Gold and Silver Bulls Take Beaver Creek

Commentary: First leg of our US trip with the gold and silver bulls at Beaver Creek. Next leg starts today and is with the US critical minerals bulls. Sorry this is so late today... been in the desert all day...

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Not sure if we have ever mentioned this...

We are very bullish gold and silver (and also US critical metals of course).

So what better place to spend this week than the Precious Metals Summit, in Beaver Creek, Colorado, USA.

Silver and gold nuts (sorry, “precious metal professional investors and fund managers”) from all over the world descended to the conference for meetings and to hear from different gold and silver companies.

...ascended rather, Beaver Creek is 2.5km above sea level, up in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and is a ski resort town in winter time.

It was the first time we had been to this event, and it was great to see so many people that are into gold and silver... more than we are.

(like when you see somebody drunker than you at a party and feel a bit better about yourself for a few seconds)

Some have been predicting this “generational” silver and gold bull run for over 30 years now.

And they were saying the mood is very buoyant this year compared to previous years.

(we’ve only been into gold and silver properly for around 5 years... hopefully we are in at the right time before this “generational move” we keep hearing about from the long term bulls).

The conference was a great opportunity to witness a giant “victory lap” from long term gold and silver bulls who have been saying “it's coming this year”... every year for the last 30 years.

Great timing too as both gold and silver hit new highs on both days we were at the conference:

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.

Mainstream media mentions are increasing too.

Here are the financial news mentions from just the last 3 days (mainstream media doesn’t often talk about gold):

Gold and silver both hitting new highs AGAIN during the conference set a great mood for the one of the biggest congregations of gold and silver bulls in one place at the same time.

There were some great key note presentations, including:

• Ronald-Peter Stoferle who is a fund manager and partner at Incrementum and the author of the In Gold We Trust Report.
  AND
• Florian Grummes who is the CEO of Midas Touch Consulting and a charting expert specialising in gold, silver and bitcoin.

(more detailed summaries and link to watch the presentations in a second)

MTH presented and reckons they have some drill results coming soon from Target 1 and Target 5 in Mexico.

We also caught up with WCE and TTM who both sounded quite upbeat...

(SS1 and JBY weren't at Beaver Creek ... when we asked they said they were going to the Mining Forum in Denver later this month instead... this is where the bigger companies and fund managers hang out.)

Our key take away from the conference was how overseas investors (especially the Canadians, of which there were many) understand silver a lot more than ASX investors.

Some North American investors were shocked at the “low valuations” on the ASX when we showed them a few companies.

What we found was that TSX listed silver stocks are valued much higher compared to ASX peers on a per ounce basis simply because they were listed in Canada.

(Canadians seem to like and understand silver a lot more)

Which makes us think are ASX silver stocks undervalued?

We already hold positions in ASX listed silver stocks SS1, MTH and WCE (TTM has a lot of silver too).

We’ll probably be adding a new ASX silver stock to our Portfolio this week too...

After two days at the conference, we tagged along to a visit to a (semi) famous gold and silver mine in Nevada,

(the same state that is home to a couple of our earlier stage silver and gold Investments, SS1 and JBY).

The company is NASDAQ listed Hycroft Mining (NASDAQ: HYMC, it's not on the ASX).

Hycroft was actually a big meme stock in the USA back in 2022 when Game Stop and AMC were kicking off.

(After the site visit, we bought a modest position in Hycroft... just in case it goes “meme-stock” again if the silver price rips)

One of the site visit attendees posted this photo from the site visit on social media...

And within about an hour we found ourselves turned into what we can only assume is an AI generated rap video along with Hycroft’s and AMC’s management team rapping about Hycroft posted on X:

It’s been a while since we got “meme’d” - we just hope ASX_bets doesn’t start making them about us again.

Looks like Hycroft still has a big following...

Anyway...

We are currently in Las Vegas, where we will then make the short 50 minute drive to visit LKY’s project - next to $17BN MP Materials Mountain Pass mine - America’s only rare earths mine.

LKY management also happened to be hanging around at the Beaver Creek conference this week and were handing out LKY branded merch to just about everyone that came past them.

Could this guerrilla marketing of a US critical metals stock at a precious metals conference be why LKY was up 100% on enormous volume in the two days of the conference?

Maybe...

But it was probably more because LKY put out two pretty strong announcements this week:

• LKY doubled its landholding next door to MP Material’s Mountain Pass mine.
• LKY signed a non-binding agreement with EV Resources to secure antimony ore supply to test its downstream antimony processing technology.

See our take on the two announcements here: LKY doubles landholding next door to $16BN US rare earths national champion

Look out for our LKY site visit write up soon, we’ll be on site tomorrow - in the meantime

back to gold and silver...

Here are our summaries of the two keynote speakers from Beaver Creek:

Keynote speakers deliver bullish outlook for gold and silver

One of the best parts about the Beaver Creek conference was the opportunity to listen to some of the premier gold and silver experts from around the world.

Speaker 1: Ronald-Peter Stoferle

Ronald-Peter Stoferle is a fund manager and partner at Incrementum and the author of the In Gold We Trust Report.

One line from Ronald-Peter’s opening keynote on day 1 of the conference sets the tone for what is a bullish but reasoned outlook on the future of gold and silver.

“What shocks us today may be the baseline for tomorrow”...

Our key takeaways:

• There are 3 key things driving gold: Debt, Geopolitics (and de-dollarisation), Systemic Distrust (investors want real bullion)
• Debt without growth is an open invitation to gold (just look at Trump’s top economic advisor Scott Bessent - his largest private position is in gold).
• Gold demand is being driven by buying from emerging markets in the East - in particular China, who may be using gold as a way to curtail US dollar dominance.
• Looking at buying gold stocks (rather than just the price of physical) "active timing” is important.

Best chart from the keynote:

Right now we are in the “participation phase” for mainstream adoption of gold.

This is where there is more mainstream attention, and people start to dabble in buying gold and silver.

We have all seen the headlines, central bank buying, increase in price and attention from those that don’t normally pay attention to commodities.

But they are now...

But, there is still a long way to go - for many constructed wealth portfolios (for individuals) gold only makes up 1-2%.

As the importance of gold grows, we should see this number increase according to Ronald-Peter.

There is still a long way to go before we reach the distribution phase for gold and silver...

This is just the beginning, he says.

Speaker 2: Florian Grummes

Florian is the CEO of Midas Touch Consulting and a charting expert specialising in gold, silver and bitcoin.

Florian did a really good job for us charting rookies to make sense of what is happening to both the gold and silver price.

“For gold, the short term price target is $3,750 and then $4,000...”

“For silver, the short term price target is US$42.50, and once it breaks through there then the next stop is US$100.”

Then he leans in real close, and says... “after that US$500 for silver is next.”

“Could we get into a completely berserk mode within the next 3 months... I think it’s possible”

Key Takeaways:

• The chart is telling us that silver wants to see US$50, “it’s a given, just a matter of time”
• Small pullback in gold price coming before the next target of $3,750 and then $4,000 - the market is always attracted to round numbers.
• Watch out for a pullback in the gold price on October 1st to 7th, that’s when there will be no demand out of China as the exchanges are closed. After that, game on.

Best chart from the keynote:

Here are Florian’s gold price targets:

And here is the generational “cup and handle” chart

(We covered this in last weekend's note here: Gold Hits All-Time High, Silver Breaks Out, Is This the Big Run?)

Beaver Creek - the gold and silver bulls are out in force

A few of our Portfolio companies at the conference included LKY, WCE, MTH, TTM.

MTH was the only one to present directly, however, getting in front of a packed crowd of high-profile investors and companies.

(Watch the full video here)

MTH has a 373k ounce gold, 11M ounce silver JORC resource estimate in Mexico.

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

MTH is drilling right now and we could see results any day now.

MTH’s Managing Director John Skeet also gave us an individual update where he walked through the upcoming drilling program and what he wants to see next:

(this huge chart that he had took up the size of the whole table, but was very useful in helping us understand the current drilling plans)

We also spent some quality time with Gerard O’Donovan who is supporting WCE’s Elizabeth Hill silver project.

The key takeaway for us is that it’s all about the exploration for WCE and that one big hit (particularly on any of the regional targets) could be game changing for the company.

Gerard joined us for the 7AM hike to Beaver Creek lake which was set up by Amvest, a North American broking house:

Finally, we got the update from Mel Leighton and Matt Carr at TTM on its 3.1Moz gold and 22Moz silver project in Ecuador.

Side note, but relevant to TTM....

One of us randomly shared a ride from the airport to the conference with the CEO of SolGold (long story).

$1BN capped SolGold has made one of the biggest investment commitments in Ecuador - US$3.2BN deal for its Cascabel copper-gold project.

We also note there has been recent M&A interest in Ecuador, particularly from CMOC who acquired Lumina Gold in June, and Jiangxi who increased its position in SolGold to 12.19% earlier this year.

We have previously done a deep dive into the M&A potential for Ecuador here: M&A in Ecuador shows where valuations are heading...

These deals put a benchmark valuation on TTM’s project, particularly once the resource upgrade is complete - scheduled for the end of the year.

Tomorrow we will be at LKY’s Mojave rare earths and antimony project right next door to MP Materials.

Have a great weekend,

Next Investors