IKN #686Premium

The IKN Weekly
Week 686, July 10th 2022
Contents
This Week: In Today’s Edition, Inflation > Jobs, You’re only as good as your last trade.
Fundamental Analysis: Rio2 Ltd (RIO.v): Picking up the pieces of a broken story.
Stocks to Follow: Element 29 (ECU.v), Rio2 Ltd (RIO.v), Minera Alamos (MAI.v), QC Copper &
Gold (QCCU.v), Amerigo Resources (ARG.to), Superior Gold (SGI.v).
Copper Basket: Overview.
Producer Basket: Overview, Kinross (KGC), Gold Fields (GFI).
TinyCaps Basket: Overview, Signature (SGU.v)
Regional Politics: Chile’s Constitutional referendum vote is now on deck, Colombia: The Petro
government aims at Soto Norte, Regional inflation continues higher, Brazil: Lula consolidates his
lead, Ecuador: The calm after the storm, Peru: Prepare for the next round of copper mine
disruptions.
Market Watching: Deferred.
I remind subscribers that no part of this newsletter can be copied, reproduced or
given to any third party without the express permission of the author.
This Week
In Today’s Edition
 This edition is mostly about Rio2 Ltd (RIO.v) and the reasons behind its EIA permit
denial last week. It considers the fall-out and tries to map a way forward.
 This week’s macroeconomic agenda will likely be set by Wednesday’s CPI reading, we
consider that using our usual mirror of the gold price in today’s intro.
 Regional politics for mining companies continue to suck, but somebody has to tell you
about it. Reports from Chile, Colombia and a brief update on the rapid rise in inflation
across the region.
Inflation > Jobs
We start with last Friday’s jobs numbers, as it’s not that the US BLS Employment Report for the
month of June was unimportant; quite the contrary in fact, the headline number of 3.6%
unemployed and +372k NFP jobs were strong and once the seasoned US-macro watchers had
pored over the details, many pointed to the U6 number of 6.7%, which measures labor under-
utilization and is now lower than pre-pandemic levels and the main reason is explained by BLS
thusly (1):
"The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons declined by 707,000 to 3.6
million in June and is below its February 2020 level of 4.4 million. These individuals, who would
have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been
reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs."
Not only more jobs, but more part-timers are now becoming full-timers. So much for the Fed
trying to manufacture a recessi…sorry…cool the market and provide a soft-landing. The market
also took the Friday numbers in its stride, because we’re now in one of those unusual periods in
which the BLS Jobs data play second fiddle to another dataset, that of inflation.
1

The main show is up this week, in a Wednesday double-bill that starts with the US Consumer
Price Index data for June and then continues early afternoon with the publishing of the Fed
beige book. Both these events are potential market movers and while the Beige Book will get
examined for likely Fed cues, CPI is the big one. Current consensus is (2) “…for a 1.1%
increase in CPI, and a 0.6% increase in core CPI. The consensus is for CPI to be up 8.8% year-
over-year and core CPI to be up 5.8% YoY.” This matters for us, simple followers of junior
mining stocks, because the CPI number has the potential to move the gold price and in these
bearish times, all the company analysis in the world won’t stop a stock price from dropping hard
if gold tumbles another U$100/oz. o we now get on-point and after last week’s strong jobs
report, if inflation comes in higher than expected it shifts the narrative from the current classic
“slowdown-to-recession” assumption to one of stagflation and to remind this esteemed
audience, it’s why we continue to advocate a position in gold even as the US economy slows. In
two lines:
 Recession: bad for gold price (e.g. recent classic slowdown scenarios such as 2013/4)
 Stagflation: good for gold price (e.g. That 70s Show and the Jimmy Carter years)
The market is flashing the economic slowdown as clearly as you’d like, with last week seeing
the yield curve slip into negative territory:
It may be only 0.3% underwater but that’s enough of a signal and as seen in this longer-term
chart of the same data, every dip under the zero line has preceded a recession period (grey
shaded areas). The relationship is well-established and there’s every reason to expect the
economy to slow as The Fed hikes rates and on that, we all know it’s 75bps this month.
So the conundrum is clear; We know The Fed will raise rates in its attempt to reel in inflation,
but we also know that no matter how much bluster and “It won’t be my fault” Jay Powell offers,
a recession is even worse news and will be avoided if possible. A that point, take another
glance at the long term FRD chart above and those shaded areas denoting recession periods,
because another fact of life is that a recession is never called a recession at the time. Those
grey areas are added in retroactively, when at some point the datacrunchers comes out with
something along the lines of “We now understand that the US economy slipped into recession
at X Date…”, by which time it’s too late.
Which brings us back to next week’s important CPI because for gold, real interest rates are
2

what matter. The wider the gap, the stronger the case for gold and now what remains to be
seen whether inflation comes under control as the Fed demands it. And that’s next Wednesday
and a hot inflation number will put the Fed under pressure and an increase in negative real
rates that not even a 75bps rise will be able cover quickly enough.
Wednesday also brings Beige Book and the Fed has more control over that narrative, so once
the dust settles on the day, we should have a clearer idea on which way gold jumps. The
popular call this weekend is for gold to go lower and chartists can call on plenty of evidence.
There’s also market selling of gold on show, with GLD inventories now back to the levels seen
before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (it would seem the world doesn’t consider it an existential
threat any longer, just as long as they fight in those East Ukraine places that are difficult to
pronounce). However, the selling isn’t out-and out dumping either, as the ratio shows the drop
in inventory as orderly and in-line with the dollar.
GLD gold holdings, 2022 year to date (metric tonnes)
1140
1120
1100
1080
1060
1040
1020
1000
980
960
940
920
You’re only as good as your last trade
It’s a well-established truism. In the world of equities analysis and third party advisories, be the
medium a newsletter, brokerage, financial advisor, TV personality or, in this day and age,
YouTuber with their channel or a Twitter thought leader, you’re only as good as your last trade.
I have no issue with that and it means this weekend The IKN Weekly sucks at its job, no matter
that it’s been going for 13 years and for closing in on 700 near-consecutive weekends. Last
week was bad for me, bad for you and bad for business. I accept my failings.
The hit taken from the RIO.v going sour is a personal financial setback, but far more important
for me is the hit this publication takes from backing a high confidence trade that didn’t deliver.
The money loss hurts, reputation loss hurts more but the loss of trust is the keenest pain; it’s
not a nice feeling to know that people have lost money because of your badly placed advice.
The recent market downturn had seen plenty of unsubscriptions even before last week’s Top
Pick (until this weekend at least) reversal brought another flurry of people leaving the service.
That’s normal and it’s how capitalism works; it’s hardly the first time these very pages have
pointed its readers to the basic tenet and reason for a service such as this is to make money. If
it cannot do its most basic job, The IKN Weekly will get the fate it deserves.
Finally, there’s little in the way of ‘Market Watching’ this weekend as for one, the continued
drudgery of the juniors’ sector has seen the industry pulling in the flags and battening down its
own hatches; suddenly it’s not cool to be out there spending money on exploration and
development assets. For another, I decided to focus on Rio2 this weekend and not dilute the
message too much. Hopefully it won’t be as painful to read as it was to write.
Life goes on. I’ll be in a better place by next weekend.
3
12/21/13 22/1/5 22/1/01 22/1/51 22/1/02 22/1/52 22/1/03 22/2/4 22/2/9 22/2/41 22/2/91 22/2/42 22/3/1 22/3/6 22/3/11 22/3/61 22/3/12 22/3/62 22/3/13 22/4/5 22/4/01 22/4/51 22/4/02 22/4/52 22/4/03 22/5/5 22/5/01 22/5/51 22/5/02 22/5/52 22/5/03 22/6/4 22/6/9 22/6/41 22/6/91 22/6/42 22/6/92 22/7/4
mt GLD: Inventory/Price Ratio, 2022 year to date
6.40
6.30
6.20
6.10
6.00
5.90
5.80
5.70
5.60
source: SPDR GLD data 5.50
13/21/1202 5/1/2202 01/1/2202 51/1/2202 02/1/2202 52/1/2202 03/1/2202 4/2/2202 9/2/2202 41/2/2202 91/2/2202 42/2/2202 1/3/2202 6/3/2202 11/3/2202 61/3/2202 12/3/2202 62/3/2202 13/3/2202 5/4/2202 01/4/2202 51/4/2202 02/4/2202 52/4/2202 03/4/2202 5/5/2202 01/5/2202 51/5/2202 02/5/2202 52/5/2202 03/5/2202 4/6/2202 9/6/2202 41/6/2202 91/6/2202 42/6/2202 92/6/2202 4/7/2202
Source: SPDR data, IKN calcs

Fundamental Analysis of Mining Stocks
Rio2 Ltd (RIO.v): Picking up the pieces of a broken story
Today’s main fundies note covers Rio2 Ltd (RIO.v) and the fall-out from the decision by Chile’s
permitting authorities to deny its EIA permit for the Fenix project. It’s a long note, mostly script
and has two main objectives:
A post-mortem, in which we piece together what went wrong. In this, we mostly consider the
way in which the Chilean authorities have changed tack on mining matters and lay out the
evidence of a country that, to date, tried to say one thing and do another. We also note the
way in which the Fenix decision marks a watershed moment and with it, the mask of deception
has come off. I will telegraph the main finding by saying that even after being as rigorous as
possible and setting aside personal and professional bias it’s still difficult to blame the company
for the way it went about its permitting track, however both the style and substance of the
Chilean permit denial is deplorable.
2) But the post-mortem is not an exercise in closing the stable door after the horse has bolted,
it’s important for the future of this company and the trade potential of RIO.v the stock to at
least comprehend what happened, because that frames the way in which the company can
start getting itself out of this mess and making improvement s to its share price, both in the
near and longer-term.
Recent SEA decisions
The first task is to frame the backdrop to last week’s EIA permit denial for Rios at Fenix and
that means laying out what the Gabriel Boric government has been up to regarding the mining
sector. The first thing to note is that in public discourses, Boric always promoted a green
agenda and in fact, it’s one of the policies that most appeals to his left wing voter base.
However, when it comes to the potentially contentious subject of mining for a ecologically-
oriented government, he has consistently used the classic “We Welcome Responsible Mining”
banner. That’s the kind of message that only survives until the moment it comes up against a
mining project that has been through its EIA process and taken every step required of it by the
Chilean government, only to have its permit denied at the last minute by a government that
looked for an excuse to deny. That was Tuesday, come Thursday and with shellshock of the
decision behind, I had a conversation with CEO Alex Black who shared information his team had
collated; over the last seven years before March 2022, only one mining EIA submission had
been rejected. Since the start of the Boric government and despite his outward declarations of
Chile remaining open for business, open to mining, open to FDI etc, the reality has changed
dramatically.
His checking offered an interesting perspective with which to view events since Gabriel Boric
came to power, as since then we have seen no fewer than four EIA permit applications knocked
back. This suggests Chile has been using a back door method of stopping mining from
happening while making all the right noises up front. It’s at this point that The IKN Weekly
opens itself to criticism, because going from one EIA denial for mining projects in the seven
years before Boric, to four in three months since his government began, makes for a clear
change in policy. “So if there were three other projects, denied EIA permits, why didn’t you see
this coming Mark?”, is the obvious question and it’s a valid criticism and it’s not as if I was
ignorant of the main events, so to explain (or “make pathetic excuses”) we now consider the
substance of the other permit denials. The four EIA permit applications in question are:
 Aclara Resources (ARA.to) in March 2022
 The San Cayetano copper mine in April 2022
 Anglo American at Los Bronces in May 2022
 Rio2 Ltd at Fenix in June/July 2022
Now for some background on each case:
Aclara Resources (ARA.to): ARA was spun out of Peru’s big silver miner Hochschild in 2021 and
4

is developing it Penco Module rare earths (REE) project in the South of the country. However,
in late March Aclara Resources announced this (4):
TORONTO, ON, March 24, 2022 – Aclara Resources Inc. (“Aclara” or the “Company”)
(TSX: ARA) announced that the Company has withdrawn its application for an
environmental impact assessment (“EIA”) of the Penco Module (the “Project”) located
in Chile so that it can fully address the issues raised during the late stages of the
application process.
And…
Ramon Barua, Aclara’s CEO, commented: “We believe that the withdrawal of the EIA
application at this time is in the best interests of moving the Project forward. The
Company is well-funded and can continue with the permitting process while it
advances its exploration program and the feasibility study. At Aclara, we are committed
to ensuring that we can produce rare earths with the minimum environmental footprint
and, as we move forward, we will seek to reassure relevant authorities in Chile of our
approach.”
Aclara withdrew its EIA application in March, close to the last minute, in order to improve the
data. It then announced in May that it would delay its next application “until its has additional
clarity on the permitting process” and at present,
its timeline estimates a new EIA application to
begin in 2q23. The timing of the ARA application
withdrawal caught the eye at the time, coming as
it did just days after the Boric inaugural ceremony.
Nobody outside the company knows the real
reason for the decision, but the nature of Heavy
Rare Earths and the novelty of having a HREE
project in Chile for the first time was always going
to make its permitting more complex. Also, a look
at the 2022 YTD price performance of ARA next to
Rio2 suggests that no matter whether Rio2
followed ARA withdrawing its application at the
last minute, the fate would have been largely the
same. However, at this point and while ARA was making its own internal decision not to seek its
EIA permit, RIO.v was also on good terms with the Atacama SEA body in charge of permitting
and complying with its requests for information as required. There was no reason to suppose
RIO.v and its straightforward permitting track was in any danger from the withdrawal of a REE
project EIA submission in the South of the country.
San Cayetano: I need to be honest and upfront before getting to the brief outline, I was not
aware of this small mine and its EIA issues in 2022 before searching out its story this week.
However, even if I’d known about its travails over the last three months it would not have
affected my support of Rio2 into the EIA meeting of last week.
We join the issue in early April 2022 (5), when the small and privately owned San Cayetano
copper mine in the Coquimbo region of Chile (close to the town of Ovalle in the centre of the
region) had an EIA permit denied by the SEA. It applied for a mine expansion project that
would have raised ceiling output at the mine from 5,000mt to 60,000mt copper production per
annum, a plan that included raising the tailings pond capacity to 330,000mt. In this case, we
again see reasonable grounds for an EIA refusal, as in 2018 Chile brought charges against the
company for its lack of environmental control at the mine. There was also apparent bad blood
between the State and the mine’s owner, one Diomedes Cruz, a Peruvian national resident in
Chile.
In this case and unlike that of Aclara, Cayetano’s permit application was denied by the EIA
authorities on the recommendation of Chile’s SEA. However, we again point out that while this
ruling was being handed down in Coquimbo region, Rio2 in its Northern neighbour region
Atacama was getting green lights from that region’s SEA desk.
5

Los Bronces: We come to the highest profile case to date, that of the Los Bronces copper mine
under 50.1% ownership of Anglo-American, which is also the operator. In early May the SEA
recommended against the EIA permit for Los Bronces and in much the same way as Fenix last
week, the permit application was subsequently rejected on this reco by the EIA authority. We’ve
spoken about this case in previous editions and noted that while it raised the suspicions of the
mining sector inside Chile, there was also reasonable concerns over dust levels affecting nearby
residential areas among other issues (6). However, in light of last week’s decision against Fenix
and Rio2 on altogether more spurious reasons, it’s worth going back to the Anglo literature at
the time and considering what it published on news that the SEA had called against its Los
Bronces project expansion plans (7):
Los Bronces Integrated Project expands the current open pit within Los Bronces’
operating site and replaces future lower grade ore by accessing higher grade ore from
a new underground section of the mine. The project uses the mine’s existing
processing facilities, optimises water efficiency, and requires no additional fresh water
or tailings storage facilities. LBIP has been designed with the benefit of 10 years of
scientific studies and a thorough and extensive consultation process with local
communities and the relevant authorities. Mitigation measures will compensate for
120% of the emissions created by the project and Los Bronces’ current operations,
both during construction and in operation, thereby improving air quality. The result is a
project that has been configured specifically to protect both the local environment,
without any impact on biodiversity or on the nearby protected areas or glaciers, and
human health.
LBIP represents a multi-billion dollar investment in the future of one of Chile’s largest
copper mines, and is an example of modern mining where the full range of
sustainability considerations have been consulted on and designed in from the
outset.
So yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing and in the light of the Rio2 Fenix permit denial, the words
published by Anglo at the time sure do look familiar as our company had also done thorough
and extensive consultation processes and included a full range of sustainability considerations.
The difference is that the reasons given for the Los Bronces permit denial were apparently more
considerable and covered air quality in local communities, water quality and other direct
matters.
It’s time to get to our specific case, the Rio2 Fenix EIA decision and how it went down, but
before doing so I’m going to jump out of chronological order and comment on a new and
separate case that started just four days ago, after the Fenix EIA refusal. To re-cap so far, up
to last week we had two facts at hand:
1) In the seven years to March 2022, Chile had denied one EIA permit application for a
mining project
2) In the period March to date, Chile has denied three permits and one other company
decided to pull its application at the last minute, rather then move to the committee
decision.
Hindsight, dear hindsight. I will freely admit that taken as a group, three non-awards (to Aclara,
Cayetano, Los Bronces) throw suspicion on the motives of the Servicio de Evaluación Ambiental
(SEA) (Environmental Assessment Service), but taken case-by-case there were extenuating
circumstances in each. Aclara withdrew, rather than got a “no” and while it’s not difficult to
assume that they got some sort of “that won’t pass” message from the government and
decided discretion is the greater part of valour, that wasn’t so obvious back then. In the case of
the privately owned Cayetano, it already had legal actions against it for previous environmental
infractions. In the case of Los Bronces, while hindsight again makes the decision against that
project expansion more nefarious, it could at the time be logically defended as a deferral due to
legitimate concerns over health and safety of nearby population centres at the time. It’s also a
big company doing big things that would immediately make appeal to the national Comité de
Ministros (as Rio2 will now do)
6

However, we now have even more evidence on a hidden agenda in operation at the SEA, above
and beyond that of Fenix. On Thursday July 7th (i.e. four days ago and two days after the Fenix
decision was handed down) Chile’s Ministry of the Environment (MMA) published a petition to
the director of the SEA regarding the Gold Fields (GFI) Salares Norte project.
The story was picked up by El Mercurio (8) (9) (10), Chile’s newspaper of record, and made the
front page of the “Economy & Business” section in its
Saturday edition under the title “Environment Charges SEA
to Revise Permits for Mining Project”. The subhead does
like this:
“The Minister Maisa Rojas has asked the bureau (SEA)
to take action, after the death of chinchillas and foxes in
the project zone. According to experts, this could be an
intromission on the part of the authority.”
Now that might sound like the Fenix case, but it’s not. In
fact this is Chile’s Environment Ministry sending a message
to the SEA to ask it to revise (and potentially repeal) The
EIA permit granted to Gold Fields in 2021 for its Salares
Norte project in the dame general vicinity at Fenix. The
report quotes the MMA missive sent to the SEA:
“Considering the seriousness of the events and the effect
on certain species in a state of critical conservation (i.e.
endangered species), we ask that you take into account
this message to initiated the office in a revision of its EIA
permit (RCA, or Resolución de Calificación Ambiental).” In
effect, Chile’s Environment Minister…
 Maisa Rojas, an academic climate scientist (PhD Oxford UK) who is new to the political
sphere and got involved with the Boric campaign only after the first round in order to
help him defeat the far right candidate against him in the run off and due to that, was
awarded the job of Environment Minister in the Boric government
…has formally requested the head of Chile’s SEA…
 Valentina Durán, an academic climate scientist (PhD Sorbonne Paris) and environment
lawyer who is also new to the political and public sector and is also a personal friend of
Maisa Rojas
…to re-open the EIA permit awarded to Gold Fields for Salares Norte due to the 1) two
chinchillas that died during the re-location process agreed upon for the group of animals living
o the project site and 2) the deaths of three Andean foxes when they entered the tailings
facility under construction, noting that there were no studies made on the local fox population
during the permit application process. It’s one thing to deny a permit, quite another to award it
and then repeal it when a mine U$800m mine is 70% complete and the letter sent by Rojas to
the SEA caused an almighty ripple among Santiago’s legal community. The El Mercurio report
quoted one Martín Astorga, lawyer at the Chilean firm Cariola Diez Pérez-Cotapos, “…even
though the MMA is merely bringing this case to the attention of the SEA, it is indirectly asking
for a revision of its environmental permit. “What stands out in the contents of the communiqué
are that they are normative, and not about control or evaluation, the type of content from
control bodies and not from the Ministry of the Environment, from which one may conclude that
the MMA was compiled with data that is not from its own sources.”
That’s what a lawyer sounds like when they want to say, “This is different and not good, the
Ministry of the Environment is trying to reverse a previously-emitted EIA permit by asking the
bureau that awarded it to reconsider its opinion”. At this point, we should underscore that the
Salares Norte EIA was awarded last year under the previous administration and the proposed
revision has been sent to the bosses of the people who refused the Rio2 Fenix permit last week.
There were other reactions to the news yesterday Saturday, here are a couple of other quotes
7

translated:
“In my opinion, this is completely new…I have haven’t seen this before, it’s an
unconsidered intromission that is not supported by any previous issue.” Jorge Cash,
the lawyer in charge of environmental affairs for the Elias Abogados law firm.
“This is practically unheard of…”, Jorge Canals, lawyer at Moranga & Company
“This is a signal that we need to take into account and watch the next steps of this
administration, with a view to consider the basis of these revisions and their impact in
many projects that could suffer new criteria revisions.” Alejandro Montt, lawyer at
Dalgalarrando & Cía, who went on: “It would not be a good signal that already have
their EIA permits granted that they can be threatened in this way, considering that
there are many legal mechanisms in (Chile’s) law to mediate variations in
(environmental) impact…”
And that’s putting it mildly. It’s not a giant leap of logic to consider that the SEA, in conjunction
with Chile’s national MMA, may be parlaying their “win” against Fenix last week by going after
the other new mining project in the zone and are able to do so for the same general reason.
However, if they do start making waves at Salares Norte it may even work in the favour of Rio2
at Fenix and we’ll come back to that in a moment, first it’s time to consider details of what
happened last Tuesday.
The Fenix decision process
We know that the Atacama regional committee meeting was set to happen on Friday July 1st
and we know the meeting was put back until last Tuesday, July 5th, at which the permit was not
granted. Now for some back story which starts on the morning of the 5th before the meeting
began. In a letter to the editor of Chile’s Resumen newspaper (11) the Atacama branch of the
Constitutional Assembly published its opinion, naming eleven of the twelve members sitting on
the committee and identifying each with their job title, then demanding that they refuse the EIA
in a text that contained pearls such as, “By its own admission and the data compiled by the
company, the project brutally threatens species that inhabit the salt flats.” In other words, local
eco-warriors were already applying pressure to the committee before the meeting began, and
that pressure came from other sources, too.
So to the meeting itself and Rio2 has been tight-lipped about the political toings and froings
that went on. I’ve tried to eke something out of the RIO.v CEO about the meeting, the politics
of Chile and its Left wing government but so far at least, he hasn’t stooped to my level.
However, this desk has its own line of information not directly connected to the company and
that person wasn’t as worried about playing the shrinking violent. It turns out the decision on
Tuesday wasn’t just political, but one that came “directly from La Moneda”, i.e. the seat of the
executive national government. The dynamic was the new national government telling a table
of regional public functionaries its opinion, the type of situation where the regional government
al lackeys suddenly remember where their salaries come from. As for that phrase, “directly from
La Moneda” either means President Gabriel Boric himself (less likely) or his appointed Minister
of the Environment, Maisa Rojas (more likely) and as the table was stacked with people from
SEA, that also means the head of the national SEA, Valentina Durán. As a result, the vote came
in 11 to 1 with the only vote in favour that of the Public Works office of Atacama.
The vote result was picked up by the local media, for example this report (12) that quotes the
regional environmental representative with, “(A) lack of information about how it would affect
populations of the short-tailed chinchilla, Guanaco and Vicuña, all species with conservation
problems.” It also quoted the chair of the meeting, the Presidential Delegate for the Atacama
region Gerardo Tapia (i.e. the admin’s regional point man) who gave them, “Of course we want
investment in the region and more jobs for the people of Atacama. In this respect, we must be
capable of harmonizing growth, employment and development with a sense of environmental
protection.” A politically astute answer for sure, but there was also plenty of pushback locally
on the permit denial and we haven’t even had Chile’s typically vociferous Chamber of Mining
chiming in yet (they will wait for the official EIA decision document to be published). Instead it
was the local chamber of business investment, the “Corporación para el Desarrollo de la Región
8

de Atacama (CORPROA)” (with “desarrollo” meaning “development”, the rest should be
straightforward) who called the decision “disappointing and another setback for growth
potential for the region.” Its President, one Juan José Ronsecco, noted that it was the second
EIA refusal for the Atacama region in the space of 30 days (the other being a natural gas
pipeline) and went on the record with this:
“This is another blow for the Atacama economy, these types of measures only scares
away investment opportunities in the region.”
And…
“This measure is against what we want to support as a government, we are already
losing investment opportunities for the Atacama region. It cannot be explained how
President Gabriel Boric, who just days ago was in Cananda and inviting its business
community to invest in Chile while here they do the contrary and close the doors on
this excellent project, which also happens to be Canadian. I wonder whether or not we
want growth and development in Atacama. It’s certainly a mystery and will be
evermore difficult to answer if we continue to reject these large-scale projects.”
At least we know Rio2 isn’t alone in the region, no matter that last week’s decision was a
painful disappointment. However, the blow-by-blow this weekend isn’t just a case study in
reporting and exercise in shutting the stable door now the horse has bolted, as the outlined
scenario to date also demonstrates the likely way forward for Rio2 . We’ll get to the company
numbers in a moment, but first we re-cap:
 There is now no doubt that the decision made by Chile last Tuesday to deny the permit
for the Rio2 Fenix project was made for political reasons.
 The denial may be ostensibly about the chinchillas, vicuñas and guanacos, but the
driving force was national scale ideology.
 The three other EIA denials for mining projects before Fenix may have had their own
circumstances, but with the new knowledge of last week the pattern is now crystal
clear and the Fenix denial for its spurious reasons lets the cat out the bag (or the
chinchilla out of its hole, perhaps).
 What’s more, this weekend’s development and the combo of Environment Ministry
(MMA) and SEA looking to revise (i.e. repeal) the Gold Fields Salares Norte EIA
retroactively, means the real agenda is no longer hidden.
The way in which local fauna is being used as the reason to hang permit denial on the project
also indicates the way forward for the company. To explain, we hark back to the reasons given
in previous editions and on the blog as to why this decision to deny Rio2’s EIA is scandalous
and a case of the country ripping up its own rulebook. The law matters in this case and one of
the reason Chile stood out as a good place to go mining in LatAm (until now, anyway) was that
the rules on doing mining business there were clear. That also goes for the EIA permitting track
and here’s how I put it in last week’s blog post:
The EIA process in Chile is laid out and regimented, all sides know (or perhaps that should be
*knew*) the rules, true for a mining project or any other large civil works project. To simplify but
remain accurate, let’s consider just the country’s environment board (SEA) and those chinchillas:
1) Company submits application
2) SEA says “we want you to monitor for fauna”
3) Company does so
4) SEA “we want you to check for chinchillas”
5) Company does so
6) Now we want you to check for them over there, there and there.
7) Company does so
8) SEA “ok, those chinchillas you found in that one place, give us more information, make a
detailed survey”
9) Company does so
Note for points 3) 5) 7) 9): in RIO.v case they went above and beyond the SEA requests and did
more than asked, always using nationally qualified and recognized third parties (e.g. specialist
environmental investigation people). They also provided expert opinion that the animals
monitored were outside the project area of influence (again third party and not just a bunch of
mining blokes going “no problems we promise”). Also re. point 9), at that point the regional SEA
desk handling the permit request was also satisfied with the information gathered. There was zero
9

dissent from the Chilean authorities regarding the work done from 2020 until three weeks ago.
And this is the thing: The Chilean environmental people can ask you for any and all the
information they want and that’s fair enough. The company complies with the requests. That is
how EIAs are permitted in the country, the rules are (*were*) clear for both sides. This is why the
Chile decision today is scandalous, they’ve ripped up their own rulebook.
Behind that is the law of Chile, which needs to be clearly understood. The law in question is
article 16 of Law 19,300 (the environmental statute) and states (translated):
“The EIA will be approved if it complies with the environmental normative and taking
responsibility of the effects, characteristics and circumstances established in Article 11,
proposing mitigation measures, compensation or appropriate reparation. In the
contrary case, it will be rejected.”
That legal mouthful means that it is up to the State to decide what it wants the company
(mining or other) to take into account in its environmental impact. This is my main beef with
the government of Chile, new admin or not, because its own rules state that 1) they ask the
company for the information they want and 2) if the company complies fully 3) it then gets its
EIA. Now, what we have seen is a new administration study the data collated by the company
under the previous administration’s auspices and they have decided, literally at the last minute,
that it wasn’t enough and therefore denied the EIA permit. They will of course use the line of
politics as pattered out by Señor Gerardo Tapia above, but the fact remains that Rio2 did
everything required of it throughout the EIA submission process (in fact they went above and
beyond the SEA requests in order to cover bases). The fact also remains that up to three weeks
before the EIA permit was to be awarded, all the company had received from all desks was
green lights on the permit (and as an analyst, I was watching this process and becoming more
confident as the weeks wore on…it was difficult not to).
That was then, this is now
We are not here to winder wistfully on what might have been however. Instead, the reason to
pick over this legal point carefully is to show how Rio2 can unblock this permitting process,
because these details make it clear that the project is far from dead. The process going forward
is as follows:
1) We await the official EIA decision document, the Resolución de Calificación Ambiental
or RCA. The RCA will provide the official reason for the permit denial and while it’s now
clear to any reasonable observer that the SEA has a hidden agenda to go after any
mining project in the country for its own ecological, environmental and/or political
reasons (want it simple? Okay; climate change is a vote winner among the Boric
hardcore), it needs to justify that negative according to the law.
2) The committee has used the fauna angle to deny the permit, we know that from its
own declarations to the press and don’t need to read the RCA for that, but that still
needs to be written in the RCA.
3) Once that is stated, Rio2 can move forward on at least two fronts. Firstly it can run
more studies on the local fauna population. In fact, if it were me I’d instigate the holy
mother of “bend over backwards” study policies as according to its own submession
from expert environmentalists, the cuddly chinchillas who live nearby the mine area
simply will not live in the project zone due to altitude factors. The chinchilla in question
is known to have a ceiling altitude for its habitats and while it’s certainly possible to find
other families 2km, 3km and maybe even 1km from the project zone, the actual mine
site is literally the top of a mountain and at an altitude not conducive to the lil critters’
lifestyle. In fact Rio2 submitted that fact to the SEA committee via its expert opinion,
but it seems the government needs more convincing. So be it. The second front will be
to raise its appeal at the national Comite de Ministros and if done concurrently with
reams of extra data in-hand, any negative from the appeal would either have to change
its reason for denial completely, or make it ideology clear, or grant the permit (perhaps
conditionally, but I’d take it).
The bottom line to the theoretical way forward is, in simple terms, to play the SEA at its own
10

game. They have used the fauna as a spurious excuse to deny this mining project its EIA
permit, therefore once the fauna issue is studied to a degree above and beyond anything that
even the Chilean enviro authorities could possibly pick holes in, the law of the land states that
with the problem removed they must award the permit.
Now for sure, this adds extra time to the permitting and development process at Fenix and it’s
also clear the project has been used as a political ping-pong ball by those that would do these
things. However, it’s up to the company to play by the rules set and not fall into the type of
rhetoric that an outside third party observer (i.e. me) can use against the country and
government. Meanwhile, the overt move that the MMA and SEA is apparently playing against
the nearby Salares Norte project may help Rio2 (a political pingpong ball) as if that larger
project owned by a much larger company becomes the centre of attention and a political
football, the reality of a government using dirty tricks to stop development will help its cause
without Rio2 having to raise another finger. Footballs are larger than table tennis balls.
However, even if nothing comes of the shot Chile just fired across the bows of Gold Fields atr
Salares Norte, there is a clear way forward for Rio2 at Fenix and that’s something we longs
need understand. We will have to wait until Chile publishes the RCA document and states for
the record its reasons to deny the permit, but once it does the company has a right to appeal
and if it goes on a “bend over backwards” environmental survey and monitoring program that
provides 10X the data any reasonable government body would need on the local fauna, plus
multiple peer-approved mitigation and protection initiatives, as long as Chile doesn’t decide to
change their own rules again the project will get its EIA, late better than never. We’ll return to
this issue in the conclusion, but we now need to cover the company financials and consider its
asset value.
An update on the company financials
Clearly, the permit denial last week threw a massive spanner in the Rio2 works, both in the
timing of its development and its financial situation. At this point, please note that it wasn’t just
little old me that got completely blind-sided by Chile’s scandalous decision to deny a permit that
under any normal situation it would have awarded, because we’re only two months from the
date when Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) delivered its first $25m pre-payment to the
company as it began the process of pre-production (e.g. building its Lince camp near to the
mine site, or its water station in Copiapó). Rio2 took that money and went about signing deals
for some of the long lead time plant and machinery it would need.
With the company now facing significant delays to its timeline, that may be a problem so today
we try our best guess on the current financial situation at Rio2, starting with share structure:
 Shares out: 257,510,649
 Options: 18,236,730 (all OTM)
 Warrants: 25,091,950 (will expire soon OTM)
 RSUs: 183,334
RIO.v: Shares out
It may go without saying but the share price drop 300
275
means that all warrants and options are now out of 250
the money and with most of those due to expire 225
200
soon, in fair terms we can value Rio2 today on its 175
shares out. Therefore, this weekend’s C$0.165 150
125
share price gives the company a market cap of 100
75
C$42.49m (or U$34m approx).
50
25
0
The first thing you get for U$34m is this (below):
11
71q4 81q1 81q2 81q3 81q4 91q1 91q2 91q3 91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 tse22q2 tse22q3 tse22q4
M s/o
source: company filings

It probably doesn’t need to be stated to this audience, but to be clear and to make sure we’re
all on the same page, RIO2 IS NOT ABOUT TO LOSE ITS PROPERTY. It owns Fenix, it has zero
ownership issues and anyone trying to insinuate otherwise is best ignored. That means its 5m
oz of M+I gold (using a gold price of U$1,300/oz, which was a wise decision back in the 2019
43-101 and provides all the “inflation insurance” required with a U$1,700/oz gold price) and
1.39m oz of inferred gold is not going anywhere.
If we go on the M+I ounces only, this weekend RIO.v’s ounces are valued at U$6.80/oz in-situ
and while that price certainly includes the distress of the permit denial, they are still cheap for
clearly economic ounces.
Secondly RIO.v still has this:
The Fenix updated PFS was predicated on only some of its gold ounces and is slightly long in
the tooth now, dating as it does from late 2019, but again we see that U$1,300/oz base case
assumption which provides plenty of economic buffer. As for costs, we know the project was
still in-budget this year as WPM began to advance its part of the capex cash, so while opex has
almost certainly gone up the way they all have, there’s no reason to suppose any great changes
to that healthy IRR with gold at U$1,700/oz.
Therefore, whether delayed for a long or brief period RIO.v at Fenixx still owns a valuable
asset. What we don’t know this weekend is 1) how long a delay and 2) how the company
financials will hold up from now until then. But we can make some educated guesses:
RIO.v: Assets per qtr
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
The first charts above show the balance sheet overview and the important bit is to the right:
We see the fixed asset (i.e. Fenix) dominating the book value and as from 1q22, we see the
effect of that first U$25m cash tranche coming in from WPM.
The issue we on the outside have is to make a best guess on how much of that $25m RIO.v
has already used on long-lead items. What’s more, at some point we’ll need to get a handle on
how many of those lead deals can be reversed (force majeure?) because the key point at RIO.v
will be cash preservation.
12
81q4 91q1 91q2 91q3 91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 tse22q2
C$m RIO.v: Liabilities overview
50
fixed 45
other current
cash+ST 40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
source: company filings
81q4 91q1 91q2 91q3 91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 tse22q2
C$m
LT liab
current liab
source: company filings

We know at end 1q22, RIO.v had $33.7m cash and a healthy working capital of over $25m, but
they must have committed a fair portion of that money to procurement. Therefore, once the
2q22 financials are filed we’ll know more but for the time being, these are my best-guesses for
a situation that would be acceptable in our new circumstances:
RIO.v: Cash& short term eq, per qtr
If, in its 2q22 financials, RIO can show around $15m in cash and a working capital of at least
$10m, it should have enough “get by” money and avoid talk of dilutive/emergency financing.
That’s important today because the current crushed share price will be looking for reasons not
to rebound in this current bear market for junior stocks, so take away the “running out of cash”
reason and RIO.v shares will have more chance of floating higher in the weeks ahead. This
expenses breakdown chart shows typical quarterly burn and shows a couple of corporate
advantages:
C$m RIO.v: Quarterly expenses breakdown
6 employ. costs prof fees
share comp Expl. Costs
5 G&A other
4
3
2
1
0
source: company filings
-1
1q18 2q18 3q18 4q18 1q19 2q19 3q19 4q19 1q20 2q20 3q20 4q20 1q21 2q21 3q21 4q21 1q22
 Even in the last couple of quarters as it expanded payroll into the supposed
construction period, RIO.v doesn’t burn much cash and is a lean-burn structure
 Its most expensive segment is employment costs. Those should drop
considerably in the quarters to come as development goes on ice (Lince etc).
And that’s not bad. The bottom line to the current financial situation:
Shares out are known and not about to change, which gives us a clear market cap and very
cheap in-situ ounces at the current share price. In a normal market RIO.v could move up from
its distressed levels on this fact alone, sadly our backdrop is rather bearish but either way,
these are now cheap ounces and once RIUO.v can show the market that its project isn’t dead
and has ways forward, it should come off the current ultra-low levels.
However, a big unknown this weekend is treasury. It’s not easy for us on the outside to make
an accurate estimate of treasury because we don’t know how many long lead item cheques
have been drawn, but our best guess is that cash is likely in good shape as art end 2q22.
The more long-lead item deals RIO.v can walk back (to improve treasury further) the better.
The company should then batten down hatches and bring cash burn to a minimum in order to
13
201.1 515.4 614.1 611.12 174.91 297.41
47.9 579.9
434.3 535.3 554.1 560.32 543.12 966.33
51 21
40
35
30
25
20 15 10
5
0
81q4 91q1 91q2 91q3 91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 tse22q2 tse22q3
C$m RIO.v: Working capital
source: company filings
22.1-
25.1
67.0-
94.02
28.51
69.31
92.9 19.9
64.1 60.3
80.0-
68.22
54.91
63.52
01
30
25
20
15
10 5
0
-5
81q4 91q1 91q2 91q3 91q4 02q1 02q2 02q3 02q4 12q1 12q2 12q3 12q4 22q1 tse22q2
C$m
source: company filings

show the market it can rough out a few quarters of delay without showing financial weakness.
If they can get an endorsement and some type of public support message from WPM, it would
do market confidence a world of good. There are many ways that could happen and nearly all
of them would be shareholder-friendly.
Discussion and conclusion
I’d like to wrap this note up quickly but cannot, as there’s a final subject we need to cover
before closing out. The national political dynamic in Chile is now in-play, not least because
against its own will Rio2 at Fenix now finds itself as a political ping-pong ball. And like it or not,
from this moment politics matters to this share price, but that could be a benefit in both the
near and medium term because the recent trend has the new Boric government losing
popularity quickly. To get the picture we need to take a step back into 2021 (and it will be as
brief as possible) and consider the way Gabriel Boric rose to become the current President. It
wasn’t quite as wild as circumstances in Peru that changed Pedro Castillo from no-hoper
candidate into President of Peru, but a re-cap of how Gabriel Boric won the 2021 Chilean
Presidential election is needed as National Executive politics is now directly affecting the mining
industry.
As the field narrowed in the 2021 first round election, Chile found itself moving to the populist
extremes and the space for centre-left/left or centre-right/right wing politicians became smaller.
We’ve seen this all over The Americas and on both sides of the political spectrum of course,
let’s point out Trump and Brazil’s Bolsonaro as right wing examples, Peru’s Castillo and most
recently Petro in Colombia as examples from the left. In the case of Boric, he came from the
hard left and rode the “Change The Constitution” wave (helped along by Chile’s rejection of the
brutal suppression tactics used by police in the 2018 protests). He won the equivalent of Chile’s
primaries, became frontrunner on the left and from there, the candidate around which others
adhered. However, something similar was happening on the political right and as things turned
out, the second round run-off pitted young Boric against José Antonio Kast, who had
consolidated votes around a populist, strident and very right wing political message. It was so
far to the right that even normal establishment Chile righties had difficulty in endorsing Kast, in
the last leg of 2021 Boric had an easier time moving to the centre during the run-off campaign,
his eventual 10-point victory wasn’t a tough one to call.
That very quick potted and incomplete history helps explain why Boric has seen his approval
ratings drop hard this year since becoming President (see Regional Politics below, today), as
many voters chose him on sufferance as “least worst” against a very right wing opponent. Now
Boric is President, the left wing policies of his government (as well as their collective style, it
has to be said) is turning many voters against him. To that mix, add in the dropping copper
price, the big rise in inflation in Chile and the airs of recession, which may all be unlucky timing
but sadly, it’s on him. In another year the new President and his team might be able to tough
it out, but this time the country has a big date in its diary; that’s September 4th and the
Constitutional Referendum. As also noted in Regional Politics below today, that’s quickly going
against Boric and his left wing stance and Chile looks set to reject the new draft Constitution.
That means September 4th is set to be the date on which this new left wing government’s wings
get clipped by the electorate. Again too quick and likely incomplete, but it captures the gist.
At which point we return to Rio2 and its permitting disaster at Fenix. What happened last week
happened, but we now look to the future and the combination of a referendum date that comes
at the right time on RIO.v’s appeals track is set to diminish this anti-mining government’s
political power. So yes, things are rotten this weekend for Rio2 and it’s been a tough week
personally, but there’s still plenty to play for at Rio2 (RIO.v). That’s true to the point where I’m
obliged to deliver what’s going to be a very unpopular opinion for many readers who are
nursing the same type of losses this desk has taken. So, with a deep breath…Rio2’s current
share price is attractive and while risky, give a nice speculative win from here.
There, I’ve said it. However, other opinions dovetail with that, for example we note that after
14

the permit deferral on Tuesday, Cantor revisited its model and put a 60c price target on RIO.v,
a target that assumed a 12 month delay to permitting. Another brokerage that covers RIO.v is
Sprott, which now assumes a three year delay to first pour but still gives the stock a 40c
speculative buy price target. That’s one I don’t find difficult to believe and if RIO.v doesn’t
rebound that fast that soon, a target of 25c would imply a 50% gain to this weekend’s price
and that’s a juicy near-term number. However, it also comes with plenty of risk including the
unknown cash position, the contents of the RCA when it arrives and, of course, the wider woes
caused by the drop in metals, junior mining stocks and even gold.
However, the biggest risk from here is the political angle and there’s no getting around that.
Once the RCA is publishes RIO.v will be able to get active and show the world a way forward,
as well as being able to engage the national executive via its established appeals track that
gives it every opportunity to right its perceived EIA weaknesses and find a way to production
(the bend-over-backwards policy). But politics is politics and we’re clearly up against the
government with an agenda to stop mining from developing in Chile for the next four years.
That shows in the very latest event, because its apparent will to chase down a previously
granted EIA permit (Gold Fields Salares Norte) and potentially rescind it would be an
unprecedented and highly controversial move, one that is already making waves from the
inference of a single letter between MMA and SEA. When ideology is in-play RIO.v could easily
be up against interminable rounds of “Decide no, then find a reason why” from Boric’s Chile. It’s
by no means a perfect situation, but on the other hand do not lose sight of the forest for the
trees and even in the worst case, those 5m oz of gold owned by RIO.v will be there in four
years when the next election comes around. Politics change faster than rocks.
Therefore, at the current price the easiest trade recommendation is the most obvious; RIO.v is
not a sell at today’s levels and even if you want out, you’d do well to wait a few days and
get better prices. Those of you with the risk tolerance and willing to expose more cash to the
junior gold sector could trade this for a reasonable near-term win, as interest in the stock is
likely to remain after its waterfall selling on high volume and even a gentle float up to 25c or so
(i.e. $10/oz in-situ) would provide a nice win. It’s unlikely be that gentle or a smooth passage,
bu ton the other hand and as long as gold doesn’t collapse completely, last week’s lows will
mark the bottom and this company isn’t about to go belly-up or see its share price at zero.
Summing up: However bad last week was, examination of events and how they came to pass
shows there’s still life in this company and stock, no matter how bad the losses have been. Rio2
is down, but not out. I don’t want to end on an upbeat note, however, because it truly was a
horrible week, one of the worst I’ve ever experienced. As you’ll see below, my personal position
is to drop Rio2 Ltd out of the Top Pick status and make it a Hold (until further notice), which is
as much to do with the number of share owned as it is the desire to keep recently raised
treasury powder dry. It is tempting to start trading round the edges of the larger position and
making a gain or two from the likely rebound in to the 20s, however. Perhaps when we get
more on the cash position at the company and its reaction to the eventual RCA publication.
Stocks to Follow
There were three winners on the week among the minor sized stocks we follow (MIRL.cse,
ELBM.v, WRN.to) and two other unchanged stocks (QCCU.v, ALDE.v). The others were losers
ands while most were minor losses that didn’t stretch the current trading ranges, Rio2 Ltd
(RIO.v down 41.6%) was nothing short of catastrophic.
We cover 14 open positions. Only one is in the green.
15

company Ticker this week Avg Price Reco date Current PPS Gain/Loss% Notes
TOP PICKS
Minera Alamos MAI.v STR BUY C$0.21 13-Oct-19 C$0.485 131.0% $1.14 tgt, #1 idea on FY22 dev
RECOMMENDED STOCKS
Amerigo Res ARG.to STR BUY C$1.36 12-Dec-21 C$1.22 -10.3% $2.40 tgt on FY22 guidance
Superior Gold SGI.v STR BUY C$0.95 3-Apr-22 C$0.75 -21.1% Au prod jr, right place/time
QC Copper&Gold QCCU.v SPEC BUY C$0.275 25-Apr-21 C$0.16 -41.8% Now drilling. Easy hold
Rio2 Ltd. RIO.v HOLD C$0.83 22-Apr-18 C$0.165 -80.1% Downgrade on permit denial
SPECULATIVE TRADES
Chesapeake Gold CKG.v SPEC BUY C$3.07 20-Feb-22 C$2.08 -32.2% Au leverage, small trade so far
Aldebaran Res. ALDE.v SPEC BUY C$0.72 16-May-21 C$0.70 -2.8% hole 221 may give boost
Palamina Corp PA.v SPEC BUY C$0.295 21-Nov-21 C$0.11 -62.7% Au expl in S.Peru
Altiplano Metals APN.v HOLD C$0.31 17-Sep-21 C$0.19 -38.7% Cheap entry, plan on track.
Minera IRL MIRL.cse hold C$0.195 22-Jul-12 C$0.095 -51.3% CEO change will move stock
THREE TRADE IDEAS FROM IKN670, March 2022 (originally five) NB: I DO NOT OWN
Newcore Gold NCAU.v WATCH C$0.51 20-Mar-22 C$0.26 -49.0% tracking IKN670 idea
Electra Battery ELBM.v WATCH C$5.31 20-Mar-22 C$3.75 -29.4% tracking IKN670 idea
Western Copper WRN.to SPEC BUY C$2.41 20-Mar-22 C$1.78 -26.1% tracking IKN670 idea
LONG-TERM NON-MINING HOLD
Mene Inc. MENE.v adding C$0.66 6-Dec-20 C$0.56 -15.2% LT bet, adding slowly
CLOSED TRADES IN 2022 date closed close price
Great Bear Res GBR.v Jan'22 C$15.83 26-Aug-20 C$28.58 80.5% Bought out by Kinross, print
Copper Mountain CMMC.to Jan'22 C$3.40 18-Jun-21 C$3.78 15.9% Sold 1/2 position in rebalance
Copper Mountain CMMC.to Feb'22 C$3.40 18-Jun-21 C$3.70 8.8% Sold rest on FY22 guidance
Trilogy Metals TMQ Mar'22 U$1.84 15-Sep-19 U$1.04 -41.3% killed by US permit reversal
McEwen Mining MUX Apr'22 U$0.89 2-Jan-22 U$0.82 -7.9% No 2022 turnaround, cut loss
Abrasilver Res. ABRA.v May'22 C$0.42 24-Apr-22 C$0.33 -21.4% sold to reduce Ag exposure
Strategic Metals SMD.v May'22 C$0.42 31-Jan-21 C$0.30 -28.6% trade flatlined 1.5 years
Discovery Silver DSV.v Jun'22 C$1.77 24-Oct-21 C$1.39 -21.5% Cutting Ag exp.& raising cash
Element 29 ECU.v Jul'22 C$0.58 6-Mar-22 C$0.30 -48.3% sold to cut Cu exposure
2015 to 2021 annual closed positions in appendices below, 2009 to 2014 closed positions in editions IKN553 or earlier
Now for a few notes just one or two of the covered companies:
Element 29 (ECU.v): POSITION CLOSED. It was easy enough to sell out, which added to
the regret of lightening the copper load by losing this company from the list.
Rio2 Ltd (RIO.v): A brief line to complement the main fundies section and to confirm that
Rio2 Ltd (RIO.v) is no longer a Top Pick stock. Its failure to get its EIA permit was for spurious
reasons and would not have been an issue Dropped to main list and “hold”.
One final note; I understand the company will publish a NR at some point in the next couple of
days. No idea of contents, however.
Minera Alamos (MAI.v): Word from Santana is that the rains in the locality have arrived and
while there’s no exact number on precise litres falling on the mine, the company is now more
relaxed about the water situation. President Doug Ramshaw said that they were “looking
forward to putting the 7,000oz of recoverable gold stacked on the pad under leach this quarter”
and as we know Santana has straightforward and quick leach kinetics, that’s a good amount of
gold to produce and presumably sell during the second half of the year, which should kick off
the move into steady state production.
16

QC Copper & Gold (QCCU.v): The NR published on July 5th (14) was a good one and, has to
be said, an improved hook to its title: “QC Copper & Gold Reports 10 New Holes to Convert
Waste into In-Pit Mineralization” because as noted last weekend, that’s what QCCU’s 2022 drill
program is all about. The latest set of reported holes from Opemiska were in-line with the
results seen in the plethora of holes already out of the current program, but it was enough to
see QCCU close the week unchanged, though still at this deep discount. The downside to last
week was volume, which continued to be patchy so QCCU is probably not the best trade for
someone looking to flip into any continuation to the copper rebound.
Finally and to clear up a formatting mistake in last week’s review of QCCU, page 9 of IKN685
inadvertently saw a price chart partially obscuring some of the paragraph text. This is the full
paragraph with the few words covered by the chart on show:
For a couple of examples, at the end of QCCU’s 2021 financial year, the difference
between these lines was 18.5c, or C$24.9m using the share count at that time. Even
when we take into account the value of those FIND shares and then back out all its
cash, that was the equity afforded to the project and operations at the company. Right
now, after the recent downturn and the crushing of the share price to this weekend’s
16c, the difference is down to 1.1c or C$7.3m. That, in effect, is what you’re paying
for the whole of Opemiska. And before we move on, it may be worth comparing the
orange line above to the trajectory of the spot copper price (right) during the same
period. The drop in copper has brought it back to where it was in lata 2020 and within
tolerances, that’s also true for QCCU’s share price. Back then, the company was a
promising prospect but without a 43-101 compliant resource and C$2m or so at bank.
You’re getting a lot more company for the same price today, the difference comes
from the negative sentiment in copper that’s dragged everything down.
Amerigo Resources (ARG.to): To address the obvious elephant in the room, the issue in
Chile is not with operating and established mining companies, much less a company such as
ARG which is arguably the epitome of a Green Metal story, turning tailings (fresh and historic)
into production tonnes that would otherwise lay dormant. Chile’s government position on
mining has turned into a serious problem, but its targets are clearly those companies looking to
build and as its new tax regime underscores, it
needs operations to continue. Hypocrisy and
short-termism perhaps, but it’s the way it is and
after what we’ve witnessed out of this
government in the last month as regards mining
I’m not expecting wisdom.
As for ARG and its trading last week, this
comparative chart to copper tells us how it
tracked the metal’s move reasonably faithfully.
Also encouraging was the way ARG also enjoyed
improved volume at the bargain hunter
moments, along with the metal (see The Copper
Basket, below) and the larger copper operator
stocks (I didn’t include COPX in this chart, but it was largely the same pattern).
This coming week should bring the 2q22 production numbers, which normally include unofficial
preliminary sales figures and an idea on costs. As ARG spent Q2 buying back all the shares it
could in its current NCIB, it’s fair to assume cash flows were fully supportive of the accelerated
buyback even though copper prices have taken a dive in the last month.
Superior Gold (SGI.v): Another company due to deliver its 2q22 production numbers in the
days to come is Superior Gold (SGI.v), as it tends to pre-announce production in week two or
three following the close of a quarter (e.g. in 2021 the NR came on July 14th). We know the
company is gearing up to deliver more production in the second half of this year and we also
know WA was still suffering Covid headwinds at the start of Q2, so we don’t need a massive
production number from SGI this time. Of more interest will be costs, what with the recent
17

downturn (though not a dumpage) in gold prices and for that, we’re looking for SGI to keep
absolute costs in line with previous quarters. That will allow the AISC/oz to drop as production
take its next leg up in Q3 and Q4.
We know miners of all types are out of fashion (just seeing this stock at 75c is enough to know
that), but there’s still tremendous value on offer here as the market hasn’t yet seen the benefits
from the management and operations turnaround reflected in quarterly results. I didn’t expect
SGI to stay this cheap, which is my bad read on sentiment rather than on company
fundamentals. So much to like about this company at these prices.
The Copper Basket
After twenty-seven weeks of 2022, The Copper Basket shows a loss of 46.68% level stakes:
company ticker price 1/1/22 Shares out Market Cap current pps gain/loss%
1 Copper Mtn CMMC.to 3.42 210.166 355.18 1.69 -50.6%
2 Marimaca Cop MARI.to 3.77 88.118 279.33 3.17 -15.9%
3 Western Copper WRN.to 2.00 151.451 269.58 1.78 -11.0%
4 Oroco Res OCO.v 2.04 203.4 148.48 0.73 -64.2%
5 Meridian Min MNO.to 1.18 153.735 93.78 0.61 -48.3%
6 Nevada Copper NCU.to 0.71 448.437 91.93 0.205 -71.1%
7 Aldebaran Res. ALDE.v 0.84 114.495 80.15 0.70 -16.7%
8 Regulus Res. REG.v 1.06 101.845 78.42 0.77 -27.4%
9 Hot Chili HCH.v 1.53 109.223 68.81 0.63 -58.8%
10 C3 Metals CCCM.v 0.16 645.379 32.27 0.05 -68.8%
11 Kutcho Copper KC.v 0.88 103.94 25.99 0.25 -71.6%
12 Element 29 Res ECU.v 0.58 79.24 25.36 0.32 -44.8%
13 Doré Copper DCMC.v 0.79 66.123 25.13 0.38 -51.9%
14 QC Copper QCCU.v 0.34 129.06 20.65 0.16 -52.9%
15 Coast Copper COCO.v 0.13 41.335 2.89 0.07 -46.2%
NB: All stocks in CAD$ Portfolio avg -46.68%
Though it’s another new low for 2022 for our
The Copper Basket 2022, weekly evolution
5%
basket average, the selling exhaustion we
0%
mentioned last week is now clear and while -5%
-10%
calling the bottom to any sell-off is a dangerous
-15%
game, the volumes traded now show that those -20%
who wanted to sell have now largely sold. That’s -25%
-30%
how relief rallies kick in but let’s also not put the -35%
cart before the horse, as junior equities are at -40%
-45%
the behest of the copper price. -50%
So for the count, we had four week-over-week
winners (MARI.to, WRN.to, MNO.to, CCCM.v),
three unchanged stocks (ALDE.v, QCCU.v, COCO.v) and that leaves eight losers (CMMC.to,
OCO.v, NCU.to, HCH.v, REG.v, KC.v, DCMC.v, ECU.v) but unlike last weekend, the big losers
were restricted to just three stocks. The worst was Nevada Copper (NCU.to down 21.2%) but
that one has its own problems, then Doré Copper (DCMC.v down 17.4%) and Kutcho (KC.v
down 16.7%). So while there were a majority of losers, most weren’t massive losses and many
stocks rebounded from lows as copper found a midweek bottom. The action in stocks that run
better volume, such as WRN, CMMC or OCO, backs this position. Here comes the visual on the
midweek copper reversal:
18
ts1naJ ht9naJ ht61 dr32 ht03 ht6bef ht31 ht02 ht72 t6raM ht31 ht02 ht72 dr3rpA ht01 ht71 ht42 1yam ht8 ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5nuj ht21 ht91 ht62 dr3yluj ht01
source: IKN calcs

The above chart is the near-term view and while the intervals on that chart don’t do traded
volumes justice, there was a big uptick in trades as
real buyers first arrived and then pushed the metal
back over U$3.50/lb. it was getting rather boring to
witness the same action day after day (and
particularly depressing on Tuesday, see today’s
Fundies section for more) but hindsight brings
relief. No matter if it didn’t happen at my carefully
selected line in the sand at U$3.80/lb and we
needed U$3.40/lb to trigger the buyers, the combo
of sharp price rebound and big volume is the right
one. As for wider context, this shows how prices
levelled out at the temporary plateau we last saw at
the turn of 2021
The change in direction came at the same time as the latest round of stories out of China about
the Central Party’s (i.e. President Xi) plan to jumpstart its economy. Here’s Bloomie (15):
China’s Ministry of Finance is considering allowing local governments to sell 1.5tn yuan
($220bn) of special bonds in the second half of this year, an unprecedented
acceleration of infrastructure funding aimed at shoring up the country’s beleaguered
economy.
The bond sales would be brought forward from next year’s quota, according to people
familiar with the discussions, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t
authorised to speak publicly. It would mark the first time the issuance has been fast-
tracked in this way, underscoring growing concerns in Beijing over the dire state of the
world’s second-largest economy.
And…
Commodities rallied in European trading hours following the news, with copper
extending gains to as much as 3.6% to $7,789 a ton on the London Metal Exchange.
Or if you prefer, here’s how ING reported the event (16):
A demand slowdown in China has been a major concern for metal markets this year as
Covid-related lockdowns weighed on demand. A further boost to infrastructure
spending should be supportive of base metal demand prospects over the latter part of
the year.
While the copper sell-off has gone deeper than this desk expected, reports of the death of Dr.
Copper have been greatly exaggerated. What last week underscored was that the same market
speculating on the recession depth and copper’s volatility is the same market that recognizes
how China has a real world need for the metal. Now we move to the regular weekly look at
world copper inventories data:
19

 World copper stocks rose again, but more modestly this week, the aggregate total of
the three world official systems up by 6,433 metric tonnes (mt) to Friday, closing at
266,627mt. Reasons for the price drop are elsewhere, not here.
 The SHFE gave us its fourth inventory rise in as many weeks, but the 2,692mt added
isn’t going to provide the buffer it normally requires in Q3. Stocks closed Friday at
69,353mt, the charts below compare 2022
to what we should expect.
 At the LME, stocks rose by 6,175mt to
close at 133,025mt and the interesting
part of that is the landing of 8,375mt in
New Orleans warehouses, well away from the real market. A minor datapoint is the
return of rising cancelled warrants, which
cover 17,475mt this weekend.
 Also US-centric, the Comex went the
other way for the second week and
dropped by 2,434mt to close at 64,249mt,
which means it has lost 10% of its stocks in two weeks.
Here are the dedicated SHFE charts and we’re now approach an inflection point for copper
inventories. In the next two or three weeks, we’ll know whether SHFE copper stocks will
continue to grow and alleviate the tight end-user market, or whether the normal seasonal
depletion begins and takes away what little stock has been raised in the last two months:
Shanghai Futures Exchange Warehouse Stocks, 2014 to date
400000
350000
300000
250000
200000
150000
100000
50000
0
20
31'13ceD dr32 ht02 ht51 ht01 ht5tco ht03 ht52 dn22 ht71 ht21 ht6pes ts1von 5102ht72ced ts12 ht71 ht21 ht7guA dn2tcO ht4ceD ht92 ht62 ts12 ht61 ht01 7102
ht5von
ts13 ht52 dn22 ht42 ht91 ht41 ht9 9102
dr3bef
ts13 ht62 ts12 ht51 ht01 0202ht5naj 0202ts1ram ht62 ts12 ht61 ht11 0202ht6ced ts13 ht82 dr32 ht81 ht21 ht7 2202dn2naj ht72 ht42 ht91
Mt Cu
|
source: Cochilco
SHFE copper inventory levels, 2018 to 2022
400000
350000
300000
250000
200000
150000
100000
50000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 01 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 02 12 22 32 42 52 62 72 82 92 03 13 23 33 43 53 63 73 83 93 04 14 24 34 44 54 64 74 84 94 05 15 25
LME: Cu tonnage under cancelled warrant
MT Cu 2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
source: Cochilco data
00142 52074 57334 00714 52045 05205 52027 52418 52926 05694 57332 52271 05761 52511 57471
100000
90000
80000
70000
60000
50000 40000 30000
20000
10000
0
dr3rpa ht01 ht71 ht42 ts1yam ht8 ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5nuj ht21 ht91 ht62 dr3yluj ht01
mt Cu
source: Cochilco

The Producer Basket
After twenty-seven weeks of 2022, the Producer Basket shows a loss of 13.79% to level stakes:
company ticker price 1/1/22 Shares out MktCap(U$Bn) current pps gain/loss%
1 Newmont NEM 62.02 797.44 47.34 59.36 -4.3%
2 Barrick GOLD 19.00 1779 30.56 17.18 -9.6%
3 Franco-Nevada FNV 138.29 191.192 25.40 132.84 -3.9%
4 Agnico Eagle AEM 53.14 454.904 20.55 45.17 -15.0%
5 Wheaton PM WPM 42.93 450.3 15.85 35.19 -18.0%
6 Gold Fields GFI 10.99 887.72 8.16 9.19 -16.4%
7 Kinross Gold KGC 5.81 1296.5 4.34 3.35 -42.3%
8 B2Gold BTG 3.93 1055.6 3.52 3.33 -15.3%
9 Alamos Gold AGI 7.69 392.503 2.83 7.22 -6.1%
10 Sandstorm SAND 6.20 191.4 1.10 5.77 -6.9%
All prices and stock quotes in U$ Port. avg -13.79%
It was another negative week for the big cap precious metals producers as they chased down
the drop in the price of gold (GLD down 3.58% on the week), reflected in our basket of stocks
in which all ten components lost ground. Most of our ten dropped in line with GDX (-3.9%) or
at worst GDXJ (-5.6%). The outliers were the “less worse” performances of Franco-Nevada
(FNV down 1.3%) and Gold Fields (GFI down 1.9%) and at the other end of the scale, Kinross
(KGC down 9.5%). As for our comparative performance, GDX outdid us slightly and is back with
a thin lead, but really there’s nothing in it.
The 2022 Producer Basket: Weekly performance and
35% comparative to GDX control
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
-5%
-10%
-15%
Kinross (KGC): It’s not as if the other gold producer stocks have been having a good time,
but things have been particularly poor for Kinross these last two weeks. The biggest loser of the
week in IKN685 (-7.5%) is also the biggest loser of the week this weekend (-9.5%) and it’s not
difficult to spot the moment when the relative weakness to peers began:
Ever since that update on the Dixie project and its long timeline, the world has been selling
21
ts1naJ ht9naJ ht61 dr32 ht03 ht6bef ht31 ht02 ht72 t6ram ht31 ht02 ht72 dr3rpa ht01 ht71 ht42 1yam ht8 ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5nuj ht21 ht91 ht62 dr3luj ht01
The 2022 Producer Basket: Percentage difference
between GDX benchmark & basket (negative = IKN ahead) 5.0%
4.5%
ikn 4.0%
3.5%
gdx control 3.0%
2.5%
2.0%
1.5%
1.0%
0.5%
0.0%
-0.5%
-1.0%
source: NYSE, IKN Calcs
ts1naJ ht9naJ ht61 dr32 ht03 ht6bef ht31 ht02 ht72 t6ram ht31 ht02 ht72 dr3rpa ht01 ht71 ht42 1yam ht8 ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5nuj ht21 ht91 ht62 dr3luj ht01
source: IKN calcs, NYSE data

Special K. We await the 2q22 financials to see if the world is right to do so.
Gold Fields (GFI): For the first time since announcing the deal to buy Yamana (AUY), GFI cut
a break with the market and mostly thanks to strong 2q22 production and sales numbers from
AUY, along with a long-term guidance track that improved the optics of the targetco (17).
That caused the positive reaction on Friday compared to GDX, but will it be enough to convince
the insto doubters? There’s also Gold Fields’ issues with the country of Chile to potentially
contend with, as Salares Norte comes under irregular scrutiny.
The TinyCaps List
After twenty-seven weeks of 2022, the TinyCaps show a loss of 29.22% to level stakes:
company ticker price 1/1/22 Shares out Mkt Cap current pps gain/loss%
Aurelius Min AUL.v 0.24 45.836 4.13 0.09 -62.5%
Golden Pursuit GDP.v 0.13 34.638 6.06 0.175 34.6%
Infield Min INFD.v 0.06 48.445 2.18 0.045 -25.0%
Kingfisher Met KFR.v 0.30 103.007 19.06 0.185 -38.3%
Latin Metals LMS.v 0.12 57.296 5.44 0.095 -20.8%
Manitou Gold MTU.v 0.06 344.57 10.34 0.03 -50.0%
Melkior Res MKR.v 0.295 24.011 5.76 0.24 -18.6%
Precipitate Gold PRG.v 0.105 129.322 9.05 0.07 -33.3%
Signature Res SGU.v 0.07 238.4 8.34 0.035 -50.0%
Winshear Gold WINS.v 0.08 61.585 3.70 0.06 -25.0%
Prices in CAD$, data from TSXV basket avg -29.22%
This section attempts to track the tinycap mining sub-sector of the market, our ten companies
chosen under the following criteria to put together a list representing the state of play in the
sub-sector of tinycap exploration company stocks. At least, that’s the plan.
 Market capitalization of under $20m. They have to be tiny. In two cases I’ve stretched the window a
little and allowed sub-U$20m market capper in that are just over the C$20m level, but the spirit is unaltered.
 A “non broken” stock price and project story. There are literally hundreds of tinycap juniors of the right
size, but it was a particularly depressing exercise to trawl through the whole of the TSXV and find companies
that are small enough, but with life in them. The vast majority of sub-$20m stocks are broken stocks, either
traded to death on the exchange or with projects that are a bust or with entrenched management more
interested in their monthly paycheck than anything else.
 Likelihood of meaningful newsflow in 2020. This connects to the company’s “unbroken” status, as we
want news and potential catalysts from companies with projects that can work.
 Decent management if possible. When you are down among the little guys it doesn’t pay to be too
choosy, but still I preferred companies that have teams or people with good peer reputations.
Two stocks managed to deliver week-over-week price gains (INFD.v, KFR.v) and another three
22

were unchanged (LMS.v, MTU.v, PRG.v) so it wasn’t outright carnage here, either. But five
losers (AUL.v, GDP.v, MKR.v, SGU.v, WINS.v)
were enough to drag the basket average to its 15% TinyCaps, 2022 weekly tracker
10%
second lowest close of the year, with the worst
5%
performance from Signature Resources (SGU.v
0%
down 22.2%) getting our brief notepad, below. -5%
-10%
-15%
Signature Resources (SGI.v): Slightly late to
-20%
this, but that’s better than never. SGU is by no
-25%
means the only tinycapper to have fallen flat -30%
recently, but this one has done so while carrying -35%
spec trade dreams of many on Twitter due to its
relatively heavy marketing compared to size.
SGU dropped 22.2% last week on news that its
Maiden Resource Estimate under 43-101 rules for the flagship Lingman Lake project originally
set for deliver in late 2q22 will be late (18) and here’s how the news broke:
Initial Resource Update. Resource estimation by its nature is an iterative process. The
initial work has revealed areas requiring additional data to further improve the
understanding of the Lingman Lake gold mineralization. Initial work has further
indicated that a small portion of historical
assays are not to NI 43-101 standards. As a
result of these recommendations, the
Company is currently engaged in additional
assay and site work intended to advance the
initial resource estimation. Completion of this
work is expected to allow the Company to
publish an initial resource in H2/22.
Considering that SGU hired Wood (ex-Amec) as
its 43-101 compiler, we suspect that large
company didn’t want to risk its international
reputation on data that SGU thought would pass
muster, but they didn’t. Also, the use of “H2/22”
instead of “Q3” suggests that wait is months,
rather than weeks.
NB: Please be clear that The Tiny Dogs is NOT a list of recommended tinycap stocks. It is a list of companies with
market caps of under $20m offering a reasonable representation of the wider tinycaps market. It’s possible in the future
I may buy shares in one or several of these stocks, at the moment both my opinion and wallet are strictly neutral.
Regional politics
Chile’s Constitutional referendum vote is now on deck
In its lead article on the region last week, The Economist didn’t mince words with its headline
and sub-header (19):
Voters should reject Chile’s new draft constitution
It is a fiscally irresponsible left-wing wish list
We’ve tracked Chile’s growing disdain for its Constitutional Assembly and eventual draft
constitution for since the start of this year, indeed we watched as the whole subject of the
country nationalizing its mining industry was floated and then rejected by the Assembly. Even
so, what’s left fits TE’s sub-header squarely. The draft document was presented to the country
by President Gabriel Boric on Monday and before the week was out it had garnered so much
criticism that even he admitted (20) “There’s a disposition to improve the text” before the day
of the referendum, September 4th and during the week, a contingency plan has arisen among
the Left wing alliance parties on ten points they will look to change in the current constitution
“if the new version is rejected.” In other words, they’re making contingency plans for the defeat
23
dn2naJ ht9
naJ
ht61naJ dr32 ht03 ht6bef ht31 ht02 ht72 ht6ram ht31 ht02 ht72 dr3rpa ht01 ht71 ht42 ts1yam ht8 ht51 dn22 ht92 ht5nuj ht21 ht91 ht62 dr3yluj ht01
source: IKN calcs, TSX data

withing 48 hours of the presentation of the draft to Chile’s voting public.
Things got worse when doyenne Chile’s left wing, ex-President Ricardo Lagos, wrote this as
part of a letter-to-editor to one of Chile’s major newspapers (21):
“Chile deserves a Constitution that achieves consensus. As neither of the two texts
that may result from the referendum has that, the political challenge is to continue with
the constitutional debate until reaching a Constitution that reflects the majority.”
That from the person who did most to stop the Pinochet dictatorship from holding onto power
way back when and the man that ushered the left wing governments in the last two decades.
The left-leaning media channel El Mostrador (22) has joined in this dose of reality about the
upcoming referendum, reporting last week how polls suggest 49% will vote to reject the new
Constitutional reform and 31% to approve, with 22% undecided. What’s more, 42% of those
polls “will never vote to approve”, up seven points in the last two months, while 33% say they
“will never vote reject”, two points lower in the last two months. To cut a long story short and
use the words of one of the draft Constitution’s political opponents, “the more Chileans read the
document, the less they like it.”
This polls-of-polls shows how opinión has moved away from the Draft Constitution approval:
To that, we can also add the Presidential approval ratings for the new President Gabriel Boric,
who only got to enjoy the briefest of honeymoon periods at his new job. The large Chilean
pollster CADEM takes a regular snapshot (23) of Presidential approval (previously every two
weeks, but these days they survey literally every week) and Boric’s approval is down to 33%,
basically his base party support, while disapproval has risen to 62%. That happens to be the
worst disapproval rate for any president in the last 14 years, worse than anything posted by
Sebastian Piñera or Michelle Bachelet.
24

While Boric is unpopular on these pages for his two-faced mining policies and discourse, he’s
fared badly with Chileans for a mix of reasons, some not his own fault (e.g. inherited inflation
and economic downturn), but he’s also facing plenty of pushback as he’s already U-turned on
several of his most populist election pledges, such as “a house for everyone”. Suddenly the
poorest in Chile’s society don’t automatically get the house they were promised, instead there’s
an eventual plan for cheap loans rolling out at some point.
Colombia: The Petro government aims at Soto Norte
The difference between known risks and unknown risks. On Thursday, Colombia’s regional
newspaper for Santander, Vanguardia, spoke with the next Minister of Environment and
Sustainable Development, María Susana Muhamad González as nominated on Tuesday by
President-Elect Gustavo Petro (24) and published its report under the title line “There Will be a
Halt for Pilot Fracking Programs in Santander and Mining in the Páramo de Santurbán”. Susana
Muhamad’s background is as an academic environmentalist, political scientist and includes a
Master’s in Philosophy from South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, she has also formed part of
Petro’s inner circle in his stronghold city of Bogotá and there was no surprise in the country
when her appointment was announced.
To cover the other story briefly, Colombia being Colombia the hydrocarbons issue took the first
part of the Vanguardia report, in which the Minister Elect explained that fracking was off the
agenda for the new government as it was concentrating its efforts on a transition to green
energy, also that fracking ran against the “social license” policies demanded by communities
and localities. As for our focus, she then went on to outline the incoming government’s position
on the region’s most important (and controversial) mining project, the Soto Norte gold mine
project owned by Minesa SA, 80% owned by Abu Dhabi capitals Mubadala and now being
optioned into by Aris Gold (ARIS.to), with 20% and an option to take up to 50%. Here’s the
translation:
Santurbán
Regarding the mining projects in the Santurbán Páramo, the new head of the Ministry
of the Environment said that, under the logic of climate change and to order territories
giving precedence to water, there will have to be studies on the complexity of the
Páramo ecosystem in order to generate measures that protect its water production
capacity for Santander.
“It’s illogical to advance an operation of the size that Minesa proposes in order to
extract gold from an ecosystem, limited to where (mining) takes place if the limits are
raised or lowered by by a few metres, without seeing how said ecosystem works in a
complete way, one that also supports the high Andean forest”, said Muhamad.
She also mentioned that the situation faced by towns and municipalities with
artisan/small scale mining is different and with those groups, agreements are needed
on work and measures for that activity “but new operations and especially those of the
magnitude of Minesa are not viable in a (political) program that looks to organize the
region around the question of water.”
In so many words, the incoming Petro government is not going to waste time in declaring its
anti-mine development position. However and unlike Chile, it’s not going to take a duplicitous
route and say one thing while doing another.
Regional inflation continues higher
We ran a brief comment a few weeks ago and predictably, things have got worse since then.
Foreign Policy article (25) “Ecuador’s Uprising Is Only the Beginning” dated July 1st almost
made the cut in last weekend’s commentary on the deal struck between Ecuador’s government
and protesters, but got edited out so as not to stray too far off the topipc of mining. But on
consideration, the visual in that note is worth an airing:
25

What’s more, this chart only shows data to May and those countries that have reported their
preliminary June data show that inflation is getting
worse. Ecuador registered +4.23% inflation for
June 2022 which may seem low compared to
LatAm peers, but it’s worth recalling that economy
is fully dollarized and even with the current high
oil prices, its GDP growth is hitting the brakes. Its
Central Bank predicts inflation will reach +8.3% by
end 2022.
We’ve noted the dip in popularity of new President
Gabriel Boric above, one of the reasons is
inflation, fueled further by its sharp drop in forex
since then (right).
But the daddy of them all is Argentina, with the 60.7% official inflation rate in that chart that
only scratches the surface. Last week saw the unofficial forex rate “Dolar Blue”…
…which had pottered around the 200:1 level since late 2021 before dropping sharply in June as
the spectre of defaulting on its IMF payback agreement this year (the next big problem date
comes in September). As noted last weekend, Argentina’s deteriorating macro did for its FinMin
Martín Guzmán last weekend and to cut a long political story short, that has weakened the
centre-left political position of President Alberto Fernández and in the last seven days,
strengthened that of his Veep Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK). She took centre stage last
week, first by being an integral part in choosing the new FinMin (lefty Silvina Batakis) (26), then
sticking the boot into her predecessor on Friday with (quote) “Guzmán’s resignation was an act
of tremendous political irresponsibility” (27) and that the country needed a serious debate
about its problems.
26

Brazil: Lula consolidates his lead
The latest national-level Presidential election poll from a reputable pollster camde this week,
with Quaest/Genial calling Lula da Silva at 45%, sitting President Jair Bolsonaro at 31% and
way back in third, Ciro Gomes at 6%. The same poll also notes Lula’s “rejection rate” (i.e.
would never vote for) at 38% and Jair Bolsonaro at 52%. The main question seems to be
whether Lula manages to beat Jair in round one on October 2nd (and complete the sitting
President’s humiliation) or whether the election needs to go to a run-off (28)
Ecuador: The calm after the storm
With the agreement between government and protesters (mostly indigenous under the CONAIE
umbrella) ten days ago, Ecuador’s political backdrop calmed and the social groups went back
home, mostly satisfied with the fuel price cuts achieved. However, the deal depends on
reaching longer-term agreements on the five points of contention and they include the thorny
issue of mining in zones controlled by the same indigenous communities.
As noted in IKN685 last weekend, the deal is to reform the Decree 151 (known as the “Mining
Decree” and both sides agreed to the following:
 Protected area and ancestral territories
 Declared intangible zones
 Archaeological Zones
 Areas of hydraulic protection
 A free and informed prior consultancy communes, communities, peoples and
indigenous nationalities.
Most of those points are already established and clear to both sides. We noted last week that
the term “ancestral territories” may cause issues, because the indigenous who live in the zones
understand it as one thing, while the Constitution has a clear definition that cuts the areas
under its auspice considerably (and suits the mining companies). The other one is the issue of
prior consultancy and regarding that, the Lassso administration has been charged with
reforming the current law, the agreement does not allow it to fall back on the current statute.
That may be a small point today, but it’s important for two reasons:
 In the last week (and a bit) the mining companies have lined up behind the premise
that nothing substantial has changed for them under the deal struck on June 29th. If
that were true, the law would not be under reform. In fact, the government has three
months to present its project that will be up for debate and eventual passage into law.
 The project has to be developed in conjunction with CONAIE (and other interest
groups), if the government tries to push through its own agenda during this 90-day
working group period it will be playing with fire.
Even in a best-case situation in which Ecuador finds a happy medium between its pro-mining
national executive and anti-mining regions, there are changes coming to the current mining
laws and the so-called “social license” will be a key part of its future (29).
Peru: Prepare for the next round of copper mine disruptions
First up the Southern Peru (SCCO) Cuajone mine, which recently had a 58 day stoppage when a
spat with locals spiralled out of control to the point where the village literally cut off the mine’s
water supply and made it stop production. The two sides came to a preliminary agreement but
since then nothing has transpired, now the locals are back on the warpath and threatening to
cut water supply. However, their negotiating position is odd to say the least, as they demand
“U$5,000 million dollars, which is negotiable” (30) (quote/unquote). As for the other side, all
SCCO boss Raul Jacob has for the press is to suggest that locals have been taken over by anti-
mining activists, the usual leaden-ear approach by this company that got it into the trouble it
has at Tia Maria.
Second up is the story with no end. The last time MMG’s massive Las Bambas mine made
27

“copper bottleneck “stories in trade and business wires was for the 50 day blockade of the mine
by locals that started in April and came ended on preliminary deal in early June. Part of the deal
to end the conflict was to set up a round table between the disgruntled locals, the government
and the mining company MMG in order to formalize the agreements that would last one month.
Cut to last week:
 First, the government last week awarded (31) the EIA permit to MMG for its U$130m
Las Bambas expansion project at Chalcobamba, which is slated to improve annual
production from 380,000mt to 400,000mt Cu (or in this case, perhaps that should be
“theoretical annual capacity”.)
 Seconf On Wednesday, the locals involved in the round table and representing 38
communities affected by the mine expressed (32) their rejection of the lack of progress
made at the round table talks and gave both company and government until July 11th
(i.e. tomorrow Monday) to take the process seriously, come to the table and reach
agreement on a list of unresolved matters. If they do not receive answers they said
they “would adopt the adequate means in the fight for the defence of (their) rights.”
In other words, the next round of blockades are likely to start again as from this week.
Market Watching
Deferred.
Conclusion
IKN686 is done, we end with a bullet point:
 Some weeks are better than others. This was not a good week.
I thank you in advance for any feedback. Our Top Pick stock is Minera Alamos (MAI.v). Flash
updates will be sent if required by events.
I wish you good trading fortune, ladies and gentlemen.
Best wishes, Mark
Footnotes, appendices, references, disclaimer
(1) https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/07/comments-on-june-employment-report.html
(2) https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/07/schedule-for-week-of-july-10-2022.html
(3) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y
(4) https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6267a587be31507747a1c8b6/626c1764bd59f555442f841f_Aclara-Resources-
Press-Release-Environmental-Permitting-Update-March-24-2022.pdf
(5) https://www.reporteminero.cl/noticia/noticias/2022/04/autoridades-ambientales-coquimbo-rechazan-ampliacion-
proyecto-san-cayetano
(6) https://camiper.com/tiempominero-noticias-en-mineria-para-el-peru-y-el-mundo/los-bronces-integrado-nuevamente-
a-revision-tras-recurso-presentado-al-sea/
(7) https://www.globalminingreview.com/mining/03052022/anglo-american-releases-los-bronces-update/
28

(8) http://www.economiaynegocios.cl/
(9) https://digital.elmercurio.com/2022/07/09/A
(10) https://digital.elmercurio.com/2022/07/09/B/T44579NA#zoom=page-width
(11) https://resumen.cl/articulos/alertan-sobre-proyecto-de-mina-a-rajo-abierto-fenix-gold-que-amenaza-salar-de-
maricunga-en-la-region-de-atacama
(12) https://www.biobiochile.cl/especial/aqui-tierra/noticias/2022/07/06/comision-de-evaluacion-ambiental-rechaza-
proyecto-minero-fenix-gold-en-copiapo.shtml
(13) https://www.nostalgica.cl/comision-de-evaluacion-ambiental-de-atacama-rechazo-proyecto-fenix-gold/
(14) https://qccopper.com/news/qc-copper-gold-reports-10-new-holes-to-convert-waste-into-in-pit-mineralization/
(15) https://www.gulf-times.com/story/720654/China-considers-220bn-stimulus-with-unprecedented-bond-sales
(16) https://think.ing.com/snaps/the-commodities-feed-supply-risks-linger/
(17) https://www.miningweekly.com/article/yamana-records-stellar-q2-production-results-2022-07-08
(18) https://www.signatureresources.ca/news-media/news-releases/2022/signature-resources-provides-a-progress-
update-on-its-ni-43-101-initial-resource-estimation-development-work
(19) https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/06/voters-should-reject-chiles-new-draft-constitution
(20) https://www.biobiochile.cl/especial/una-constitucion-para-chile/noticias/2022/07/05/hay-disposicion-para-mejorar-el-
texto-boric-tras-carta-de-lagos-sobre-propuesta-de-constitucion.shtml
(21) https://www.elmartutino.cl/noticia/politica/revuelo-por-carta-de-ricardo-lagos-sobre-nueva-constitucion
(22) https://www.elmostrador.cl/dia/2022/07/05/encuesta-criteria-y-expectativas-si-gana-el-apruebo-58-cree-que-se-
acabaran-las-protestas-y-se-restablecera-la-calma-en-las-calles/
(23) https://www.infobae.com/america/america-latina/2022/07/04/chile-crece-el-rechazo-al-gobierno-de-gabriel-boric-y-
a-la-nueva-constitucion-segun-las-principales-encuestas/
(24) https://www.vanguardia.com/economia/local/habra-freno-para-pilotos-de-fracking-en-santander-y-la-mineria-en-el-
paramo-de-santurban-proxima-minambiente-EC5400006
(25) https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/01/ecuador-protests-indigenous-conaie-lasso-fuel-subsidies-inflation-latin-
america/
(26) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-04/argentina-taps-batakis-as-economy-minister-to-tackle-
crisis#xj4y7vzkg
(27) https://www.emol.com/noticias/Internacional/2022/07/08/1066469/cristina-fernandez-renuncia-guzman-
irresponsabilidad.html
(28) https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/poll-shows-brazils-lula-maintaining-strong-lead-presidential-race-2022-07-
06/
(29) https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/economia/politica-minera-petrolera-gobierno-ecuador-conaie/
(30) https://elcomercio.pe/politica/actualidad/el-diablo-se-viste-de-cobre-una-cronica-de-fernando-vivas-sobre-las-
amenazas-a-cuajone-cuajone-southern-peru-pedro-castillo-cobre-conflicto-minero-raul-jacob-noticia/
(31) https://www.americaeconomia.com/peru-aprueba-ampliacion-bambas
(32) https://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2022/07/08/peru-las-bambas-comunidades-de-apurimac-dan-plazo-al-
gobierno-y-minera-para-solucionar-demandas/
29

Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2021
Closed in 2021 closed close price
Fiore Gold F.v jan'21 C$0.98 21-May-20 C$1.17 19.4% closed as part of rebalance
Norsemont Min NOM.cse feb'21 C$1.55 6-Set-20 C$0.70 -54.8% Cut loser to reduce Au exp.
Element 29 Res ECU.v feb'21 C$0.49 7-Feb-21 C$0.54 10.2% Cut Peru exposure
Kuya Silver KUYA.cse feb'21 C$1.66 8-Nov-20 C$2.51 51.2% Cut Peru exposure
Pucara Gold TORO.v apr'21 C$0.65 4-Oct-20 C$0.26 -60.0% Cut loser, Peru risk call
Copper Mountain CMMC.to apr'21 C$1.40 22-Nov-20 C$4.18 198.6% tgt hit, profit taken
New Gold NGD may'21 U$0.76 9-Feb-20 U$2.14 181.6% Sold to buy AGC, nice win
Orezone Gold ORE.v jun'21 C$0.79 21-Jun-20 C$1.61 103.8% sold on pop, leaky boat
Wolfden Res. WLF.v sep'21 C$0.30 11-Abr-21 C$0.19 -36.7% Failed spec trade, cut loss
Cartier Res ECR.v sep'21 C$0.32 21-Mar-21 C$0.235 -26.6% Failed spec trade, cut loss
Amarillo Gold AGC.v sep'21 C$0.31 30-May-21 C$0.30 -3.2% Capex story changed: Out
Excelsior Mining MIN.to oct'21 C$0.93 10-Mar-19 C$0.53 -43.0% May return in 2022
Royal Road Min. RYR.v nov'21 C$0.155 17-Mar-19 C$0.275 77.4% Closed on Nica pol risk
Aurelius Min. AUL.v dec'21 C$0.75 28-Jun-20 0.24 -68.0% cut end 2021, failed trade
Argonaut Gold AR.to dec'21 C$2.95 25-Jun-21 C$2.15 -27.1% cut on capex blowout
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2020
Closed in 2020 closed close price
TMAC Resources TMR.to Jan'20 C$3.41 20-Dec-19 C$3.61 5.9% TLS flip play, sold new year
Regulus Res REG.v Jan'20 C$1.10 20-Dec-19 C$1.30 18.2% TLS flip play, profit taken
Bonterra Res BTR.v Jan'20 C$1.90 9-Dec-19 C$1.66 -12.6% TLS flip play, loss taken
McEwen Mining MUX Jan'20 U$1.12 2-Dec-19 U$1.18 5.4% TLS flip play, profit taken
Core Gold CGLD.v Jan'20 C$0.255 7-Apr-19 C$0.305 19.6% arb trade, profit taken
HudBay Min HBM Jan'20 U$3.56 9-Dec-19 U$3.36 -5.6% TLS flip play, loss taken
Midas Gold MAX.to Feb'20 C$0.71 5-Jan-20 C$0.57 -19.7% sm & silly trade
Warrior Gold WAR.v Feb'20 C$0.08 3-Aug-18 C$0.05 -31.3% clean out non-perf sm stocks
Contact Gold C.v Feb'20 C$0.40 19-Aug-18 C$0.18 -55.0% clean out non-perf sm stocks
Sandstorm Gold SAND Feb'20 U$3.73 17-Apr-16 U$7.21 93.3% Sold during port rebalance
NexGen Energy NXE Feb'20 U$1.20 2-Dec-19 U$1.06 -11.7% TLS flip play, loss taken
MAG Silver MAG Apr'20 U$8.95 1-Mar-20 U$10.07 12.5% Sold to cut silver exposure
Alexco Res AXU Apr'20 U$1.69 7-Sep-17 U$1.69 0.0% sold to close Ag exp. in FY20
Bonterra Res BTR.v Jun'20 C$1.62 2-Feb-20 C$1.10 -32.1% under-performer cash moved
Regulus Res REG.v Jun'20 C$0.64 6-Apr-15 C$0.79 23.4% moved $ TMQ/MIN & Au stocks
Great Panther GPR.to Aug'20 C$0.60 21-Jun-20 C$1.10 83.3% Profit taken, good trade
Jaguar Mining JAG.v Aug'20 C$0.42 21-Jun-20 C$0.65 54.8% Profit taken, good trade
Sandstorm Gold SAND Aug'20 U$7.76 10-May-20 U$9.37 20.7% Profit taken, good trade
Integra Resources ITR.v Aug'20 C$2.23 13-Aug-18 C$5.40 142.2% Profit taken, good trade
Wesdome Gold WDO.to Aug'20 C$2.37 14-Oct-17 C$14.82 525.3% last 1/2 of big win closed
INV Metals INV.to Sep'20 C$0.40 17-May-20 C$0.45 12.5% Cut all Ecuador exposure
Cartier Resources ECR.v Nov'20 C$0.155 3-Aug-18 C$0.25 67.7% Exact close price TBA
Tinka Res TK.v Dec'20 C$0.195 19-Apr-16 C$0.195 0.0% Closed on a round trip fail
2015 to 2019 annual closed positions in appendices below, 2009 to 2014 closed positions in editions IKN553 or earlier
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2019
Closed in 2019 closed close price
Atico Mining ATY.v jan'19 C$0.55 24-Jul-16 C$0.32 41.8% patience ran out, made room
Candente Copper DNT.to jan'19 C$0.075 3-Ago-18 C$0.05 -33.3% tiny trade, made room for new
B2Gold BTO.to feb'19 C$2.11 12-Set-14 C$4.05 91.9% Took 1/2 profits, reduce size
Western Copper WRN.to mar'19 C$0.80 20-Ene-19 C$0.81 1.3% Spec trade that didn't work
B2Gold BTO.to mar'19 C$2.11 12-Set-14 C$4.15 96.7% Took rest of profit.
30

GT Gold GTT.v mar'19 C$1.17 10-Oct-18 C$0.90 -23.1% Took loss. Story changed
NovaGold NG apr'19 U$3.84 13-Ene-19 U$4.15 -8.1% Short that didn't work, sm loss
Zinc One Z.v jun'19 C$0.47 14-Set-17 C$0.025 -94.7% clearing out dead trade
Amarillo Gold AGC.v jun'19 C$0.24 22-Ago-18 C$0.20 -16.7% clearing out dead trade
New Gold NGD aug'19 U$1.44 31-Jul-19 U$1.23 14.6% ST short win thru Q2 earnings
IMPACT Silver IPT.v aug'19 C$0.39 21-Jul-19 C$0.46 18.0% took a quick profit
Fiore Gold F.v aug'19 C$0.34 26-May-19 C$0.56 64.7% Took profit, 2q19 avg
Chakana Copper PERU.v oct'19 C$0.84 22-Mar-18 C$0.16 -81.0% Exploreco trade fail. Want space
Wesdome Gold WDO.to oct'19 C$2.37 14-Oct-17 C$7.57 219.4% Sold half, profit taking
Superior Gold SGI.v oct'19 C$1.46 8-Abr-18 C$0.47 -67.8% Failed sm spec on Au. Moved on
Amerigo Res ARG.to nov'19 C$0.91 23-Set-18 C$0.50 -45.1% worst trade of year, hefty loss
Guyana Goldfields GUY.to dec'19 C$0.94 14-Abr-19 C$0.56 -40.4% taking the loss, financials weak
Tethyan Res TETH.v dec'19 C$0.30 8-Set-19 C$0.16 -46.7% tiny trade, word of probs in co
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2018
Closed in 2018 closed close price
Amarillo Gold AGC.v jan'18 C$0.38 24-Mar-17 C$0.31 -18.4% Cut away losing trade
Riverside Res RRI.v jan'18 C$0.39 27-Jun-16 C$0.31 -20.5% Cut away losing trade
Eros Res ERC.v jan'18 C$0.175 1-Mar-17 C$0.16 -8.6% CEO sudden exit, not good
Excellon Res EXN.to jan'18 C$1.54 9-Oct-16 C$1.66 7.8% 4q17 poor, one too many bad qtrs
Wesdome Gold WDO.to jan'18 C$1.68 15-Dec-17 C$2.06 22.6% Near-term trade block, took profit
Sabina G&S SBB.to apr'18 C$2.06 17-Dec-17 C$1.77 -14.1% Near-term trade, bad timing, small
B2Gold BTO.to May'18 C$2.11 12-Sep-14 C$3.67 73.9% sold 25% to reduce exposure
Lara Expl. LRA.v May'18 C$0.65 11-Feb-18 C$0.58 -13.8% Spec on Brazil didn't work
Solitario XPL June'18 U$0.72 19-Mar-17 U$0.41 -43.1% Failed trade, may return in 4q18
SolGold plc SOLG.to July'18 C$0.475 19-Nov-17 C$0.415 -12.6% cut, trade didn't perform
Pan American PAAS July'18 U$17.90 1-Jun-18 U$16.30 8.9% modest win on short position
NGEx Res NGQ.to Sep'18 C$1.01 22-Oct-17 C$1.00 -1.0% Closed to reduce Argentina exp
Sandstorm Gold SAND Oct'18 U$3.73 17-Apr-16 U$4.13 10.7% partial sale to raise cash for GTT
Aldebaran Res ALDE.v Nov'18 n/a n/a n/a n/a liquidate spin out of REG
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2017
Closed in 2017 closed close price
Continental Gold CNL.to Jan'17 C$2.68 22-May-16 C$4.17 55.6% trade closed, profit taken
Focus Ventures FCV.v Jan'17 C$0.23 1-Jul-12 C$0.05 -78.3% Give up, a disaster trade
Wesdome Gold WDO.to Feb'17 C$1.72 28-Aug-16 C$3.00 74.4% Target hit, sold, good trade
Belo Sun BSX.to Mar'17 C$0.90 30-Jan-17 C$0.90 0.0% failed near-term flip trade
Lara Expl. LRA.v Mar'17 C$1.15 8-Apr-12 C$1.05 -8.7% cut to make room for new trade
Rye Patch Gold RPM.v Apr'17 C$0.31 2-Sep-16 C$0.32 3.2% cut for doubts & new stock
Cordoba Min. CDB.v Jun'17 C$0.75 15-Sep-16 C$0.63 -16.0% closed
Constantine Metal CEM.v Aug'17 C$0.135 9-Apr-17 C$0.28 107.4% spec trade closed, good win
Red Eagle Min. R.to Sep'17 C$0.67 13-Dec-16 C$0.27 -59.7% IKN's biggest failure in years
Starcore Intl SAM.to Sep'17 C$0.61 10-Jan-15 C$0.31 -49.2% Patience ran out
B2Gold BTO.to Dec'17 C$2.11 12-Sep-14 C$3.39 60.7% sold small portion for liquidity
31

Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2016
Closed in 2016 closed close price
Phoscan Chem FOS.to jan16 C$0.28 29-mar-15 C$0.265 -5.4% Buyout trade, bot but poor deal
True Gold TGM.v jan16 C$0.18 23-ago-15 C$0.25 38.9% okay trade, sold on pol risk
McEwen Mining MUX jan16 U$1.09 25-ene-15 U$1.20 10.1% sold due to lack of value
Lake Shore Gold LSG.to feb-16 C$1.10 07-abr-15 C$1.69 53.6% bot out, sold early in process
Atacama Pacific ATM.v feb-16 C$0.19 26-abr-15 C$0.40 110.5% sold for a double on big pop
New Gold NGD feb-16 U$2.06 24-ene-16 U$2.96 43.7% closed good near-term trade
Sandspring Res SSP.v mar-16 C$0.195 18-oct-15 C$0.32 64.1% Hit tgt, took profit
Teranga Gold TGZ.to mar-16 C$0.54 15-feb-15 C$0.60 11.1% disappointing trade
B2Gold BTG mar-16 U$0.85 13-ene-16 U$1.30 52.9% Separate trade on B2, hit tgt
Dalradian Res DNA.to mar-16 C$0.67 27-oct-13 C$1.00 49.3% Hit target, sold, good win
HudBay Min. HBM may-16 U$4.10 03-abr-16 U$4.36 -6.3% Short trade, poor timing
Nevada Sunrise NEV.v may-16 C$0.185 28-feb-16 C$0.23 24.3% V. small, no big deal either way
Richmont RIC jun-16 U$7.60 01-may-16 U$9.30 22.4% near-term trade, profit taken
INV Metals INV.to jul-16 C$0.25 03-abr-16 C$0.95 280.0% Trade closed on time
HudBay Min. HBM aug16 U$4.98 09-jun-16 U$4.80 3.6% short trade covered, no big deal
Miranda Gold MAD.v oct-16 C$0.125 03-jul-16 C$0.10 -20.0% tiny spec trade, didn't work
Avino G & S ASM nov-16 U$2.00 21-oct-16 U$1.40 -30.0% Abandon trade on bad bot deal
Stocks To Follow Closed Positions 2015
Closed in 2015 closed close price
Argonaut Gold AR.to jan'15 C$1.47 14-dec-14 C$2.53 72.1% Big gain small time, profit taken
Amerigo Res ARG.to jan'15 C$0.405 20-jul-14 C$0.285 -29.6% Given up on weak Cu prices
Reservoir Min. RMC.v jan'15 C$6.05 18-jun-14 C$4.12 -31.9% sold on Cu downturn
Coro Mining COP.to jan'15 C$0.075 26-jan-14 C$0.035 -53.3% sm, sold on Cu downturn
Fortuna Silver FSM mar'15 U$4.12 10-nov-14 U$3.75 9.0% Short used as hedge
GoldQuest Min. GQC.v mar'15 C$0.26 27-oct-13 C$0.085 -67.3% given up ghost
Rio Alto Mining RIO.to apr'15 C$2.30 07-apr-11 C$3.57 55.2% Top pick, bot out, big win
Timmins Gold TGD jun'15 U$0.60 19-apr-15 U$0.62 3.3% near-term trade, out of time
First Majestic AG jul'15 U$10.51 10-aug-14 U$4.55 56.7% horrible failed trade
NovaCopper NCQ.to jul'15 C$1.05 09-apr-14 C$0.50 -52.4% no more Cu exposure, sm sell
McEwen Mining MUX aug'15 U$0.695 21-jul-15 U$0.92 32.4% Closed nearterm flip for win
Midas Gold MAX.to sep'15 C$0.39 21-sep-15 C$0.35 -10.3% Sm. trade idea that didn't work
New Gold NGD oct'15 U$2.18 23-aug-15 U$3.05 39.9% trade closed, profit taken
Legend Gold LGN.v nov'15 C$0.085 01-mar-15 C$0.035 -58.8% tiny "land grab" idea, failed
Timmins Gold TGD nov'15 U$0.245 20-sep-15 U$0.15 -38.8% small near-term loser
Please note that due to space considerations closed positions 2009 to 2014 are now
available on request, or were published in any edition to IKN553 (end 2019).
Important Disclosure
The information and opinions contained within this report reflect the personal views of the author and therefore all
material within should not be construed as accurate or reliable or be utilized as advice for investment or business
purposes. Independent due diligence and discussions with ones own investment and business advisor is strongly
recommended. Accordingly, nothing in this report should be construed as offering a guarantee of the accuracy or
completeness of the information contained herein, as an offer or solicitation with respect to the purchase or sale of any
security or as an endorsement of any product or service. All opinions and estimates included in this report are subject to
change without notice. It is prohibited to copy or redistribute this report to any type of third party without the express
permission of the author.
32