In the coming 12 months all will be revealed...

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The information contained in this communication is provided for general information purposes only and may relate to speculative investments. It does not constitute financial product advice, and has been prepared without taking into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. You should consider obtaining independent financial advice before making any investment decision.

In the coming 12 months all will be revealed...

By this time next year one of two things will have happened:

1. Our gut feel was right, the timing was right, our thesis played out as expected and there are high fives all round while we get called “genius investors”.

OR...

2. We will be doing a Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones style nude walk of atonement down St Georges Terrace while everyone shouts “shame, shame”, spits and throws rotten cabbages at us.

(figuratively of course)

It all depends on what the silver price does.

Put your cabbage away... for now.

Because silver closed at ANOTHER new record of US$48/oz overnight... after the ASX closed.

The 1981 high was US$49/oz.

The 2011 high was US$49.81/oz.

We are so very close to a NEW ALL TIME HIGH if silver goes above US$50/oz

(not adjusting for inflation)

... and the generational “cup and handle” breakout we’ve been talking about actually happens.

More specifically, (1) or (2) depends on the outcomes of the “silver stock bender” we just went on - which we have dubbed “Silver September 2025”.

(we went fast on adding a few new ASX silver stocks to our Portfolio because we wanted to get set BEFORE the silver price run that we think will happen imminently... we could be wrong of course)

If anything, it will be fun to watch either our confirmation as small cap investing geniuses OR us trying to tap dance our way out of our Silver September 2025 actions as our thesis unravels in front of us... and all of you.

Are you not entertained?

Let he who has never been early or wrong on an investment thesis cast the first cabbage.

BUT... so far so good.

Last night silver roared again and the “generational cup and handle formation breakout” is so close:

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

Last night silver equaled its 1980 high.

...and is very close to going above its 2011 high.

It could happen next week...

Anyway, a quick summary of our thesis is:

We think silver is going to go a LOT higher.

And soon.

(no guarantees of course)

Australian investors don’t really understand silver, which is where the edge is.

Lack of Australian’s understanding (or caring) about silver means there are only a handful of ASX listed silver stocks.

The projects are real and they look undervalued (to us) compared to peers overseas (where silver is better understood, particularly North America).

If silver does go on the run we think it will, the handful of ASX silver stocks with legit, advanced projects should go up... a lot.

(because large amounts of money could pile into a few silver stocks as investors suddenly start understanding and caring about silver)

This (and the silver price run accelerating) is why over the last four weeks we quickly added a few new ASX silver stocks to our Portfolio.

We scoured the ASX, researched reader suggestions (thanks for these) and added the following silver stocks to our Portfolio (in order of being added):

RCM has an estimated 67M ounces of high grade silver equivalent resource (at around 400 g/t AgEq) in NSW, Australia, across three projects in close proximity.

RCM just attracted Jupiter Asset Management, Tribeca Investment Partners and billionaire Eric Sprott to its register in a $14M capital raise at 3.5c.

RCM wants to drill out its assets to achieve a total JORC resource estimate of over 100M+ ounces silver equivalent.

Read our full RCM initiation note here

AVM which has an estimated 100M ounces of silver equivalent foreign resources in Mexico PLUS a Victoria, Australia, gold exploration asset.

AVM raised $13M this week and attracted Jupiter Asset Management, Tribeca Investment Partners, Lowell Resources Funds and APAC Resources to its register at 10c.

(We also put cash into the AVM placement at 10c)

Read our full AVM initiation note here

JBY - An existing Portfolio company with a gold project in Nevada (where we already held a position) acquired an advanced stage silver project this week.

We liked the silver silver acquisition so much we anointed JBY as ouINext Investors Small Cap Pick of the Year for 2025.

The new project has a 17.5M ounces of silver (non-JORC) resource estimate AND ~$150M of processing plant and project infrastructure in Texas, USA.

Geologically, it sits on Mexico’s famous Sierra Madre belt, which is home to some of the world’s biggest silver producers... but it sits inside US borders, with a decent amount of exploration upside.

We want to see it get into production ASAP (especially at record silver prices).

Read our full JBY 2025 Small Cap Pick of the Year note here

IVR - One of Australia’s highest grade undeveloped silver assets, IVR has a 57M ounce silver JORC resource estimate with an average grade of 73g/t.

Discovered in 2011 during the last bull run for silver, IVR has spent 14 years drilling out and developing this project to the point where it is now almost completed the development stage... and is turning its attention to first production - just as silver is coming back to all time highs again.

IVR recently bought in a new Managing Director, Lachlan Wallace, former CEO of Hillgrove Resources where he led the design, permitting, financing and restart of the Kanamantoo copper mine, also in South Australia...

We are backing him to do it again with IVR.

Read our full launch note here

(we are still open to looking at additional legit, advanced stage silver projects, with JORC resources, good management that in our opinion are undervalued and would deliver the best uplift in a sustained silver price run).

In addition to SS1, MTH and later WCE (more on these in a second) we also own a bunch of physical silver, took out some call options on the silver spot price in July, hold shares in a NASDAQ-listed silver company that used to be a US meme stock (Hycroft Mining), hold shares in ETPMAG physical silver trust and Sprott’s SLVR silver miners ETF. We also hold 3SIL, which basically delivers 3x of whatever the silver price does each day... (up OR down).

So we are officially overweight silver.

Here is a a bit more on our thesis and why we quickly added these new silver stocks in the last 4 weeks:

• We think silver is going to go a lot higher - if it does it will take the few ASX listed silver stocks with it.
• In a silver bull market, more money flows into a tiny number of silver stocks. The ASX understands (and likes) gold... not silver (until silver rips, then suddenly everyone magically understands and likes silver). There are hundreds of gold stocks on the ASX. There are maybe 20 silver stocks. Lots of peanut butter chasing not much toast.
• Silver is a precious metal - Rising inflation and fiat currency concerns are driving investors toward safe-haven assets like gold (and silver) to preserve wealth. Geopolitical tensions and global uncertainty (seen the news lately?) are boosting the appeal of assets perceived as stores of value.
• Silver's historical tendency to outperform gold during bull markets due to its higher volatility and relatively lower market capitalisation.
• Silver also has industrial uses... and military uses - military uses of silver are not talked about much due to secrecy/sensitivity - apparently a lot of silver is needed in missiles and other military stuff. The whole world is accelerating stocking up on war gear.
• Low silver price over the last 10 years means mines have not expanded or come online - in the last 10 years, there has been a lack of capital allocated to exploration and making major new silver discoveries. Silver is generally produced as a byproduct of mining other minerals, so even if the silver price goes up, those mines that produce silver won’t necessarily increase production (unless the main commodity being produced goes up too).
• Growing silver demand continues to exceed supply - silver demand as a precious metal and other industrial uses are growing. Silver supply is not. Silver has been in structural deficit for years, so if we want to get it back into equilibrium - we will need more supply online.
• Volume of content about silver on our social media feeds is increasing daily - have you seen a bullish silver post or reel lately? We stare at this kind of stuff all day and the volume is increasing, which means more and more people will start to think about silver. For an example check out #silver on X/twitter, (buckle up though, if you thought we were down the rabbit hole bad, this is where the proper silver nuts hang out). Even Alan Kohler was talking about silver to boomers on free to air TV this week (remember TV?)
• Technical traders will lose their minds if silver trades above US $50/oz and completes the “generational cup and handle” formation - whether you believe in chart analysis or not, a LOT of people do, and they are watching for this cup and handle breakout. This could make technical traders pile into silver. In 1980 silver hit US $49.00 In 2011 it hit US $49.81...A few hours ago it touched US $48.37...
• We have added ADVANCED STAGE silver projects to our Portfolio. Taking lessons from the 2020 great lithium bull run - the stocks that performed best last lithium bull run were advanced lithium projects on the ASX, that nobody cared about until lithium ran - they were already lithium stocks BEFORE lithium became cool. We have taken lessons learned and added later stage silver stocks (hopefully ahead of the silver price run)
• Now we just wait for the generational silver price run to happen
• Profit...? (or cabbage laden walk of shame)

That’s the high level summary - we have written in detail about each of the above topics in past weekend editions (here)

So the silver Investments have (mostly) been made, and the finger is ready to start hitting the refresh button on the silver price page when it opens on Monday morning...

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We first called a potential silver price run almost two years ago at the start of 2024.

So we added two silver picks SS1 and MTH Portfolio:

SS1 is our 2024 Small Cap Pick of The Year and the single biggest pre-production silver equivalent resource on the ASX.

(and it just might have a big antimony resource to go with the silver, SS1 is finding antimony in just about every hole it assays/re-assays).

Read our latest SS1 note here

MTH has a 373Koz gold and 11Moz silver JORC resource estimate in Mexico.

MTH is about to have three drill rigs on the ground and is looking to grow that resource to a ~2.5M to 3M ounces gold equivalent resource estimate over the next 12-14 months.

MTH is one of those companies that we think is underappreciated because of the ASX just not understanding Mexico as a jurisdiction and silver in general.

No surprise the Canadians led the last $12.7M raise for MTH.

Read our latest MTH note here

Earlier in 2025 we added WCE this year before silver broke above US$40:

WCE - has one of the highest grade silver mines to ever produce in Australia - the Elizabeth Hill Mine.

Now that the silver price is pushing new all time highs, the team behind WCE are looking to drill out its project and make near-mine discoveries at Elizabeth Hill...

But also discover and define an Elizabeth Hill ‘look-a-like’ deposit across its ~20 regional targets.

Read our full launch note here

So, where are we in our silver “macro investment theme lifecycle” model?

We think that we are at “Stage 3 - “it’s getting real and time to add a few more stocks”

(Which we did over the last 4 weeks.)

Stage 3 means there are plenty more chapters to write in the silver story (if we are right of course, we may not be):

Silver price action generally lags gold? Is silver about to follow gold’s incredible price run?

We think a lot of money has been made in gold.

Gold is also trading at all time highs pushing ~US$3,900 per ounce...

Now some gold investors are selling out, OR worse yet, the ones who missed out on the gold rally are looking for the “next gold”.

The easy and most obvious alternative to the gold trade, is the silver trade.

Silver typically follows gold - albeit with a lag:

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

With gold running so hard, the gold/silver ratio is now out of whack relative to historical ratios.

Which is why we think silver is about to “do a gold” (plus all the reasons we identified above).

And n that happens, there will be very few options on the ASX for that capital to flow into (which we hope means valuations start to move higher from where they are today).

Where are we in the silver cycle relative to gold’s big run?

Anyone invested in gold stocks will remember how small cap gold equities were trading despite the big run in the gold price.

Gold went from US$1,200 to US$2,000/oz and hit all time highs (at the time) but the small/mid cap gold stocks did nothing.

(Anyone who was invested in gold stocks back then like we were will remember the pain and confusion about why their stocks weren't running with the gold price).

For a good 6 months it was pretty rough out there... until all of a sudden it wasnt...

Eventually gold stocks finally started ripping - some of the more advanced ones ripped really hard off very little newsflow.

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

What that tells us is that the market sits and waits to see if a move in an underlying commodity price is “real” before really putting capital to work at the smaller end.

We think the same will happen in silver.

Right now, we are going through the initial run up phase where the silver price is trending up.

But we think the big capital inflows and big runs in silver names happens when the market starts to believe the move in the silver price is real and longer lasting.

Here is how we see it look for silver relative to that gold image from earlier:

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

We listened to a presentation by the CEO of silver producer $9BN capped First Majestic Silver who said “we need triple digit silver to increase this production”.

He then said:

“You are not going to get the mining sector investing dollars into building new mines without higher silver prices”.

This is coming from the guy who wakes up everyday to decide whether or not to produce more silver and bring more mines online...

(Check out those comments here)

Silver has been in structural deficit for years, so if we want to get it back into equilibrium - we will need more supply online.

(Source)

Of course, he could be wrong, and so could we about where the silver price is going. He is biased as the CEO of a major producer, and we are biased (given our recent Portfolio additions).

IF Keith is right and silver DOES trade in the triple digits, then the market will start to extrapolate US$50 or US$60 as the new baseline normal for valuing silver assets.

(Exactly the way the gold investors are now plugging in US$3,000/oz into their valuation models, instead of US$2,000/oz 12 months ago).

When we start seeing that sort of behaviour we think silver will finally move into stage 4 of our “macro theme interest” model - see below.

(we hope we are right and silver goes crazy... but we could be wrong, nobody can predict commodity prices)

Here it is again:

More weekend reading? Back in February we wrote this eBook sharing what we have learned about gold and silver.

Since then we have added more silver and gold stocks, we’ll update our newly added silver and gold stocks in the next edition of the eBook..

Key point is, after we published this in February, it turns out we were right about gold and silver, which is the most important thing in this game.

And given how overweight we are on silver now, we hope we are right again...

What we’ve learned about gold and silver and the incoming mega-bubble

Have a great weekend,

Next Investors