Here Ravi Sood, the CEO of such a marginal producer is interviewed on Palisade Radio.

OT - Hungaroring - Hell yeah

Youtube - below

Brent Cook Interviewed by Daniella Cambone

Interview on Kitco

 On the junior side, he thinks that it is an interesting area to look at but at the same time it is getting ‘tough.’ “There are very few [junior] companies out there now with the technical competence and cash to really advance exploration plays.” However, Cook says well-standing junior companies are the place to be because over the next two years, the majors are going to have to buy something and this is where they will be looking

Productivity in Mining - Ernst & Young

Report from Ernst & Young putting the case for "broad transformation" by the miners to increase productivity.

Summary                         Full PDF

For example Australian Mining labour productivity trend

A long term re-focus is required

Eric Coffin & Rick Rule Discussion at Sprott Vancouver Resource Symposium

Discussions from Sprott Conference on Korelin.

Sprott Symposium - Includes list of Sponsor Companies
Reports on Symposium discussions

• Northern Miner (free subscriptions offer)
• Sprott 

Liam Halligan - UK Telegraph Questioning the Dollar

Goldbug narrative in the mainstream / establishment UK Telegraph newspaper questioning the Dollar's role as reserve currency, the rise of the Brics at purchasing power parity and non-dollar trade settlement.

Martin Armstrong also discusses the politicisation of the dollar in trade and reserves.

Silver Deposits in Mexico - Size & Grade

Comparative graphic from Plata Latina
Also Silver Institute - Global Silver Production for perspective
And Companies with Mining Projects in Mexico according to the Mexican Geological Service - large searchable database.
Production       Development        Exploration

Top 20 Silver Producing Countries in 2013 (millions of ounces)
1.	Mexico	169.7
2.	Peru	118.1
3.	China	118.0
4.	Australia	59.2
5.	Russia	45.4
6.	Bolivia	41.2
7.	Chile	39.2
8.	Poland	37.6
9.	United States	35.0
10.	Argentina	24.7
11.	Canada	20.8

OT - Anglesey & North Wales

Hot Sunny Days   -   Trearrdur Bay

New Sprott Gold Miners ETF

New Gold Miners ETF from Sprott - SGDM
Sprott discuss weighting for growth and balance sheet strength - HERE
Company components - at launch sees a very strong concentration in top 3 holdings. Franco Nevada, Randgold and Goldcorp.

Rising Rates Good for Gold - Myrmikan Capital - Daniel Oliver

Myrmikan Capital Research Report

If less printing and higher rates were bad for gold, as the bank analysts tell us, gold should have sold off vigorously. It surged instead.

Peter Brandt - Gold bias Long Term Bullish

Peter Brandt sees critical supports at $1277 and $1240

Marginal Oil Production Costs vs Rise of Alternatives

Ambrose Evans Pritchard reviews the marginal cost of oil production and the increasing competitiveness of alternatives, which may leave trillions of dollars of malinvestment - the "subprime danger of this cycle".

US Official Gold Reserves vs M3 Money Supply

An interesting chart from Jason Hamlin's speculations on the gold price