BkrDzn will you be taking a single stock approach or more of a VC approach (buy a few in the possibility a couple go to the moon) when looking at these types of stocks. (presumption is that you will still do your evaluation on them). I'm a new member hear but like the Srawman's asymmetry approach when taking into account a stock selection ie if I lose it will only be a little but these sub 2 c stocks have the potential to rise quickly on some news.

Apologies for the delayed reply. The 2c threshold is the fact that one can't buy or sell as tock with a SP of 2c or under in the platform so looking at a thread for people to discusses or state trades in them.

In general, weighting depends on my analysis and subsequent assessment for probability of the upside/downside scenarios playing out. However, for me, they are often more lottery ticket type plays like junior exploration companies (not a biotech guy) so I would tend to put a small weight in them with a view to average up on success. Its a single stock approach as I don't go and try and find 5 or 10 of them at a time. Often I will not own anything that would fit this description.

An example of a recent one I have which I can't do in Strawman is PLC as it trades at $0.01/sh and this is the price I paid for it last last week (~1% weighting). At ~$3.7m mcap with $2m cash and about to break ground on a 3km drill campaign at their Yalgoo gold asset. The assets has a non-jorc complain resource and drilling is very shallow so there is strong upside success as I don't think the resources were closed off in prior drilling. Risk is that being a reef style system is it can be thin and patchy thus not add up to much. The upcoming drill campaign should test depth given they are permitted to drill up to 250m deep (noting the period resource and drilling rarely exceed 60m depth).

In summation, I have paid an EV of $1.7m (sub $5m, ideally sub $3m EV is best for exploration punts imo) for a decent sized and fully funded drill campaign with the potential for high grade hits. A director has bought on market (just $8k though) mid-Feb leading into the upcoming drill campaign too. These types of plays have been rewarded this year noting OZM, KAL and CRS who were in similar positions to PLC prior to results (2 of which were at or sub 2c). The first two were supergene hits and I think fresh will be light so risk is there. BPM was an example last year where it went from $0.05/sh to $0.15/sh on such a supergene hit in air core and when it test the fresh rock with RC, came up light and if the punter moved fast, would get out at breakeven at worse (assuming in the stock before assays). The year before, STK was the same and one I traded getting a double out of what ended up being far from a discovery, just some strong supergene hits.

N.B. supergene refers to enriched grades in the oxide layer of the ground. For minerals like gold, grades are enriched through the weathering process of the ground as they are not leached away in this process. These supergene layers may give a false sense of the scale and richness of a mineralised system, thus the key is drilling into fresh rock to test the true extent and grade of the mineralising event.

Glad you started this thread @BkrDzn

Just for some context, the reason we prevent members from adding sub-2c stocks on Strawman is it helps ensure fairness in our trading system.

Because we rely on end-of-day pricing and only receive the total daily volume traded (not the breakdown of volume at each price level), there was a loophole that could be exploited.

Here’s what happened in the past:

• A member could buy (say) $20k worth of a stock at 0.1c and then sell it the next day at 0.2c, locking in a 100% gain overnight.
• While we do volume matching, the problem was that not all shares traded at 0.1c on day 1—most may have traded at 0.2c, but because 0.1c was the last recorded trade of the day, our system saw that as the price.
• The next day, the opposite scenario played out, making it appear as though a perfect round-trip trade was possible, when in reality, acquiring and selling that many shares at those prices was highly unlikely.

To stop this from happening, we introduced the "2c Rule"—which significantly reduces the feasibility of gaming the system this way.

It’s a simple fix that helps keep Strawman’s trading engine as fair and realistic as possible.

Anyway, hope that helps.

While I'm here, I also need to tip my hat to @BkrDzn for absolutely smashing it out of the park with his SM portfolio

You can check out his portfolio for yourselves, but a few thinsg to highlight:

1. Anyone can get lucky over a short time frame. 19.4%pa over more than 6 years takes a lot more than good fortune.
2. He's done this with a diversified portfolio. I'd put less weight on it if it were just one or two lucky hits that he just let ride -- but as you'll see, this is an actively managed portfolio with a wide variety of winners
3. I don't think we've ever overlapped in terms of shares held -- in fact, I usually shun resources stocks. Goes to show that there are many ways to win in the market, and he's clearly found an area where he enjoys an edge
4. A great long term average return is one thing, but the volatility of returns (or lack of it) is remarkable given the types of companies he's invested in. My average is ok, but i'm only barely back to my high water mark after a brutal and sustained drawdown!

Anyway, sorry for the effusive flattery mate, but it is very much deserved and we're lucky to have you on the team.

I appreciate the shout out. I will say that from mid 2021 to 2023, my straw portfolio had just two stocks as it was cashed up and lightly touched due to professional commitments and compliance. IRL I had a deeper drawdown in that stretch so my average would be more moderate.

What is accurate is that I have been a resources junkie.

Here here!

Nice work @BkrDzn

Long may you run

Had a little dig through open file/wamex and found a bit more detail on the old resource estimate. It came in at ~390kt at 3.74gpt which is ~47koz, sitting within 40m depth (as suspected from my prior observations) and appears to be done in the 80s or 90s hence why it is not JORC compliant.

The snip below comes from the Aurox combined annual report dated Dec 2008 which covered a tenement that covered the general project area.

Today this tenement sits between PLC (south) and SPR (North). Hard to know for certain but at least half of the Crescent and Olive Queen deposits sit on each side as the below aerial view suggests (PLC preso dated October 2024).

Throwing this in here to demonstrate some of the extra dd that can be done to cross check what the company chooses to report and try and find insights that may not make it to a bullet point on a presentation.

I do note that the company referred to as the source of the gold resource details, was an iron ore company. This ground is fill with BIFs. The results were not good. One can rule out iron ore as an opportunity (not that this is what I'm punting on lol).

You've got my attention with this one @BkrDzn - and I don't usually dabble in such early stage explorers, but this one does look super interesting. Firstly, the fact that they've pivoted to gold from lithium, yet the company name doesn't reflect that yet; they're still calling themselves "Premier1 Lithium" with the PLC ticker code. Anything with lithium in the company's name is likely to get overlooked by gold bugs, unless they're digging deeper as you clearly have @BkrDzn - and thanks for sharing some of your work here - much appreciated.

Secondly, their project locations:

Their Yalgoo Project is butting up against Spartan's Yalgoo gold project to the north - as you pointed out today - and has plenty of established gold miners around them.

Also, their Abbotts North project (see below) has Westgold (WGX) nearby and Meeka (MEK) a stone's throw to the east, plus Catalyst (CYL) not too far away to the north east.

Again - here's where those two sit in relation to each other:

Next, while this text that I'm about to quote from Commsec is old - like, when they were still lithium focused - the use of AI to assist with developing and prioritising drilling targets is interesting:

• Premier1 Lithium Limited (PLC, formerly Sensore Ltd) is an Australian company emphasizing expedited mining development. It relies on advanced data analytics, AI/ML, and scientific computing for exploration discoveries. Premier1 organizes its operations into three divisions for AI-target opportunities. Currently focused on lithium projects, with Abbotts North as the premier exploration site featuring lithium-bearing pegmatites.

Source: Commsec (today, under "About" PLC)

I do note that they're very small; currently their m/cap is around $3.7 million according to the ASX site and their share count (SOI) is just 368,060,582 shares. Accordingly, with a market cap of under $4m, you wouldn't expect their Board and Management to hold a huge amount of shares, and they don't:

When looking at those numbers people, keep in mind that their share price is hovering around 1 cent/share (closed today up +10% at $0.011 - i.e. 1.1 cps) so 2,500,100 shares (what their MD Jason Froud owns) is currently worth just $27,501.10 ($27.5 K) at today's $0.011/share close.

However, they do have some Subs:

The largest substantial holders are Deutsche Rohstoff AG, which Google tells me is a globally operating holding company that identifies, develops, and divests resource projects, with a focus on oil and gas opportunities in the United States, as well as base, specialty, and precious metals projects in North America, Europe, and Australia. They are based in Germany and their website is: https://rohstoff.de/en/company.

Not sure who Timothy Bird is, but there's a small chance it could actually be this guy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timbirdlaw/ who recently posted the following:

• Love this story. My grandfather and great-grandfather were the wheelwrights maintaining the mineshaft wheels at South Crofty mine many years ago and I’m sure they would be delighted to hear it is being given new life.
• ⚡ Big news for UK mining and green energy transition!
• We have advised Cornish Metals Inc. on its £56M fundraising, including a £28.6M strategic investment from the UK’s National Wealth Fund. This investment will help restart the historic South Crofty tin mine in Cornwall, securing a domestic supply of tin — a critical mineral for renewable energy, EVs, and tech.
• Why does this investment matter?
• - Supports the UK's transition to net zero
• - Creates high-quality jobs in Cornwall
• - Strengthens the UK’s critical minerals supply chain
• The Fieldfisher team was led by Edward Westhead, and included Anna Crosby, Oliver Perkins, Jamal Moursy and Catriona Grew.
• Congratulations to Cornish Metals Inc. and everyone involved. Exciting times ahead as the UK takes another step towards a sustainable future.
• Read more here: https://ow.ly/fgul50UQoZS
• #Mining hashtag
• #GreenEnergy hashtag
• #Investment hashtag
• #EnergyTransition hashtag
• #NetZero hashtag
• #Renewables hashtag
• #RenewableEnergy
• 

--- end of linkedin excerpt ---

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timbirdlaw_love-this-story-my-grandfather-and-great-grandfather-activity-7291050369256685568--34t/

That's a stretch I know, however I couldn't find any other Tim Birds with any link to mining in the 5 minutes I devoted to that pursuit this arvo.

Also, that Tim Bird used to work for and was an Associate at Deutsche Bank from Jan 2000 - Feb 2002 so there's that tenuous link also.

It could also be this Tim Bird: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-bird-66a457114/

Or this one: https://www.businessnews.com.au/Company/Prochoice-Global-Investments

https://www.businessnews.com.au/Person/Tim-Bird

That Tim Bird has been with Paramount Safety Products since September 2002. The company was founded by his late father (Rob Bird) in 1992, and Tim became their GM and took over the helm when his father passed away in 2010.

In June 2021, Paramount Safety Products was acquired by US company Protective Industrial Products, a global leader in hand protection and PPE for the industrial, construction, and retail markets. The Bird family have maintained a stake in the business following the deal, which included $160m in cash from the $227m deal.

Prochoice Global Investments is the family office of the Bird family behind Paramount Safety Products and operates across Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, the Pacific Islands, Asia, North America, Canada and Europe. Tim Bird is a Director of Prochoice Global Investments.

On 30th June 2024, Mr Timothy Bird (possibly the same Tim Bird) owned 1,405,137 shares in Pure Foods Tasmania (PFT.asx) (1.15% of the company)

Anyway, I digress.

Regarding the 3rd Sub of PLC, Sasak Minerals, I did find the following in an announcement way back in March 2013 (so 12 years ago) titled, "MRG IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE ACQUISITION OF SASAK RESOURCES AUSTRALIA PTY LTD":

Sasak is a privately owned Australian company, founded in 2010 by four highly experienced mineral explorers and mine developers, with the aim of discovering ore bodies under younger cover sequences. Most of the large, outcropping ore bodies have been discovered in Australia. Their in-house proprietary data mining technology drives their core business, which is the application of data mining techniques including predictive analytics using hundreds of GIS layers of information to generate and commercialise high potential/high value exploration targets. They have one of Australia's largest private geo-scientific databases comprising over 10 terabytes of data.

--- ends ---

So Sasak Minerals could just possibly be the investment vehicle of one or more of those 4 "highly experienced mineral explorers and mine developers" that sold their business, Sasak Resources, to MRG 12 years ago.

Anyway, like I said, it's got me interested, and I might take a small punt on them, but only with money I can afford to lose, because I do consider this type of "investing" more akin to gambling, as the vast majority of these minerals and metals explorers never make any money and most of them do go broke, unless they morph into something else, like this one has morphed from a lithium explorer into a gold explorer.

Importantly, despite the high risk nature of gambling on stocks like this one, it's clear from what @BkrDzn has shared here that you can certainly narrow the odds by studying the form guide and the track conditions.

Disc: Not held (yet).

Nice run down! I will note that Anja Ehser is VP Geology for Deutsche Rohstoff, the largest shareholder. And the head geo joined after wrapping up at AZS post acquisition.

Good to know @BkrDzn - I note that Premier1's (PLC's) neighbours @ their Abbotts North project (see map below), New Murchison Gold (NMG) were up +33.33% today on this announcement: VISIBLE GOLD IN DIAMOND CORE AT CROWN PRINCE.PDF

NMG is also a penny stock - trading around that 1 cent per share mark - even after rising +33% today from $0.009 to $0.012.

Below is MoM's take on today's news:

Link to timestamp in podcast: 0:37:20 The best visible gold announcements ever

Disc: Not holding, but added to watchlist.

I bought small positions ($5 K of each) in NMG (@ 1.5 cps) and PLC (@ 1.1 cps) today. Wish I'd bought NMG last week when they were more than 60% cheaper ($0.009 instead of $0.015) but realistically, I wouldn't have been too interested in them last week so that was never going to happen. They got my attention with this however:

And thanks again @BkrDzn for sharing your PLC research and modelling - I know PLC are more focussed on their Yalgoo prospect right now, in terms of drilling, with those upcoming drilling results providing possible positive share price catalysts for PLC in the near-term, however I do also like their Abbotts North project being just north of where NMG have just produced those diamond drill cores with heaps of visible gold shown in the above image.

When PLC do get around to drilling Abbotts North, there is a chance they might hit something like that also, and while NMG's SP has risen +33.33% on Monday, another +8.33% yesterday followed by a further +15.38% today, there is potential for them to go higher still when they get the assay results for those cores and the good news hopefully keeps on coming with further drilling. Of course, they could also find bugger-all gold from now on and their SP could retrace back below 1 cps, but I would imagine, on the basis of that visible gold in those cores, that they're well and truly "on the gold" and there is more good news coming. The question of course is how good that news is going to be, and how much of that is already priced in? The market is clearly pricing in a fair bit of further upside, so is it going to be that good, better or worse? We shall see.

I would have bought a position in both PLC and NMG yesterday (Tuesday) after thinking about it on Monday night and deciding both were worth a punt with a small amount of money, but I had my second kidney op yesterday (final and largest stone now lasered) and I left for the hospital before the market opened and I decided not to make any financial decisions after the procedures due to having had a general anaesthetic and still feeling fairly high from strong pain meds. I chose $5K of each because I'm only risking a total of $10K, and I didn't want to go any smaller because realistically I want one or both to double from here, at a minimum, which is certainly entirely possible - it happened with Meeka (MEK) and plenty of others within a few months - and so I needed a minimum amount as a starting point that should result in a decent payoff - i.e. provide a little holiday money. But, again, I don't want to go hard, because there's a lot of risk. So, hopefully I'm just in these two for a good time, not a long time.

So, the delay didn't really hurt me with PLC, but I ended up paying more today than I would have earlier in the week for NMG. Or to be more precise, I got less shares for the same amount of money today than I would have got yesterday or Monday.

I trimmed $10K off my GMD holding to pay for those, so swapped out a little profit on a growing gold producer (which I was already up +35% on in that portfolio) for some exposure to two gold explorers who appear to have some good ground. Almost apples for apples, same commodity exposure, just heaps more risk. But position sized to account for that risk.

Ten years ago I'd have been throwing substantially more than $5K at each of them, but I'm older, wiser, and more risk-averse now.

But I still have a pulse... So I'm rolling the dice with a couple of penny-stock gold explorers once again.

24th March 2025: Came across this today: WA copper-gold hunt adds punch to Critica mission [26th September 2024]

by James Pearson, published in SMH (Sydney Morning Herald newspaper and website) on September 26, 2024.

A strategic review by rare earths-focused Critica and Premier1 Lithium at their Yalgoo joint venture (JV) project in Western Australia’s Murchison region has prompted a shift from lithium exploration to gold and copper.

While Critica has maintained a strong focus on its emerging Jupiter rare earths deposit, also in WA’s Mid West, the change in thinking at Yalgoo has also today captured the market’s attention. The news prompted a small spike in Critica’s share price, while Premier1’s stock jumped 80 per cent during intraday trading this morning on the biggest volumes since it listed in early 2022.

Critica and Premier1 Lithium have shifted the focus at their Yalgoo project JV from lithium to copper and gold exploration.

Although the JV’s initial exploration efforts were focused on lithium at Yalgoo, it has since identified extensive gold and copper prospects and has now kicked open the door to exploring for the two commodities in an area renowned for big discoveries of the respective metals.

The Yalgoo project spans 220 square kilometres in the northern Yalgoo-Singleton Greenstone Belt, a region known for major discoveries such as 29Metals’ Golden Grove and Red5’s Deflector mines.

Historical exploration of the Wadgingarra area in the northern part of JV ground was conducted mainly by Mount Kersey Mining from 1985 to 1989 and revealed gold mineralisation in subvertical quartz veins. An estimate from that work reported 390,000 tonnes at 3.7 grams per tonne gold down to a depth of 40m and extending into neighbouring ground held by Spartan Resources.

Key targets included Crescent, Olive Queen and Cumberland. At the time, the area was tested with a 73-hole drilling program and additional potential was identified at three other additional targets. Notably, exploration data from the 1900s has also revealed untested gold mineralisation in multiple zones within the Yalgoo tenement, offering additional immediate opportunities.

The unearthed historic drill results highlighted high-grade gold intercepts, including one of 5m at 5.1g/t from 1m, another of 10m at 6.4 g/t from 8m and 2m running at 20.8g/t from 10m. Further historic surface rock chip sampling thrown up from desktop studies revealed multiple high-grade assays including 9.4g/t and 7.4g/t gold, in addition to 6.6 per cent copper.

A more recent electromagnetic (EM) survey in 2020 by Critica discovered four high-priority volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) ore drill targets, 10km north and along strike from the Golden Grove zinc-copper-gold mine that contains 750,000 tonnes of copper, 1 million ounces of gold and 3 million tonnes of zinc.

The promising finds, which have been overlooked since the 1990s, have now presented the JV with multiple high-potential drill targets. Moving forward, the JV plans to initiate a fieldwork program to test and confirm the targets, with an eye to establishing a broader mineral portfolio than just the lithium prospects.

The change in direction follows a review of initial fieldwork undertaken by Premier1 in May, which was focused on lithium exploration and formed part of the expenditure needed to honour its farm-in agreement commitments with Critica that was first structured in March last year.

Under the deal, Premier1 – which initially first entered into the agreement for the project’s sole lithium potential – has the right to earn 70 per cent of all mineral rights at Yalgoo, excluding the rare earths, by spending up to $4.5 million in two stages. The requirements include spending $1.5 million for a 51 per cent interest within two years and a further $3 million for the additional 19 per cent.

Critica, however, still retains an option to claw back 10 per cent of the project, valid until March next year, and will keep all rights to its high-grade Vulcan rare earths target, where surface samples previously returned up to 12.5 per cent total rare earth oxides (TREO).

With a renewed focus on gold and copper, spurred on by multiple incidents of historic finds, Critica and Premier1 Lithium have high hopes of cashing in on two metals – both of which are enjoying booming prices.

It gives Critica something genuine to keep an eye on as it builds on its burgeoning mission at Jupiter.

--- ends ---

Disclosure: I hold PLC (Premier1) shares IRL, but not Critica (CRI) shares. To be clear, I'm not interested in their REO (rare earths) or Lithium exploration activities, but I am interested in the gold that they may well find in their tenements on the basis of their location in close proximity to other proven decent gold discoveries. These companies, if they do find enough gold, are unlikely to attempt to progress through to being gold producers, however they might get taken out (acquired) by a company like Ramelius Resources (RMS) who last week announced an agreed plan to acquire ("merge with") Spartan (SPR) who own gold just to the north of the Yalgoo project discussed in that article. Spartan's project is also called their Yalgoo Gold Project, as shown below (top right of the map) because Yalgoo is the area name. I do hold RMS and SPR, both here and IRL. I'm confident that we'll only see M&A activity increase if the gold price keeps rising and making new all time highs. Even if it goes sideways for a while, these are very good levels for gold miners to make excellent profits and there's plenty of incentive for cashed-up gold miners to buy more ground that they know contains more gold.