By The Gold Report, on February 9th, 2012
  Preserving wealth in a volatile political and financial world is a job for gold. Greg Weldon, publisher of Weldon’s Money Monitor newsletter and Grant Williams, a portfolio advisor at Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore, will share their insights at the Cambridge House California Investment Conference Feb. 11–12. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, they answer the question: How low and high can gold go?
The Gold Report: Recent headlines continue to focus on the debt crisis in Europe as more countries are having their debt downgraded. Greg, you have diagnosed the problem as credit addiction and said that the European Union won’t be able to recover until leaders take painful measures necessary to kick their addiction. What does this mean for commodities and commodity equities?
Greg Weldon: It’s critical for asset prices across the globe. It is a debt addiction, debt refinancing and deficit financing problem, not only in Europe, but also in the U.S. and Japan. Austerity is the real answer to the fact that there is too much debt, and austerity measures in an economic sense are not positive.
My fear is that it’s going to be very difficult to see how economies in Europe, the U.S. and Japan can stand on their own two feet without the assistance of central banks debasing currency through debt monetization. I liken it to filling the sink halfway up with water and pulling the plug out of the drain. Of course, the water level will recede unless you turn the faucet on and start more water pouring into the sink. The level of water represents asset prices, the water flowing out of the faucet represents liquidity provided by global central banks and the drain represents the real macro economy, which has not been fixed.
At the end of the second round of qualitative easing, when the Fed shut off the faucet, the water level (asset prices) started to go down. But now the water is running again—particularly with some of the measures instituted by the European Central Bank, with its three-year loan program, the federal liquidity swaps and the back-ended way that it’s managed to involve the International Monetary Fund.
The problem with all of this is it does nothing to fix the underlying problem, which is too much debt. This is not sustainable. Central banks turning on the water faucet is good for asset prices. The real solutions of fiscal austerity, which are probably not palatable to most politicians in Europe, are the real struggle as we go forward. This problem is not going to go away.
TGR: Grant, in your Things That Make You Go Hmmm…. newsletter, you painted a picture of the final implosion of the euro and U.S. municipal bond meltdown. What would this mean for resource stocks?
Grant Williams: That was part of a prediction piece that I wrote at the end of 2011. It was semi-tongue-in-cheek. My contention was that as volatile as 2011 played out, we didn’t actually get any resolution. And it feels like 2012 will be the year those resolutions start to take place. One of the primary ones is the European situation. A Greek deal to solve the crisis seems to constantly be on the horizon, but they can’t seem to come up with an absolute solution to the public sector involvement haircut issue. When they do, I think it’s going to be the start of a whole slew of legal action to try and either trigger credit default swaps or negate any haircut from those who don’t want to sign up. Greece has a big refinancing coming up in March. It has to raise a little over €14 billion (B), and between now and then it somehow has to get a $130B loan package approved from the Troika. It is very hard to see how Europe can just keep pumping money into Greece. It’s very likely we’ll see Greece exit the Eurozone then, and that’s going to focus everyone’s attention on Portugal. I think Italy will be OK. Spain worries me more than Italy because the economy there structurally is in far worse shape. But if a bunch of countries pull out, that leaves the question of how people unwind any obligations they have in the current euro construct.
What this means for commodities is that the money-printing presses are going to be turned up to the max again. Despite adamant claims from politicians to the contrary, money printing—even if by another name—will have to be implemented at a magnitude much, much higher than ever before to meet current demands. Cash is being given to banks basically for free through the long-term refinancing operation on the quid pro quo that the money finds its way back into the government bond market. The problem is that a lot of this money is going to leak out somewhere other than where it is intended and I suspect it’s going to leak into commodities and equities. We are going to see stock markets float higher, not necessarily on particularly good numbers from corporates, but from the simple dynamic of a lot of freshly printed money looking for a home. We have already seen it in gold and silver this year. They both had big corrections in December, but they are two of the best performing assets of the year so far and I suspect the more money they print this year, the faster these things are going to go up.
People are starting to understand that deflation is not an option for the central banks. Once people realize that if we get a brief period of deflation, it will be fought aggressively with inflation, they will start to look past any deflationary period and position themselves for inflation. That is going to mean higher prices in commodities.
TGR: How high could gold and silver go in 2012?
GWilliams: I think gold trades at $2,200 an ounce (oz) this year. I think silver trades at possibly $60/oz this year, but they’re really just stepping stones on the way to higher ground. This 11-year ascent in both precious metals is only going to change when central bank policy surrounding it changes. I just don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future until they get this debt problem under control.
We are going to see periods with crazy spikes. We are going to see corrections. Some will view this as a collapse but the difference between a correction and a collapse is your entry price. If you bought gold at $700/oz a few years ago and you watched it go from $1,900/oz to $1,500/oz in December, that’s a correction. If you bought it at $1,900/oz, it’s a collapse. I think it’s important to try and take a longer view. The rationale for owning gold and silver is still in place. In a world of printing presses and fiat currencies, no one can manufacture gold and silver out of thin air. I think they are both going to go a lot higher.
TGR: Greg, what are your predictions for 2012?
GWeldon: There is a disconnect in the markets. Currencies really aren’t moving much either. The dollar hasn’t appreciated much. This is why gold is stuck in this range, capped just above $1,700/oz, with potential downside toward $1,300/oz. People are liquidating commodities. My sense is that there is more weakness to come in H112. Commodity prices in Q411 have already come down significantly, pumping some relief into margins. There is a little window of opportunity here where equities and some of the commodities markets could have some upside.
Debt could become an issue again in H212 depending on how central banks deal with that and whether we have a big downturn again in the stock and commodity markets. My longer term view is that when push comes to shove and central banks are staring into the abyss of a potential debt deflation, they will choose to reflate at whatever cost. That is bullish for gold long term. If banks can find the political will to do it, there will be significantly higher prices for commodities across the board in the long term.
China, in particular, has a bullish dynamic. Certain commodities, such as copper, have their own supply-demand dynamics that are detached from the dollar and monetary policies. The Chinese imported copper at a record high in December. Copper stocks on the London Metal Exchange have fallen by close to 30% since October. Copper is one of these commodities that has upside potential regardless of what the dollar is doing.
TGR: Grant, you are based in Singapore. There was a lot of talk at the last Cambridge House Conference in Vancouver about whether China is growing, shrinking, landing hard or soft. What impact will China have on commodities and equities around the world?
GWilliams: China faces a lot of problems. A lot of people think it is in for a hard landing. It is always difficult to believe official Chinese statistics, but the message that the Chinese government is sending through those numbers can be useful. For example, the Chinese growth numbers last week showed an 8.9% increase in gross domestic product. In a world of basically zero growth, that’s a pretty good number, but it’s not the double-digit number we’ve been conditioned to expect from China. Whether it was true or not, it shows that the government is saying: things are OK. We are on top of this, we’re in control. We are not going to slow to zero; we’re just going to grow a little bit slower. The big problem China has is inflation. Roaring food inflation in a society in which half the population lives in relative poverty in rural areas would be a big issue. A lot of people talk about property bubbles—and there are definitely bubbles in Chinese property—but as long as the government can keep people fed, it is going to find a way to get through this—at least for now.
China also has vast currency reserves. The Chinese absolutely understand that paper currency is being devalued incredibly quickly. So, until someone puts a sell-by date on copper and iron ore, it will keep stockpiling the stuff because it will need these commodities to continue growing. China will continue to swap paper money for commodities. The Chinese are bringing gold into the country as fast as they possibly can. Gold is in the DNA here in Asia. It doesn’t take an awful lot to persuade the public to own gold.
TGR: Greg, in your book, Gold Trading Boot Camp, you said gold is at the top of the macro-monetary pyramid. Why does it hold such an important position?
GWeldon: It is a rare and unique mineral that has provided a store of value for centuries that is not backed by any government. It is not subject to anyone’s IOU. Gold stands alone in the level of security it creates in people’s minds as a way to store wealth and protect it from governments that are continually debasing the value of paper money.
TGR: You put the dollar second on the pyramid, but said that could change soon. What will be the catalyst for change and what will be the result for investors?
GWeldon: I don’t know what the catalyst for change could potentially be. For me, the dollar stays as No. 2. There’s been an interesting little sequence recently where the dollar has rallied and gold has declined. But gold has not declined to the same degree that the dollar has rallied. Gold is appreciating in a lot of currencies outside of the dollar where it’s actually outperforming dollar-based gold.
Investors have a greater degree of confidence that the Fed will do what it has to do to circumvent a bigger issue. Next to gold, the dollar still is the second place that people feel comfortable.
TGR: Mining equities haven’t been able to keep pace with the price of gold. Do you see that changing?
GWilliams: It continues to surprise me, frankly, that these stocks are on such crazy valuations against the metal. I think once we start to get wider acceptance that inflation is going to be the outcome rather than deflation, people will start to look at these companies in a different way. Mining companies will instantly become some of the most attractive companies in the world.
I think there’s going to be a tremendous wave of consolidation in the mining sector. When it comes is a tough one to call, though. We’re going to see a lot of junior miners get taken out because it’s going to become a battle for ounces in the ground. If you have proven reserves, the majors are going to come looking for you—particularly if you are in a safe political jurisdiction—and they can afford to pay very, very good multiples of where the stocks are trading now.
In the last 10 years, we have seen some tremendous finds. We’ve seen some tremendous small companies that are very, very well run with incredibly experienced geologists. It requires a lot of due diligence to go through the sheer number of gold mining companies and find the very valuable ones, but I think having ounces in the ground and a good, proven management team are the two fundamental criteria that you have to look for in these stocks. Once the consolidation starts to take place and once the scramble for ounces of gold in the ground begins, I think the resulting valuations will be quite spectacular.
TGR: You are both speaking at the Cambridge House California Investment Conference Feb. 11–12. Based on all of these trends that you’ve laid out, how can investors preserve wealth or even profit during volatile times like these?
GWeldon: Investors who are focused on preserving wealth are best served by buying gold on the dip that is currently taking place. The gold price has a chance to reach $1,450/oz—that’s a sizable move downward.
There’s a chance that monetary authorities would take gold coming off that hard as a sign that they need to be more aggressive. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. However, being long gold and silver is clearly the best play in my mind to preserve wealth.
For investors who are looking to appreciate wealth, the commodities markets offer tremendous upcoming opportunities. That is because there is one thing that I can be certain about: Volatility will remain high. We are not going back to a low-volatility environment. It’s treacherous for individual investors trying to do it themselves. We run a long-short commodity program that’s non-leveraged. But there is a lot of talent in the commodities space for individual investors looking to profit from this market environment.
GWilliams: Preserving your wealth is absolutely the right way to look at it at the moment. Trying to make a profit in markets when there is so much uncertainty is a very dangerous thing to do because things change midgame. So I think for the next several years, using gold, silver and the platinum-palladium group metals as a store of wealth fundamentally makes a lot of sense. I suspect you are going to see outsized gains as a byproduct of using that strategy because I think the prices will go materially higher despite low headline inflation numbers. Using gold and precious metals to hedge yourself as a safety trade is the smart thing to do. By doing that, you will not only protect your existing wealth but you can also generate increased wealth through price appreciation in excess of inflation.
TGR: When you say gold and precious metals, how would an individual investor protect wealth using gold? Are you talking about holding the bullion, buying gold exchange-traded funds (ETF) or buying equities?
GWilliams: It depends. I think protecting wealth using highly geared gold mining companies is a dangerous thing to do. Yes, if gold goes crazy, you are going to make some outsize returns, assuming the asset in the ground is good, assuming the management is good and assuming you don’t get any collapsed mines or any other geological anomalies that sometimes are part and parcel of owning gold mining stocks. Holding the bullion itself is absolutely the safest way to do it. You have an asset free and clear with no claims on it. It’s yours. But that’s not necessarily an easy thing to do from a logistical perspective. A lot of people look at the ETFs as a good vehicle, and they are a perfectly good gold proxy. You have a claim on some physical metal there. But for pure safety’s sake, owning the bullion itself or as close to pure bullion as you possibly can is the smartest way to go.
If you’re looking for any kind of leverage or any kind of gearing, then you need to start looking into the mining companies. But outside the major miners, it’s a very dangerous place to be unless you have someone very smart holding your hand, and you need to do an awful lot of work on researching the particular stocks you buy. While the returns can be extremely good, particularly at these low valuations, gold is a very, very tricky thing to dig for and mines are very tricky things to operate and to run. So you have to be aware of that.
Most important, try to steer clear of government bonds. In a world of increasing inflation, and a world where central banks have promised to try and generate MORE inflation, to lend money to irresponsible governments at 0.23% for two years in the case of the U.S is just crazy to me. Over the long term, you are absolutely guaranteed to lose money in real terms by doing that.
TGR: Thank you for your advice.
Greg Weldon started his Wall Street career working in the Comex Gold and Silver Pits after graduating Colgate University. He progressed as an institutional sales broker at Lehman and Prudential before joining Moore Capital as a proprietary trader. At Moore, Weldon honed his systematic trading methodology and risk management discipline before joining Commodity Corporation where he became one of its top risk-adjusted money managers. Today, he publishes Weldon’s Money Monitor, The Metal Monitor and The ETF Playbook in addition to operating his Managed Futures Account Program as a CTA. He has a unique ability to define and forecast the market’s direction through his proprietary dissection of fundamental and technical market data. Weldon Financial is now a highly regarded and profitable publishing company, having garnered some of the world’s most respected fund managers as loyal and daily readers.
Weldon published Gold Trading Boot Camp: How to Master the Basics and Become a Successful Commodities Investor, in late 2006 in which he predicted the current global credit crisis and discussed the impact on golf from intensified central bank debt monetization. You are invited to participate in a “one-time” free trial of Weldon’s research @ www.weldononline.com.
Grant Williams is a portfolio and strategy advisor to Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore—a hedge fund running $200 million of largely partners’ capital across multiple strategies. Williams has 26 years of experience in finance on the Asian, Australian, European and U.S. markets and has held senior positions at several international investment houses. Williams also writes the popular investment letter Things That Make You Go Hmmm….., which is available to subscribers.
By The Gold Report, on January 11th, 2012
  What do investors need to be watching out for in 2012? More Eurozone drama? Record gold highs? A hard landing in China? The U.S. Global Investors team addressed these questions with Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle author John Mauldin in a Jan. 5 Outlook 2012 webinar. The Streetwise Reports editors highlight some of the expert insights.
John Mauldin: Instead of doing an annual forecast, I’m going to look out about five years, which may be five times more foolish. What I want to do rather than try and figure out where the stock market is going to be at the end of 2012 or what gold is going to do, is look at the choices we have around the world.
In most cases, political events don’t change the economic world all that much. It’ll probably annoy partisans on both sides, but if Clinton had lost to George Bush senior the first time, we would have still had a bull market. We were already in recovery. Yes, we would have had different Supreme Court Justices, but that’s not the economic world. We were set on a path. If Gore had beaten Bush 2, economically I don’t think much would have changed. We still would have had the end of a bull market and a recession in 2001. We would have had a housing bubble. Greenspan would have probably been reappointed either way. We would have had a credit crisis because we were in the process of building up debt that started in the ’50s. Europe was building its debt up. Japan was building its debt up. That is the reality.
Now the private sector is deleveraging, but sovereign debt is in a bubble. The air is coming out. My view is that the wheels are going to fall off Europe this year. I have been researching the Mayan codes and I have determined that the ancient Mayans were not astrologers; they were economists. They weren’t predicting the end of the world; they were simply predicting the end of Europe. That is a humorous way of saying this is the year Europe is going to have to make some very difficult choices. Greece gets to choose what kind of depression it wants, hard and fast or slow and long. It can’t avoid depression completely. It has borrowed too much money. The government is too big. It has come to the end of the ability to raise money at low rates. Italy and Spain are well on that path along with the rest of Europe. So, they have to make a decision, a political decision that is going to have major economic consequences.
Does Europe want to be a political union that looks more like the United States, where the individual entities have to run balanced budgets and can’t print their own money and have some kind of fiscal controls or they go back to a two-tiered Europe with multiple currencies. One way or another, this is the year that Europe is running out of road to kick the can.
Fortunately, in the U.S. we are not there yet. We have some room to make a decision. That decision is going to be made in 2012 because by 2013 we are going to have to decide how we deal with the deficits and debt. After 2014, the bond markets will start to raise rates. Total U.S. debt is continuing to grow because governments are growing debt faster than private citizens are decreasing debt. The bond markets are starting to rebel long before you would think they would for a country that’s the world reserve currency. The key is whether debt is excessive relative to income. If you can make your debt service, people will still lend you money. When they don’t think you can, they will stop. That’s when you have a crisis. It’s a debt super cycle. And, when you reach the end, you have to deal with the debt. You can pay it down. You can default on it. You can print the money, extend it out with lower rates or financial repression, which are all other ways to look at default. But, nonetheless, that debt is there.
The problem we are facing in the U.S. is that gross domestic product (GDP) is consumption plus investment plus government spending plus net exports. If we decrease government spending over time, we decrease GDP. That’s the problem that Greece is going through right now. It has to decrease government spending by 4.5%, thus shrinking the economy. But it can’t increase government spending without increasing debt or taking taxes away, which decreases consumption. Nothing the government does will make things better. The U.S. is on the same path. We can become Greece by continuing to borrow or be proactive and say we are going to get our deficits under control over a period of five or six years. The economy is still going to be slower than we would like and unemployment higher than we would like. That’s just the rules. We’re at the end game. We are at the end of the debt super cycle and that’s what happens.
Printing money doesn’t increase the GDP in actual real terms, but it makes everyone holding gold happy because the value of natural resources goes up. That is why I buy gold every month. I take those coins, I put them in a vault and I hope I never need them. I quite frankly hope gold goes back to $300/ounce (oz) because that means the economy is in wonderful shape. I’m actually afraid that gold is going to go up in value, which means we are not getting our act together.
That leads to questions about fault. Did the banks do things they shouldn’t have? Yes. Were they the cause of it? No. Was Greenspan the cause of the bubble? No. He was part of the cause. I mean, we did a lot of things as a country that weren’t good choices. Should we have allowed our banks to go to 30 and 40 to 1 leverage? No. Should we have repealed Glass-Steagall? No. The problem is that real median household income hasn’t moved for 15 years because real private GDP hasn’t changed. The only thing that has grown is government spending.
John Derrick: In 2011, the European financial crisis moved from the periphery to the core. Central bank policies were big drivers of the decline. The European Central Bank and China raised rates early in the year and again in July as fears of a China slowdown grew. That early tightening to fend off inflation had a big impact on the course of events throughout the year. The other big events were the U.S. credit downgrade in August and currency intervention, particularly in the Japanese yen.
Frank Holmes: There is a huge amount of borrowing around the world in Japanese yen because it is so inexpensive. That includes investing in commodities, resources and emerging markets. And, every time we see this huge signal move by the yen, you get this rippling effect that takes about six weeks to resolve itself with commodities being sold down. Therefore, a lot of fund managers borrowing in Japanese yen are long energy stocks, resource stocks and emerging markets, which leads to a lot of selling.
JD: The second half of last year was very volatile, but the market ended essentially flat. In fact, much of the volatility was concentrated in the last month, which made for a very difficult psychological environment, as the market has been somewhat schizophrenic with weekly rallies and selloffs.
Spikes in the yen caused market selloffs. This hit commodities especially hard. So the secret for 2012 is to use the volatility. Buy on the volatility spikes. Unfortunately, what most people do is just the opposite. Another thing to look for in 2012 is a positive fourth year of the presidential election cycle as the government tries to implement policies that will get them reelected.
Brian Hicks: There has been a lot of concern about money supply growth in the emerging markets, particularly in China, which reduced bank reserve requirements last year. A reacceleration of global money supply can be particularly constructive for commodities going forward as there has been a high correlation between money supply growth and commodities.
If you were to take all the global money and back that by gold, the price of gold could go to $10,000/oz. If you just use half of the global money supply, gold would trade at about $5,000/oz, up from approximately $1,600/oz right now. The more U.S. dollars in circulation, the higher the price of gold. This has been the main factor increasing the price of gold since 1998 and will continue to be the case in the years to come. Gold has a lot of running room to go.
Another driver for the price of gold has been federal deficits. Government spending is way above revenues. We hit a point in 2000 where spending as a percentage of GDP greatly exceeded taxes as a percentage of GDP. This could be a point of no return and could potentially drive the price of gold even higher. There has been a large bifurcation between the price of gold and gold equities, particularly in the last couple of years as risk aversion has prompted many investors to buy the bullion as opposed to gold equities. This is creating opportunity. We feel like there’s going to be a catch up in gold equities, many of which are trading at very low multiples to cash flows and earnings. Stocks such as Newmont Mining Corp. (NEM:NYSE) look like value stocks now paying high dividend yields and trading at sub 10-times price to earnings ratios. This could really present an attractive opportunity in 2012.
JD: Just a comment on all the takeovers. We were seeing 6% premiums on takeovers in ‘06. Now we are talking 60+ premiums. That’s another reflection of how undervalued the stocks are relative to commodities.
BH: That’s a great point. We have seen tremendous value creation based on mergers and acquisitions.
Shifting gears a little bit, crude oil and refined product inventories ended the year at the lowest level on record (about 685 million barrels). That’s 6% below the prior year. It’s particularly interesting when you consider some of the geopolitical factors that have arisen with Iran talking about blocking off the Strait of Hormuz. This is a primary factor behind oil price supports despite the tenuous economic environment. Many investors don’t realize that Russia is very important for non-OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) supply, a key factor in containing oil price spikes. Russia is increasing production while other non-OPEC production in Mexico or in the North Sea have been declining significantly, which has helped to bolster OPEC’s market share. It has also limited the ability of oil markets to increase production out of the Middle East due to the inability to invest in those troubled areas. In fact, Russian production has been quite steady since 2006, increasing anywhere from 100 to 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), mid-single digit growth. But, forecasters predict in 2012 we will see flat production growth, which is troubling given the fact that we continue to see demand increase in other areas of the world, mainly out of China. This will be a driving factor going forward for crude oil prices.
Evan Smith: Oil supply threats include geopolitical problems at a time when oil supply and spare capacity at OPEC is rather low—a little over 2 million bpd. Nearly 40% of global supply is under autocratic rule. Iran has threatened to disrupt the supply of crude oil and products through the Strait of Hormuz where about a third of global oil supply passes. So, any disruption, even temporarily, would cause a severe spike in oil prices. We think oil prices could support $100/barrel. One of the things we like in 2012 is higher exposure to master limited partnerships partly because of their steady cash flows. They are becoming a growth business now. The capital expenditures here in the United States have grown from $3.5 billion (B) in 2005 to nearly $16B this year. This is partly because of the growth in many of the shale plays, which require increased infrastructure. We think this is an excellent investment opportunity. We also see a big opportunity for the global oil services. We can see that capital expenditures have been rising. We expect them to rise from about $500B to nearly $.5 trillion this year, an increase of 15%. So, we see tremendous opportunity for some of the oil services contractors and equipment providers. Another key driver is the impressive amount of money that has been invested in North America. Just over the last three years nearly $129B in mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures has occurred. Global companies are coming to North America to invest in these shale plays because the economics are so attractive due to improved technology. They want to learn that technology and take it home. So, we think there is continued opportunity for investors in the resource play here in North America.
Shifting gears, one of the base metals we will target is copper. It is our favorite base metal. The demand side is holding up relatively well compared to some of the other base metals. Even in China, which is the largest market for copper growth, the build out of the grid is really a key driver. That is holding up quite well. On the other side of the supply/demand equation, supply has been a problem. Through most of the boom in copper prices, mine output has lagged forecasts. Causes included weather, labor strikes and just poor grade. The bottom line is that supply has not kept up with demand. We have not solved that problem so we think 2012 should be a relatively good year for copper prices.
Another theme we like is the agricultural space. Global population continues to grow. The emerging middle class continues to consume more grains, principally through the production of more meat as people consume more protein in their diets. There has been a huge surge in the need for the production of grains, yet no more land is being created. One of the key ways we’re seeing increased yields out of croplands is through higher applications of fertilizers. That has created a fairly tight situation for potash, specifically. But, other fertilizers such as nitrogen and phosphate are also benefiting from this trend.
FH: I would just add that the world’s population has doubled from the ’70s when we had rising commodities. There’s a very different factor and China and India have a global footprint that they didn’t have.
Xian Liang: China remains the biggest driver of world demand for energy due to a rising middle class, but it is in a very early stage when it comes to discretionary spending. Take for example passenger cars. Despite a tremendous growth in auto consumption in the last decade, only 18% of Chinese households own a car. Car ownership in China is just one-tenth of U.S. levels or the same level it was in the U.S. in 1914. Air travel remains at the U.S. equivalent of the 1950s. This illustrates a great growth potential going forward. Urbanization is one of the most significant trends driving consumption. In 2011, the number of urban residents in China exceeded rural residents for the first time in Chinese history. But, China won’t stop at this 50% urbanization rate if the historical trajectory of its richer neighbor, South Korea, is any guide. We could have another 30% of growth by the year 2013. South Korea outgrew its urbanization rates in a 40-year time span. And, if China continues to urbanize, there will be about 200 million new urban households in China, which creates enormous demand for consumer staples, durable goods and housing.
China’s government policies signal the trend will continue. China raised reserve requirement ratios 12 times since January 2010. We view that as an early signal for the next easing cycle. The last time China eased reserve ratios in October 2008, that triggered a big market rally in Chinese stocks. This should bode well for stocks. We don’t think the Chinese auto boom is over. Actually, in the last couple of days, officials in China hinted that new measures may be introduced to support auto and home appliance sales.
Outside of China, we see government policies remaining very positive in southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia and Thailand. The money supply in the past two years has not deteriorated in these two countries, in fact, it is growing at a healthy 16% year over year. This is part of the reason why we remain positive on southeast Asia. Indonesia is rich in natural resources, but it doesn’t depend as much on exports. In fact two-thirds of its GDP is driven by domestic consumption, which is how it managed to escape a recession in 2008 and 2009. Favorable demographics is a factor. It is a very young country. More than 45% of the population is under 24 years old and 2 million people a year are joining the work force. Second, urbanization is creating new consumer demand. Just like China, Indonesia’s household debt is low. Total mortgage loans outstanding account for only 3% of GDP. Consumer credit is still at a very early state. I see tremendous growth potential going forward.
FH: The money supply is growing very rapidly in the entire region. I think it’s not just a China story. It’s a whole emerging market. And, I like to characterize it as the American dream trade as all these countries want the American dream. They all want a house. They want a car. They want all the lifestyle that we have.
John Derrick joined U.S. Global Investors Inc. in January 1999 as an investment analyst for the U.S. Global Investors money market and tax free funds. In March 2004, he was promoted from portfolio manager to director of research and now manages the day-to-day operations of the investment team. Prior to joining U.S. Global Investors, Derrick worked at Fidelity Investments. He has appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg TV and has also been a guest on Marketwatch Radio and NPR. Derrick has been featured in stories for BusinessWeek, The New York Times, the Associated Press and USA Today. A graduate of The University of Texas at Arlington, Derrick earned a Bachelor of Arts in finance. He sits on the board of directors for the CFA Society of San Antonio.
Brian Hicks joined U.S. Global Investors Inc. in 2004 as a co-manager of the company’s Global Resources Fund (PSPFX). He is responsible for portfolio allocation, stock selection and research coverage for the energy and basic materials sectors. Prior to joining U.S. Global Investors, Hicks was an associate oil and gas analyst for A.G. Edwards Inc. He also worked previously as an institutional equity/options trader and liaison to the foreign equity desk at Charles Schwab & Co., and at Invesco Funds Group, Inc. as an industry research and product development analyst. Hicks holds a Master of Science degree in finance, and a bachelor’s in business administration from the University of Colorado.
Frank Holmes is CEO and chief investment officer at U.S. Global Investors Inc., which manages a diversified family of mutual funds and hedge funds specializing in natural resources, emerging markets and infrastructure. In 2006 Mining Journal, a leading publication for the global resources industry, chose him as mining fund manager of the year. Holmes coauthored The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing (2008). A regular contributor to investor-education websites and speaker at investment conferences, he writes articles for investment-focused publications and appears on television as a business commentator.
Xian Liang is an Asia research analyst at U.S. Global Investors Inc. and a Shanghai native.
John Mauldin is the author of New York Times Best Sellers list four times. They include Bull’s Eye Investing: Targeting Real Returns in a Smoke and Mirrors Market, Just One Thing: Twelve of the World’s Best Investors Reveal the One Strategy You Can’t Overlook and Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How it Changes Everything. He also edits the free weekly e-letter Outside the Box. Mauldin also offers The Mauldin Circle, a free service that connects accredited investors to an exclusive network of money managers and alternative investment opportunities. He is a frequent contributor to publications including The Financial Times and The Daily Reckoning, as well as a regular guest on CNBC, Yahoo Tech Ticker and Bloomberg TV. Mauldin is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, an investment advisory firm registered with multiple states. He is also a registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, a FINRA-registered broker-dealer.
Evan Smith joined U.S. Global Investors Inc. in 2004 as co-portfolio manager of the Global Resources Fund (PSPFX). Previously, he was a trader with Koch Capital Markets in Houston where he executed quantitative long-short equities strategies. He was also an equities research analyst with Sanders Morris Harris in Houston where he followed energy companies in the oil and gas, coal mining and pipeline sectors. In addition, he was with the Valuation Services Group of Arthur Andersen LLP. Smith holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas in Austin.
By The Gold Report, on January 10th, 2012
  Despite a pullback in growth for China, copper demand is likely to remain strong in 2012, according to Dr. Michael Berry, publisher of Morning Notes, and his co-author, Chris Berry, founder of House Mountain Partners. Other developing nations, such as Indonesia, should pump up demand, but supply from such regions remains a tenuous prospect. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, the Berrys explain how “home-brewed” U.S. copper companies will be an important part of the equation.
The Gold Report: In a recent edition of Morning Notes, you referenced some “sprouting” problems in China. What are those problems and are they likely to affect China’s economy?
Michael Berry: We spent a couple of weeks in Shenzhen, China, and Hong Kong last month. On the surface, there do not appear to be any real problems in China. The infrastructure is fabulous—new roads, tunnels, bridges and stadiums. There are a lot of institutional investors in China with a tremendous thirst for knowledge. But old China hands—and I’ve been there many times since the 1960s—feel that there are serious problems beneath the surface, including inflation, slowing exports, bad loans and overbuilding.
During our visit to China, investment bankers we met with indicated that there are vacancies and see-through buildings in many cities. This is always a precursor of problems to come. China has an export-led economy and the U.S. and Europe, two of its main customers, have slowed down considerably. We may see a recession in Europe this year, which would bode ill for China, which counts the Eurozone as one of its largest trading partners.
An important question is how quickly can China transform itself into an economy with healthy domestic demand? That’s going to take years. There are also concerns about whether China can continue to grow at a breakneck speed of 9% or 10% per year. Most of the forecasts show China’s gross domestic product (GDP) will slow considerably over the next six years; however, it will still maintain growth levels above the Western economies. But problems are lurking in China, no doubt. The best we can hope for is a soft landing in 2012.
TGR: Paul Krugman recently wrote in The New York Times that China is on the verge of a massive real estate bubble. The World Bank recently lowered its GDP forecast for China to 8.4% from 9.1% in 2012.
MB: Growth will certainly slow, but China is better positioned to handle problems with overbuilding and bad debt than the U.S. China has been running huge surpluses for years and has accumulated significant foreign exchange reserves by pegging its currency to the U.S. dollar at artificially low levels. Japan recently inked a deal with China to buy its bonds. The Chinese currency and economy are slowly coming out of their self-induced isolation.
We remain cautious, however. China has a cushion here, but as we said before, there are some lurking issues and Paul Krugman touches on one in his piece.
TGR: How could a slowdown affect copper demand?
MB: Copper is probably the single metal that reflects good times in the world and growth. It is called the metal with a Ph.D. in economics because it’s so necessary for and indicative of economic growth. Expect supernormal growth of 5–7% in a number of emerging economies, which will keep demand for copper strong going forward.
The real question is from where will additional supply of copper come? There are the beginnings of a supply crunch in copper, which is affecting a number of mines worldwide. We are witnessing a combined supply-demand issue, not just a demand issue. Resource nationalism, falling grades and adverse weather are just a few issues affecting copper today. This is troubling but ultimately a good omen for junior mining companies involved in copper exploration.
Chris Berry: China is responsible for about 40% of global copper consumption, and copper is a 16-million-ton-per-year market. If GDP growth in China slows even from 9% to 8%, copper consumption has to fall in line unless other countries can pick up the slack in demand. What countries hold the potential to do this? Looking at demographics, potential demand and infrastructure build-out, several emerging markets come to mind including Brazil and India as well as “second tier” emerging markets such as Indonesia, Turkey or Colombia. If these countries do indeed grow at above-trend growth rates, you must then ask where additional supply is going to originate from—and supply appears tight going forward.
A notable example of a supply disruption is Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.’s (FCX:NYSE) Grasberg mine in Indonesia, where company management recently declared force majeure on copper exports. You can add labor strife to the list of issues potentially curtailing copper supply. Labor issues at mines promise to remain front and center as high metals prices make mining a more financially attractive pursuit. Grasberg is one of the largest copper mines in the world and the employees there have agreed to a 40% increase in pay over two years, however, I don’t believe the strike is fully settled yet, highlighting how thorny labor issues can be. Issues at the Grasberg mine have some very serious implications for copper supply going forward. So to summarize, between supply and demand, I think copper supply is the more important of the two to focus on.
TGR: The junior resource sector had a difficult time in 2011. The Toronto Stock Exchange Venture Composite Index, which is mostly composed of junior resource companies, was at about 2,400 in April, but had fallen to 1,450 by the end of December. Do you think we’ll see a sector rebound in 2012?
MB: There are strong headwinds for a lot of these companies and 2011 was unkind to the junior mining space in general. Very few junior mining companies have escaped the wrath of the pullback in commodities and overall panic at issues that have developed around the world. Investors must now focus on which companies can sustain themselves until we’re over the hump. We’re not there yet. The question will be which stocks can stand the test of time, can sustain their exploration and development activities and raise sufficient capital to fund operations in a difficult environment, to put it mildly.
TGR: Revett Minerals Inc. (RVM:TSX; RMV:NYSE.A) had some potential catalysts coming to the forefront this summer. What’s new there?
MB: Revett produced 3 million ounces (Moz) silver equivalent and earned about $16 million (M) in the third quarter. The company also recently announced a $20M revolving line of credit from Société Générale. It produces the best copper-silver concentrate in the country from its Troy mine in Montana. The mine has a perpetual seven-year life because it keeps finding more copper and silver resources as it mines. It’s building in production and the kind of liquidity and strength it will need to manage any economic downturn.
We visited the company in early September. The management team is very much together. It got a good ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the environmental impact of Rock Creek on grizzly bears and endangered fish. Rock Creek is a second ore body fully drilled out, and environmentalists have tried to block its development. It has 229 Moz silver and a couple billion pounds of copper in virtually identical geology to the currently operating Troy mine. There’s a good chance the company will be able to mine Rock Creek within the next couple of years.
Revett should prosper and could be the target of a takeout. It’s a very positive situation. The stock trades around $5/share, but it was $0.07/share a few years ago. That speaks well for the management and investors in Revett Minerals.
TGR: The line of credit is at London Interbank Offered Rates (LIBOR) plus 3.5%. Do you think that’s a bit high?
MB: Possibly, but certainly Revett can handle it. It’s producing and selling all the silver and copper concentrate it has, so a revolver is a good deal for it. These are catalysts that you want to see from time to time.
TGR: If Rock Creek moves ahead as planned, when would it reach production?
MB: I don’t think the environmentalist group will appeal to the Supreme Court. Even so, I don’t think the Supreme Court would hear it. It’s probably three to four years away from production.
The Troy mine will certainly sustain the company in the meantime. Management presentations indicate that Troy has perhaps 10 to 15 years of production left.
TGR: Is $5/share a good entry point for that stock?
MB: This stock is fairly volatile. If Rock Creek comes on, yes, I think $5/share will be an incredibly good bargain for investors. I’ve been watching Chief Executive John Shanahan now for several years and he’s completed everything he said he wanted to do.
TGR: In a recent edition of Morning Notes, you discuss some of the recent ups and downs of Quaterra Resources, Inc. (QTA:TSX.V; QMM:NYSE.A). You called the company’s Yerington copper project in Nevada “a company maker” even though Quaterra also has the high-grade Herbert Glacier gold project in Alaska.
MB: Tom Patton, the chief executive of Quaterra, bought Yerington out of bankruptcy for $250,000 in stock. Historically there are about 5 billion pounds (Blb) of copper at the Yerington Bear deposits. This past May, he announced he was exercising Quaterra’s option on it. There is going to be a large copper district there. There are three companies now in the area. Nevada Copper Corp. (NCU:TSX) has a very large, high-grade skarn deposit. Entrée Gold Inc. (ETG:TSX; EGI:NYSE.A) has some properties to the east of Yerington, which include the Bear deposit, a large, partially drilled out porphyry, and the MacArthur, an oxide-chalcocite run-of-mine project with 1.4 Blb of mine-ready, leachable copper. Quaterra drilled out the MacArthur oxide quite nicely and found a fair amount of higher-grade copper averaging about 0.5%. It could be leached directly and brought into production within two to three years for about $250M. The key to the entire district is the MacArthur property that Quaterra owns, in my opinion.
Quaterra has been cut in half in this pullback. We hope management will move to monetize some of its assets, either its Nieves silver property in Mexico, which may have 100 Moz silver in all categories, or even its 35% stake in Herbert Glacier, a high-grade, gold-silver resource north of Juneau, Alaska, which was recently discovered through drilling.
I may be a loner in this regard, but the MacArthur oxide-chalcocite deposit and the fact that it has a huge water resource are the keys to the entire Yerington district. I think the district holds 50–60 Blb copper. When I visited Yerington in September, Quaterra had five drill rigs turning. You don’t have five rigs turning on a property if you don’t think you’re really proving up and increasing the resource significantly.
TGR: Nevada Copper was shopping its project before its share price went down considerably. Which one—Quaterra, Entree or Nevada Copper—is most likely to be taken out first?
MB: Nevada Copper is the furthest along. A company like Antofagasta Plc (ANTO:LSE) might want to take it out. However, whatever company comes into the district is going to want to consolidate it. Having Nevada Copper would be a coup, but it would not help consolidate the district. From a strategic view point, Quaterra’s Yerington pit, MacArthur pit and Bear deposit are really the keys to the district.
There are already some big players in the district. Rio Tinto (RIO:NYSE; RIO:ASX ) owns 25% of Entrée Gold. Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (IVN:TSX; IVN:NYSE) owns 12%. But Entrée is three years behind Quaterra and Nevada Copper.
TGR: Arizona has some vast reserves of copper as well. Do you see a renaissance in developing copper juniors in Arizona?
MB: I do. On our way to China, Chris and I visited Tucson, where there are several great porphyry discoveries. ASARCO LLC, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP:NYSE; BHPLF:OTCPK) are there. One junior miner in particular, Redhawk Resources (RDK:TSX; QF7:FSE; RHWKF:OTCQX), has been drilling and it’s onto something.
Arizona, Nevada and Idaho are great states for mining. Given the unemployment in some of these regions, there is a new lease on life for junior mining companies to work in these states.
TGR: Redhawk is trading at about $0.42/share. Do you like that as an entry point?
MB: The stock is cheap, there’s no doubt about that. Its property, Copper Creek, is quite spectacular. When we visited in December, it had three rigs turning. There are close to 400 breccia outcrops of fairly small tonnage, but very high-grade copper, gold, silver and molybdenum. Red Hawk is looking for deep, but high-grade, thick veins that characterize big discoveries like Butte in Montana. I like the management team. It raised $20M earlier this year and it’s probably going to have to go back to the market again or do a joint venture. There’s lots of interest and it has confidentiality agreements signed with the big boys. There are smelters literally all around it. It’s got great infrastructure. There’s a good chance for a world-class discovery there.
TGR: What about Quadra FNX Mining Ltd. (QUX:TSX)?
MB: Quadra is a great case study. It has done a great job. You want to see that event that monetizes the shareholders. The Polish firm KGHM Polska Miedz S.A. (KGH:WSE) offered $15/share for the company. There is a lot of interest in U.S. deposits now. There’s a new life on mining and exploration, and there’ll be more takeouts in the future.
TGR: Do you have anything to add to that, Chris?
CB: There has been a lot of talk lately about what makes a metal critical. Certainly, copper is a critical metal based on its ubiquitous use throughout all facets of the global economy. Mineral deposits where resource nationalism isn’t a top concern, or a concern at all, like Arizona, Idaho or Nevada, deserve a second look and a premium in share price based on their location. I think we are sure to see more cross-border mergers or take outs like the KGHM/Quadra example as copper’s importance to economic growth is only magnified by an emerging middle class of billions in the years to come.
TGR: You gentlemen are about to launch a new product, the Discovery Investment Scoreboard. Tell us about that.
MB: About 10 years ago, I defined a technique called Discovery Investing because I was interested in discovery. All great wealth creation starts with discovery. I defined 10 rules or factors and continued to refine them over the last decade. Dr. Terry Rickard, a brilliant mathematician and former senior fellow at Lockheed, finally convinced me to put my discovery investing discipline in a software format. We use a powerful mathematical technique that he developed. It allows users to rate stocks in English vocabularies and develop an ordinal ranking. The number of companies that the system ranks, the database, is getting quite large. The most interesting aspect of the database is its ability to build a crowd score. It takes each individual user’s analysis and builds it into a single score, which allows investors to check their analysis against the crowd.
CB: The toughest part about the nano cap space is in trying to evaluate these companies, because traditional metrics don’t work. There are no earnings or cash flows so there is a great deal of guesswork involved. The Discovery Investment Scoreboard (DiS) is designed to take the guesswork out of evaluating these companies. We can rank any one of the companies we mentioned today—it doesn’t even have to be a nano cap.
We might look at the management of a company and you might say it’s average. I might say it’s excellent. At the end of the day, who’s right? Nobody really knows. There are still a lot of open questions. We’re aiming to quantify those opinions. The real bonus for the end users is the crowd score. Investors can see how their opinions rank relative to the crowd. Since I’ve been using the system, it has raised many questions about what I’m seeing that the crowd is not or vice versa. We think it has potential to shine a lot of sunlight on accurate valuations for junior companies.
TGR: Have either of you adopted a New Year’s investment resolution?
MB: In 2012, we hope to make DiS available to everyone who wants to analyze these companies. It’s going to be by subscription but we’re actually looking now for people who want to help us build the database. We’re planning to kickoff the system on Jan. 22 at the Cambridge House International Resource Conference in Vancouver. We haven’t priced it yet, but it will be affordable for the individual user. We’re going to have versions for institutional users that will be more detailed and quite a bit more powerful.
TGR: Jeepers. You might just put some analysts out of business.
MB: Chris and I actually sat with two analysts and two investor relations representatives in China and they loved it. We travel to Denver next week to conduct a focus group on the usage of the DiS.
CB: Once we explained the rationale and the background to them, it became a little bit addictive, because companies start popping up in your head and you think, “Gee, I wonder what the crowd thinks about this company or that company?” The whole idea of finding out what I’m missing or what I know that the crowd doesn’t is key. I think that’s what has a lot of people excited right now.
TGR: Thanks to both of you.
Dr. Michael Berry served as a professor of investments at the Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia from 1982-1990, during which time he published a book, Managing Investments: A Case Approach. He has managed small- and mid-cap value portfolios for Heartland Advisors and Kemper Scudder. His publication, Morning Notes, analyzes emerging geopolitical, technological and economic trends. He travels the world with his son, Chris, looking for discovery opportunities for his readers.
Chris Berry, with a lifelong interest in geopolitics and the financial issues that emerge from these relationships, founded House Mountain Partners in 2010. The firm focuses on the evolving geopolitical relationship between emerging and developed economies, the commodity space and junior mining and resource stocks positioned to benefit from this phenomenon. Widely quoted in the press and a frequent speaker at conferences throughout the world, Berry holds a Master of Business Administration in finance with an international focus from Fordham University and a Bachelor of Arts in international studies from The Virginia Military Institute.
By The Gold Report, on January 2nd, 2012
 China has become the $5.88 trillion question in the world financial equation for 2012. In an attempt to gauge the direction of this economic elephant, Cambridge House International is asking two China experts to debate the health of the second-largest economy at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference January 22. We called the two speakers for a preview of the tactics they will take in this epic debate.
Frank Holmes, chief executive and chief investment officer at U.S. Global Investors, will focus on the upside of massive Chinese modernization and growth. He is the recipient of both Mining Fund Manager of the Year Award from Mining Journal and International Citizen of the Year Award from the World Affairs Council of America and has a long-term investor’s view of international geopolitics.
Author and Commentator Gordon Chang literally wrote the book on why investors should be wary of China’s growth. His book The Coming Collapse of China has attracted attention from the likes of the LA Times and Asia Times and many other publications in between. He has made appearances on Fox News and regularly contributes to Business Insider, Barron’s, National Review and Forbes magazines. When he lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai as counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss, he saw the ghost cities and environmental challenges up close.
“The debate is a direct response to attendees who need to know if China is on a course to grow, slow or blow,” said Nicole Evans, president of the Cambridge House International Conference Division. The Gold Report called these two experts to find out the numbers behind why they have such different predictions about how this enigmatic country will fare in the coming years.
Frank Holmes: This veteran investment advisor based his positive prognosis for China and its Eastern neighbors on a combination of tacit knowledge learned firsthand through travel and observation of geopolitical conditions along with explicit knowledge of history and the markets.
He studies S-curve patterns, modeled on economist Simon Kuznets’ 20-year long cycles. For example, the world’s population has grown from 1 billion in the 1800s to 7 billion today, which has drastically affected commodity consumption and infrastructure buildout. “Nowhere is this more evident than in the emerging markets, such as China,” Holmes said.
“When governments have invested in infrastructure, there has been a powerful impact on gross domestic product (GDP) numbers.” For example, he pointed to the 1950s, when Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act, allowing commerce to expand across the nation, with restaurants including Dairy Queen and McDonald’s experiencing tremendous growth over the next several decades. “Paved roads from coast to coast helped sustain a more than tenfold increase in U.S. GDP,” Holmes said.
“Whereas the U.S. connected 160 million people with nearly 47,000 miles of freeways, by 2020 China will connect 700 million people across 250 cities, spanning more than 47,000 miles of interstate and 18,000 miles of rail,” Holmes explained.
Holmes estimated that over the next 25 years, about $41 trillion will be spent on global infrastructure—$6 trillion has been approved for the 2011 through 2013 timeframe with China projected to spend half of that $6 trillion. He believes these investments will result in rising GDP per capita and trigger a consumption economy.
“Once China connects its super cities, it will enable more Chinese to travel around the country, resulting in a completely different consumption pattern. You will see train stations with 50-story condominiums along with U.S. restaurants that have already been expanding in China, including McDonald’s, Dairy Queen and Starbucks. Major hotel chains, such as Wyndham, Starwood and Hilton, along with luxury goods businesses including Cartier, Hermes and Gucci will compete for market share. Infrastructure will change the face of the economy in China just the way it did in the U.S.,” said Holmes.
“We are big believers that government policies are precursors to change, so our investment team continuously tracks the fiscal and monetary policies of the world’s largest countries in terms of economic stature and population. The G-7 (industrialized) countries are 15% of the world’s population but 50% of the world’s GDP and growing only about 1%. Western countries seem to be focused on cutting back infrastructure spending and raising taxes to pay for entitlements. At the same time, E-7 (emerging) countries comprise 50% of the world’s population with 20% of the world’s GDP. However, these countries are growing at 7% to 8% and include a rising middle class of some 60 million people out of a total 2.2 billion people. But, 60 million people making $30,000 a year is very significant. Think about the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”—this is what is happening throughout Asia. That is why companies such as Gap and GM and KFC are focusing on expanding in China where its residents love American products and pack the stores in Beijing.”
Holmes also saw important policy changes in the works that could improve China’s economic outlook. “Over the past 10 years, we have seen a slow migration of more property rights being given to people in China. The largest transfer of real estate in the history of mankind took place in China seven years ago when more than $500 billion of real estate value was basically transferred to farmers. That was followed by condo building. Additionally, to attract public companies, Shanghai adopted the Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing and bankruptcy systems, which are based on common law. This is significant because if you look at all the countries that have had financial problems over time, no common law system has ever gone bankrupt. Civil law has. China is slowly adopting a rule of law system.”
Not all of the changes have been smooth. “One of the biggest things that China has been wrestling with is the fear of inflation,” Holmes said. “The government raised the minimum wage and that resulted in a big spike in food inflation. Then it had to deal with real estate inflation in Shanghai and the cities along the ocean. It required banks to keep more reserves, up to 20% in some cases, to avoid the problems now occurring in European banks. A tax on speculative real estate slowed the economy and it showed up in the psychology of the stock market.
“The spike is slowly reversing and rates are falling. Because there is so much less borrowing generally in China than in the rest of the world, prices rebound much faster,” Holmes said. “Only 25% of homes have mortgages so the impact of bankruptcies is much smaller. Also, I don’t think they’re going to print money the way they did in 2008. The Chinese government will move slowly to make sure the country doesn’t get hurt by Europe’s slowdown.”
Based on money supply, debt levels and the weakness of the dollar, Holmes predicted economic activity in the emerging countries should double over the next five years. “It is going to be between 8% and 9% this year and it has another 10 years of growth ahead of it,” Holmes said. “Investors need to understand volatility and not be fearful of it. If you are trading futures where your leverage is 10 to 1 and you have a big correction, you can get wiped out. But, if you are a cash business, you understand when these markets go through these corrections. Solid companies paying dividends can be an attractive investment over the long term.”
Gordon Chang: This China-watcher recently wrote an article for Forbes that said what others considered positive November trade numbers—exports up 13.8%, imports up 22.1% year-over-year—was actually an indication of flat consumer demand once the commodities were factored out. His conclusion was that the government was taking advantage of low prices to stockpile things like soybeans, copper and iron ore while domestic demand remained stagnant. “Since September, we have seen essentially flatlining growth,” he said.
“The growth over the last three decades has been absolutely stunning, but that was then, and this is now,” Chang cautioned. “After 35 years of virtually uninterrupted growth, the Chinese economy hit an inflection point, probably in September of this year. I think we are going to see a long-term cycle down. There are a number of reasons for it, some of them short term, some of them long term. The reasons that created this growth either no longer exist or are disappearing fast. Deng Xiaoping’s policy of reform paired with the end of the Cold War and expansion of globalization triggered growth in the 1980s. However, under current leader Hu Jintao, China has seen the reversal of reform, with the government partially renationalizing the economy. Today, we are in the second part of a global downturn, which will be much worse than what started in 2008. A trade-dependent economy like China’s is going to have real problems. Additionally, China was aided by the demographic dividend, an extraordinary bulge in the Chinese workforce, which by most estimates will level off between 2013 and 2016, leaving a demographic tax where one worker supports two parents and four grandparents.”
Chang pointed to stagnant electricity consumption, flat car sales, plunging industrial orders and collapsing property prices. “For example, in October, we saw property prices collapse 30% in places like Shanghai and Beijing, and actually across the country. That has to eventually trigger a negative wealth effect.
“Domestic growth is vital for a sustainable economy,” Chang said. “Last year, domestic consumption comprised less than 34% of Chinese GDP and it has been dropping in recent years. That means China is not restructuring its economy because the problems go to the core of the political model. The government would have to let the Renminbi float, allow banks to offer market rates of interest to depositors and state enterprises, allow workers to bargain collectively to get higher wages and provide a better social safety net, especially in the health care area. These are things that Beijing didn’t do a half-decade ago when it was growing at 9.9% and they’re certainly not going to do so now in a very difficult environment.”
On the manufacturing side, Chang referred to the December HSBC/Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI). “It showed an absolute, outright falloff in industrial orders domestically. I think that is a really important indication of the problems,” Chang explained. Technically, the Chinese economy went from expansion in October to contraction in November when it crossed the critical 50 line. Any number above 50 shows expansion; any number below 50 shows contraction.
The fact that China is reporting negative numbers is telling in itself, according to Chang, who said often government-issued statistics conflict with reports from other sources. Beijing reported 13.8% export growth in November. However, during that same period factories went bankrupt, factory owners fled because they couldn’t pay their debts and some of them took their own lives. Even more damning are container and freight statistics, including reports from mega-container shipper Cathay Pacific that showed November cargo shipments down 13.8%. “Exports to Europe have fallen off the cliff and the EU was China’s largest trading partner so something doesn’t add up,” he said.
For the final blow, Chang pointed to the actions of the Chinese government. “If China really does have robust, 8–9% growth as everybody says, why is the central government starting to stimulate the economy again? That just doesn’t make any sense. If we look at things like imports and exports, I think the economy is really in trouble.”
Chang warned of political consequences if the country is not growing at least close to a double-digit rate. “I don’t know if China can stand 3% growth—or the other very real possibility, contraction. The American government bases its legitimacy on the nature of its political system. The legitimacy of the Communist Party is primarily based on the continual delivery of prosperity. Already, the number of protests in China has increased dramatically from maybe 70,000 mass incidents a year in 2005, to as many as 280,000 last year. In addition to strikes, riots, insurrections and bombings, the standoff between villagers and the authorities in Guangdong province are threatening the future of the Communist Party.”
One solution is for the Chinese government to continue to spend millions on infrastructure to create growth as it did when it spent $1.1 trillion after the 2008 downturn. “This tactic is of limited usefulness the second time around,” Chang warned. “It may be able to play out the game for 18 months, maybe two years at the outside, but it’s pretty much done. Plus, the artificial stimulus also created a stock market bubble, inflation, ghost cities, banking weakness and property bubbles. Massive spending didn’t avoid problems, it just postponed them and made them bigger and more difficult to solve.”
Chang said that people in China are starting to see the reality of the problem. “There is a sense of pessimism. Starting in October, we saw large, unexplained transfers of money out of the country.”
The bright spot, according to Chang, is that while China will not be able to fuel a global recovery with a consumer-driven middle class, a Chinese meltdown won’t be a major blow to the U.S. either. “We have the world’s largest internal market; 70% of our GDP relates to consumption. Exports don’t really play that much of a role in the U.S. as it does in other major economies. So China can fall off the cliff in a sense, and it would have some negative effect but not very much. In fact, we might benefit from it.”
Chang’s conclusion? “People say the Chinese economy is the global engine of growth, but that’s not true. The engine has been the American consumer because we are taking every other country’s exports, and the Chinese, through predatory and mercantilist policies, have been grabbing growth from other countries. For the last 200 years, China has been a potential source of customers for other countries. Still, domestic demand isn’t that significant. China’s imports lately have been commodities and that is going to fall off because China’s exports of manufactured goods, to Europe and the U.S., are going to be stagnant or lower than they have been in the past. So China really reacts to the rest of the world. If the changes over the next couple of months are as dramatic as they’ve been for the past two, then we’re going to be looking at a very different China. The Chinese economy could fall into a big black hole with 1–2% growth or even contraction. Can the government turn it around as it has in the past? That’s the money question.”
Frank Holmes is CEO and chief investment officer at U.S. Global Investors Inc., which manages a diversified family of mutual funds and hedge funds specializing in natural resources, emerging markets and infrastructure. In 2006 Mining Journal, a leading publication for the global resources industry, chose Holmes as mining fund manager of the year. Holmes co-authored The Goldwatcher: Demystifying Gold Investing (2008). A regular contributor to investor-education websites and speaker at investment conferences, he writes articles for investment-focused publications and appears on television as a business commentator.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World. His first book is The Coming Collapse of China. He is a columnist at Forbes.com and The Daily and blogs at World Affairs Journal. He lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai, as counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss and earlier in Hong Kong as partner in the international law firm Baker & McKenzie. His writings on China and North Korea have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the International Herald Tribune, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Barron’s. He has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department and the Pentagon. Chang has appeared before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, and Bloomberg Television. He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
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By The Energy Report, on December 28th, 2011
 According to Jim Letourneau, author of the Big Picture Speculator, oil and gas aren’t going away any time soon. Indeed, new technologies offer the industry and investors profitable opportunities. Read more about why Letourneau considers shale gas, shale oil and enhanced oil recovery “game changers” in this exclusive Energy Report interview.
The Energy Report: Jim, in a nutshell what is the big picture in the oil and gas space right now?
Jim Letourneau: Despite a big renewable trend, oil and gas are still critical to world energy markets. We will need both for the foreseeable future, at least the next decade.
TER: You recently wrote about fear paralyzing the market. What effect is fear having on you as a newsletter writer?
JL: When people are scared, they want dividends, U.S. dollars and precious metals. No matter how interesting or exciting the company is, in a really strong bear market it will not matter unless the assets are productive today. People will look at a mine that is in production and has cash flow. A project that involves lots of drilling to build out a deposit is a tougher sell.
Most newsletter writers, myself included, do not like talking about companies whose stocks do not appreciate. Fewer people want to be invested in the stock market because they don’t see why they should be. However, even that can be an opportunity. When people are fearful, sometimes the market can turn and have a really nice run. If we do not have new lows over the next couple of months and the trend changes, we would hypothetically be able to enjoy that for quite some time.
TER: Some oil and gas companies are boosting dividends in an effort to get attention in the market. Do you expect that to continue?
JL: That is a way of showing off, of saying “Look, we are so comfortable with our business model that we can afford to pay out dividends.” If there is a bull market in dividend-paying stocks, there also could be a time when that popularity will end. It could be just a passing phase.
TER: But it does provide a bit of flexibility: A company can increase or decrease its dividend. It is one of the cards a company can play if it has a lot of free cash flow.
JL: Exactly. Some of the major gold producers are increasing their dividends. Everything else being equal, I would rather have a dividend from a gold producer than from a financial institution. Banks will tell you everything is great until the day before they collapse. If people are looking for dividend-paying stocks, at least gold mines or oil and gas companies have productive assets; they produce something of value. That’s where I would concentrate.
TER: That seems to be where the Chinese are concentrating. Sinopec just bought Daylight Energy Ltd. (DAY:TSX) for a little more than $10 a share, more than double the closing price the day before the bid. Do you think China will continue to turn its dollars into hard assets while dollars still have value?
JL: The short answer to your question is yes. China is making acquisitions all over the world every day of anything that is productive.
It tells you something about the state of the market that Canadian investors thought Daylight was worth less than $5/share and China waltzed in and paid $10 without any haggling at all. This was an opportunistic move by Sinopec.
Chinese companies have taken the clever strategy of going for lesser-tier companies. If they go for a bigger one, they will take a minority interest so it is not seen as a takeover.
TER: What did Daylight have that the Chinese wanted?
JL: Daylight has oil, natural gas and high-content natural gas liquids in a few different plays in western Canada. The Chinese are buying companies with the potential for productive assets.
I think China also has a very long-term horizon concerning its energy policies. The country is willing to invest in the long term over a broad portfolio of energy sources. The Chinese know that all the investments may not all work out, but they can afford to do it.
We are still building out the capacity to export natural gas from North America. If that happens, our low-price North American natural gas will be very attractive to China.
TER: At a recent investment conference in Montreal, you told the audience about three “game changers” in the oil and gas space: shale oil, shale gas and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Can you please give our readers the nuts and bolts of your presentation?
JL: All three of those things involve new technologies that are squeezing more oil out of the ground than we ever thought possible.
In terms of shale oil, the best example is the Bakken in North Dakota and Saskatchewan, and possibly Montana and Southern Alberta. The Bakken really changed the oil and gas landscape in North America to the point of using trains to transport gas from North Dakota to Texas. And there are a lot of other source rocks that have the same characteristics and will be developed over time.
Shale gas was actually the first big game changer. Five years ago we were building natural gas import terminals because we thought we would run out of domestic natural gas. Today, North America has the cheapest natural gas in the world and we are building export terminals. It started in Texas, in the Barnett Shale. For every argument that says shale gas will not work, there are arguments that say it will. A lot of the technical problems that exist today will be solved in the not-too-distant future. That is one of the reasons I am not a huge believer in peak oil; yes, you can extrapolate present-day trends, but you cannot predict what human innovation will come up with to increase supply.
That leads to the third category, which is enhanced oil recovery. Big picture, roughly a third of the oil that has been discovered has been produced. Getting the next third out will take some innovation. There are a lot of interesting technologies in EOR that make it quite likely that the next third will be produced. Recovery factors can move up from 33% to 50% or 60%.
TER: I see your point on shale oil and EOR. But gas prices on the NYMEX are at record lows. Very few companies can make money at that level. The only shale-gas companies seeing an uptick in their share price deal with natural gas storage, and they are running out of places to put it. How can an investor make money in shale gas?
JL: There are two sides to the story. First, abundant, cheap shale gas is good for consumers of natural gas. Second, all commodity bull markets end.
Natural gas is not the best place to invest, but, it does point to the opportunities. The service companies that unlock the shale gas are doing fairly well. I suggest that people look not so much at the producing side but more on natural gas being used as transportation fuel. Some petrochemical industries and the steel industry will benefit from cheap natural gas. So, you have to be a little bit nimble.
TER: Could you give our readers a name or two in the shale-oil space?
JL: I really like Shoal Point Energy Ltd. (SHP:CNSX) because not too many people pay attention to the company. It discovered Green Point, an oil-in-shale play in Port au Port Bay in western Newfoundland. The Green Point shale can be over 2,000m thick, compared to the Bakken, which is typically 30m thick. The extra thickness really changes the amount of oil per section. Shoal Point has an oil-in-place number of at least 100 billion barrels, calculated from volumetrics. Production will be the challenge, but that is just too big a resource to ignore.
TER: The company also has the Ptarmigan oil-in-shale play in Newfoundland and the South Stoney Creek gas play in New Brunswick. How is Green Point progressing?
JL: There was a delay for further testing and Shoal Point had to wait for permits. Investors got a little discouraged because everybody wants results right away, and the share price languished.
Now, the company has the permits and will deepen the well and test it soon.
TER: In other Newfoundland oil projects, the provincial government has wanted a piece of the action. Does the government have a piece of this?
JL: I’m not sure. But, I cannot imagine Newfoundland not having a royalty interest because that is typically how we do things.
TER: Are there other shale oil plays?
JL: There are a lot in the Alberta Bakken, in Montana and southern Alberta, where that play has yet to really ignite and catch on fire. Companies are also looking in the Duvernay in Alberta. That is a deeper, Devonian shale that sourced a lot of the Leduc oil.
TER: Do you have any names in the shale gas space?
JL: Given that the price of that commodity keeps dropping, one way to play shale gas is through service companies. GasFrac Energy Services Inc. (GFS:TSX) has gotten a lot of attention for using gelled propane as the carrier fluid instead of water.
There has been a lot of concern about the use of water in fracking. Very few people realize that most oil and gas production in North America involves about 10% oil and 90% water.
People like GasFrac because it does not use water. But more importantly, in certain types of formations having a liquid hydrocarbon that changes to the gas phase when the pressure drops helps avoid the formation damage and other problems that can happen when you use a massive water-based frack.
TER: In terms of enhanced oil recovery, what names are you following?
JL: There are very few specific companies; usually it is an oil company with a project. One that I have been following for a long time, and worked for, is Wavefront Technology Solutions Inc. (WEE:TSX.V).
All versions of EOR involve injecting a fluid. It could be water, CO2, chemicals or nutrients. The more uniform and evenly distributed those fluids are, the better the process will work. Wavefront has patented an injection process that provides that uniform fluid distribution.
The company is not quite profitable yet, but the growth will come quickly from its Powerwave application for EOR.
TER: Wavefront now has a market cap of around $68 million (M). It would not take long for a major producer to get older assets to market if this technology works as well as you suggest.
JL: The biggest upside for oil companies using the technology is that they can increase their reserves without infill drilling. The oil industry does not just jump and try new technology; it likes to see some proof. Wavefront now has proof. The longest Powerwave installation is over four years old. It has numerous case studies that document how the technology works and how it makes money for the client. It has made the transition from an unproven technology to a proven technology. It is now a commercial technology with a lot of upside.
Wavefront is essentially a technology company that licenses its technology to oil companies. Wavefront will not have a lot of additional expense to sell 100 tools or 150 or 200. The scalability is exciting.
TER: If a major can apply that technology in its old basins, it would not take long to reach perhaps, $70M worth of oil.
JL: Definitely. Of course it depends on the size of its fields, but increasing ultimate production by 5-10% provides some big numbers. More and more people are seeing exactly that. Wavefront could become a takeover target. The company has roughly $24M in cash. It has a lot of staying power.
TER: Jim, what should investors be keen on in the oil and gas space in 2012?
JL: I would still look to oil and gas service companies with the right technology. Shale gas fracking companies are interesting plays to look at.
I would not be too excited about natural gas producers. Those producers who are moving toward liquid rich natural gas are a little more interesting.
Overall in the oil space, the only thing that would move oil prices any higher would be severe geopolitical tension. And I wouldn’t be shocked to see some unpleasant geopolitical tension in 2012. Economic news is creating tension all over the world. When that happens it’s usually pretty bullish for energy prices.
TER: Jim, thank you for your time and insights.
Jim Letourneau is a public speaker, geologist, corporate evangelist, and investor in emerging technologies and discoveries.
By Bron Suchecki, on December 28th, 2011
Mineweb (ex-Reuters) is reporting that “Gold exchanges in China outside of two in Shanghai are to be banned, authorities said in a statement released on Tuesday.”
Looks like the much hyped Pan Asia Gold Exchange is dead. Not sure where this leaves those who claimed that it “will ultimately destroy the remaining short positions in both gold and silver”.
I will come back to this story but for the moment I want to see how the pumpers and hype merchants spin it, or unspin what they said before.
I also find it interesting that this story breaks at the same time as China Daily reports that “China should further diversify its foreign-exchange portfolio and make more gold purchases when the metal’s price dips but is still at a relatively high level, a senior central bank official said on Monday.”
What is China’s game re gold? How can we weave these two stories into a coherent explanation?
By Ajay Shah, on December 27th, 2011
Patrick Chovanec has a fascinating article in Foreign Affairs, titled China’s Real Estate Bubble May Have Just Popped. This is interesting and important from two points of view.
First, bad news for China is bad news for the world economy. We are already in a bleak environment, with difficulties in Europe, Japan, the US, and India. It will not be pretty if China runs into trouble as well. I am reminded of the feeling of carefully watching real
estate in the United States in 2006, with a sense that the future of the world economy was going to turn on how it turned out.
Second, it made me think about real estate in India. As with China, one often sees buyers of real estate in India have the notion that
this is a safe financial asset. This is a questionable proposition. Real estate is perhaps not an asset
class with a positive expected return in the first place; and it is certainly not a convenient asset class with features like liquidity,
transparency, diversification and easy formation of low-volatility diversified portfolios. I find it hard to explain the prominence of
real estate in the portfolios of even educated people in India.
In the article, Chovanec says:
For more than a decade, they have bet on longer-term demand trends by buying up multiple units — often dozens at a time — which they then leave empty with the belief that prices will rise. Estimates of such idle holdings range anywhere from 10 million to 65 million homes; no one really knows the exact number, but the visual impression created by vast `ghost’ districts, filled with row upon row of uninhabited villas and apartment complexes, leaves one with a sense of investments with, literally, nothing inside.
This has not happened in India. So in this sense, the situation in India is not as dire. But his second key message seems uncomfortably
close:
As 2011 progressed, developers scrambled for new lines of financing to keep their overstocked inventories. They first relied on bank loans (until they were cut off), then high-yield bonds in Hong Kong (until the market soured), then private investment vehicles (sponsored by banks as an end run around lending constraints), and finally, in some
cases, loan sharks. By the end of last summer, many Chinese developers had run out of options and were forced to begin liquidating inventory. Hence, the price slashing: 30, 40, and even 50 percent discounts.
Part of this looks familiar. There is a lot of leverage in Indian real estate development and speculation. Real estate speculators and
developers are finding themselves in a bit of a scramble hunting for credit. One hears about very high interest rates being paid by
developers. Other sources of financing are also weak. This reminds me of the dark days before the global crisis, when borrowing by real estate companies was the canary in the coal mine.
If business cycle conditions and financial conditions worsen, the problems of borrowing by real estate developers and speculators will get worse. How might this turn out? Perhaps the borrowers will merely get uncomfortable. Or, a few firms could really get into trouble, and start liquidating inventory. That would have substantial repercussions.
Suppose there is a situation where there are many people who have speculative positions in real estate, but significant selling of
inventory has not yet begun. The longs would then be nervously looking at each other, wondering who would be the first one to sell, to take a better price and exit his position. The ones who sell late would get an inferior price. In such a situation, conditions could change sharply in a short time.
On a longer horizon, I would, of course, be delighted if real estate prices are lower. This would help shift the supply function of
labour, reduce the cost of setting up new businesses, etc. But that’s more about the long-term policy changes, which would remove barriers for converting land into built-up housing, while rising vertically into the sky with FSI in Indian cities ranging from 5 to 25.
By The Gold Report, on December 15th, 2011
 David Morgan, publisher of Silver Investor, likes the balanced risk and growth that midtier companies provide, but even he can’t resist the pull of having a speculative pick pay off. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Morgan talks about the tenets he lives by when investing in mining companies, be they small-cap or midtier or billion dollar companies.
The Gold Report: David, in August you predicted that the silver price could go as high as $75 an ounce (oz). It was recently at about $32/oz. Where is it along the path to $75/oz?
David Morgan: I don’t see the silver price going above the $50/oz level in 2011. In other words, the top is in for this year, and has been for some time. I do see silver’s price going above $50/oz in 2012. I forecast $65–75/oz silver by the end of 2012. I don’t foresee a big rush into price appreciation for gold or silver in the first quarter of 2012 (Q112), which is seasonal. Typically, there is a very strong boost to the price of metals in the first quarter of every year. However, this year I’m suspect because of what’s going on in the Eurozone and all the paper pushing between the central banks of the world. I’m reserved about what’s going to happen over the next three months.
TGR: What did you think of the recent move by central banks in the U.K. and Canada getting together to boost liquidity in the markets? It seemed to push up the gold price a bit.
DM: It was what I call “old school.” I’m showing my age, but we used to avidly watch the U.S. money supply. When there was a significant increase in the money supply, the gold price would reflect that because it is more dollars chasing a fixed amount of goods. It’s a clear indicator that papering over the problem is not a solution and gold is shouting that loudly. The increase in M1, M2 or M3 (not provided by the Fed anymore) is looked at, but not with the intensity it was in the 1970s.
TGR: In the November issue of Silver Investor, you report that China could become a significant holder of European debt. While any such move would devalue China’s significant holdings of U.S. Treasuries, it would provide leverage for China’s efforts to form a new global currency backed in part by gold. Could you expand upon that idea?
DM: China as a nation has become the creditor of last resort because it has money to recycle. The more debt that it owns, the more control it has over the debt. China would have a lot of leverage in any default negotiations. There was a conference about a gold-backed yuan about a decade ago. The idea about a gold-backed currency is probably going to take place at some point in the future. China has bought more gold all along than they publicly admit, but the amount is far too small at this point to do any real gold backing to their currency. The country continues to buy gold slowly and quietly. It’s hard to say when China would have enough to make a viable gold-backed currency out of the yuan. That’s where the negotiations would come into play.
TGR: Do you think it would take decades?
DM: It would take decades to accumulate enough to make a gold-backed yuan in the fashion China is acquiring gold now. However, if China dumped a significant amount of its money (U.S. debt) into gold at once it would drive up the price thousands of dollars an ounce overnight. Gold would go ballistic. On the other hand, China has the leverage of the debt. In other words, it says, “U.S., you owe us this much money, so what we’ll do is we’ll discount the debt. You send us this much gold and we’ll cancel out part of the U.S. debt we hold.” That is a lot of power. Remember, “The borrower is servant to the lender.”
TGR: You recently reprinted Ron Hera’s “23 Ways to Boost Silver Investment Profits.” It talks about risk versus growth.
DM: The best place to be in this market, after establishing a physical metals position, is on the mining side by balancing risk with growth. I like the midtiers because this is where the greatest growth is along with mitigated risk.
TGR: Hera also tells investors to take a 24- to 36-month time horizon.
DM: All markets move up and down, including the silver market. Investors have to take the long-term view of this market. There is still a major trend to the upside, but there’s going to be more volatility.
TGR: Hera tells investors to be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy.
DM: I was getting fearful while others were getting greedy when silver was around the $35/oz level on its way to $50/oz. I cautioned investors that if they had to buy silver at that level to only buy some because the market was temporarily overdone. I was getting a lot of blowback from even some of the better analysts for being too cautious. I called the top around $48/oz and I’m pleased with that call. In other words, looking from the perspective of this interview my call was a good one, yet you would not believe the flack I took from some in this business.
TGR: Hera also says, “No excuses.” If a company isn’t progressing, just get out.
DM: You have to hold every company’s feet to the fire. Ask what it plans to do next year and if it met its milestones last year. The idea is to strive to do everything it set out to, but if it can’t then it should report it honestly and move on.
I don’t really like the junior sector that much. There are a lot of companies that have gone by the wayside early in the junior mining cycle. There are still some good values out there, but it’s pretty tough to call these days.
TGR: He also advises that investors pay attention to value and don’t pay a premium to get on the bandwagon.
DM: I agree. For example, we did an update on Royal Gold Inc. (RGL:TSX; RGLD:NASDAQ) sometime ago that showed how valuable it was—even at an extended stock price. A well-known Wall Street stockbroker took the time to call me to say it was an over-the-top, great report. That stock has done extremely well while so many have not.
TGR: Hera also discussed the influence of inflation on real wealth. Given the hidden inflation in the market, he argues that to preserve or even grow wealth, investors have no choice but to seek higher gains of a minimum of 25% a year. What’s your perspective on it?
DM: Markets are volatile. They wax and they wane. The market is in a period of consolidation. Very few stocks are reflecting their true value. It’s a good time to gradually get into these stocks. They could go lower over the next few months, but they represent one of the best places to put money right now.
As far as what to expect in the future, let me just state that I agree with ShadowStats.com Editor John Williams’ prediction that we have 10% inflation. There will always be some dogs (stocks) that won’t move, but there should be some real gains in precious metals. If there’s truly 10% inflation, there could be 25% gains in a mining equity, which would be a 15% real gain versus the true inflation rate. Once the sector gets hot again, the gains could be huge.
Presently, stocks are undervalued, which means be greedy when everyone’s fearful. This is the time investors should be buying.
TGR: Some pundits are saying that the market’s going to go even lower before it heads higher. Do you believe that’s the case?
DM: I do, but to think that you can pick an exact bottom is an amateur’s game. A professional tries to get in and accumulate while the getting is good. I’m looking at December through perhaps as late as April.
TGR: If investors are trying to reach 25% returns per year, they’ve got to turn to the small-cap space.
DM: Not necessarily. First, to expect those returns every year is unreasonable. However, investors could make 17% a year just by holding a good company, like Royal Gold, and writing the options on it. The options writers win 85% of the time and the option buyers lose 85% of the time. An investor could rent a stock like that out to people that want to play the options game and smile all the way to the bank—even in a downtrending market.
TGR: Nonetheless, you have some speculative buys on a handful of small-cap silver plays.
DM: Of course. Nothing is more exciting than getting a speculation right. We had Western Copper before it was renamed Western Silver, and eventually bought out by Glamis. Glamis was eventually bought out by Goldcorp Inc. (G:TSX; GG:NYSE). When you get a 4,000% gain on something, you can’t help but smile.
We like some small caps. Silvermex Resources Inc. (SLX:TSX; GGCRF:OTC) is one that we’ve come back to. The stock did fairly well after our initial recommendation. Then we went into this financial situation that clobbered everything and Silvermex had to regroup. We sold it. We came back to it when it was very undervalued. I’ve done that on several companies.
TGR: Silvermex is down about 26% year-over-year right now. Is that just the market or is that fallout from the deal with Genco Resources Ltd.?
DM: It’s both. The Genco deal looks pretty good on paper, but the market is giving a different vote right now.
Sometimes persistence pays off in stocks, however. I’ll give you an example. We owned First Majestic Silver Corp. (FR:TSX; AG:NYSE; FMV:Fkft) for a very long time. We had it at $4/share, but it was under $4/share month after month. When that stock finally caught on it went like gangbusters. We could have missed a huge move in that stock if we weren’t persistent. Am I always right? No. Am I right on Silvermex? I don’t know yet. Does it look bad at this particular point in time? Yes, it probably does. But I know enough to know that there’s a strong probability that at some point the stock will catch up.
TGR: What’s your view of Silvermex’s management?
DM: It’s one of the better management teams out there. I know Mike Callahan, Silvermex’s president who was formerly an executive with Hecla Mining Co. (HL:NYSE). I also know Art Brown, who was also with Hecla. Silvermex has a strong board. They want to make this company viable. They have something to prove.
TGR: It’s trading at about $0.40/share right now. Is that a good entry point?
DM: We had it earlier than that, but it’s probably OK. Investors could slowly build positions between now and April to take advantage of any further market decrease.
TGR: You’ve done pretty well with some of the midtiers, too.
DM: Pretium Resources Inc. (PVG:TSX) stock is up 20% after it announced a much larger, higher-grade asset. We were into the stock at around CA$8/share. It’s well above CA$10/share, but it’s still undervalued. We love the management. Robert Quartermain has a proven track record. Investors see a stock move and they’re scared to buy it. That’s incorrect thinking. A lot of these stocks that make big moves make new high after new high. How else does a stock go from $5/share to $50/share?
TGR: Pretium is up about 45% so far in 2011. How much upside is left?
DM: I think there’s plenty left. Think about buying $1,000 worth of Coca-Cola stock in 1928. People worry about how much is left, but what if the stock goes up 500% or 5000%? You have to let the stock tell investors how much upside is potentially left. You don’t want to sell your winners. You want to sell your losers.
TGR: What other midtiers still have some upside?
DM: Tahoe Resources Inc. (THO:TSX) is a great company on my watch list with a lot of upside. It’s not very well known.
TGR: BMO Nesbitt Burns has a $26/share price target on Tahoe. It’s trading around $18/share now. Do you think that’s reasonable?
DM: I do, but I don’t like to use price targets because it’s a no-win situation. If it makes a target and it stops at that exact price, you’re a genius. If it’s under that or over that then you get nothing but flack. Do I think Tahoe is undervalued? Yes.
TGR: Tahoe is planning to produce about 316.9 million ounces of silver from its Escobal property in Guatemala over the next 18 years. Do you have any doubts that it will execute on that?
DM: There are always doubts in the mining industry. There’s jurisdictional risk in many South American countries. Am I confident that it’ll happen? No, not today. Investors should spread out geopolitically. It’s very important in today’s financial climate to expect the unexpected.
TGR: The company is run by Kevin McArthur, who was the president and chief executive of Glamis Gold, which was taken over by Goldcorp, and then headed Goldcorp. It’s hard to argue with that kind of track record.
DM: I’m not. You have to put a great deal of credence into that caliber of management. But the best management in the world in the wrong jurisdiction can have problems. Robert Quartermain is one of my favorite examples. He was involved in a project in Russia and got burned slightly.
TGR: Are there any other company stories you’d like to share with us?
DM: Prophecy Coal Corp. (PCY:TSX; PRPCF:OTCQX; 1P2:Fkft) is undervalued. Prophecy Coal was two companies. It’s a coal company, but it also had a platinum group metals company that was spun off. I still like the Prophecy Coal side.
It’s a long-term project with a lot of hurdles to overcome in the uncertain jurisdiction of Mongolia. However, I have been to Mongolia and met with some of the people heading up the project, which will be using the coal deposit to fuel a power plant. I got a pretty good feel for how serious they are. As a speculation, it’s one of the better ones.
TGR: Do you follow 49 North Resources Inc. (FNR:TSX.V) at all?
DM: Yes, it is on my watch list.
TGR: It’s a different kind of play. It’s a little like the Pinetree Capital model where it takes positions in companies involved in many different resources.
DM: What I like about that type of model is that it spreads risk out. These are run by professionals that know what they’re doing. That model is especially good for the retail investors who don’t have the time to understand what they’re buying. It’s a good way to play the market.
TGR: In a response to a readers’ inquiry about the frightening possibility of deflation, you replied, “I do see a deflationary scare and suggest you buy all the way through it—three to six months. These mining stocks are cheap, but could get cheaper. I do not see it as being as bad as 2008.” How bad do you see it getting?
DM: The mining equities market could drop another 10%. But it’s possible that the current market is as bad as it gets. I do not see the financial crisis of 2008 repeating in 2012. But something needs to be done that’s going to really strengthen the financial markets and confidence in the system on a global basis. If that isn’t done, I expect 2008 or worse to repeat at some point. But, again, I don’t think that will happen for a couple of years.
TGR: Thanks for taking the time to share with us.
David Morgan (Silver-Investor.com) is a widely recognized analyst in the precious metals industry and consults for hedge funds, high-net-worth investors, mining companies, depositories and bullion dealers. He is the publisher of The Morgan Report on precious metals, author of Get the Skinny on Silver Investing (Morgan James Publishing, 2009) and featured speaker at investment conferences in North America, Europe and Asia.
By The Energy Report, on November 16th, 2011
 From fossil fuels to fission, growing global demand for power generation offers investment opportunities. Thermal coal is heating up and the uranium junior mining sector is set for development and a wave of consolidation. Geordie Mark, mining analyst with Haywood Securities in Vancouver, shares his thoughts in this exclusive Energy Report interview.
The Energy Report: There have been recent takeovers in the coal sector, including the $1 billion (B) takeover of Grande Cache Coal by a Chinese and Japanese business combination. What should investors take away from that deal?
Geordie Mark: Investors need to be aware that metallurgical coal is intimately related to the steel market. Our expectations for growth in the steel market drive our expectations for growth in metallurgical coal. It is a positive sign that the market sees the value of such a strategic commodity. We’ve seen a lot of activity this year in the space, highlighted by the $4B takeover of Riversdale by Rio Tinto (RIO:NYSE; RIO, ASX) primarily for Riversdale’s metallurgical coal asset base in Mozambique.
TER: Chinese imports of metallurgical coal have grown along with China’s steel sector. Do you see this trend slowing in the near term?
GM: With steel demand increasing, we expect China to have an ever-increasing footprint in terms of metallurgical coal consumption. Long-term, there is still big potential for metallurgical coal, although we may see a plateau in pricing in the near term. China is also the largest producer of metallurgical coal, producing more than 500 million tons (Mt) in 2010, but we are expecting continued importation of the commodity in China, as well as Japan, India and South Korea.
TER: Which juniors with advanced coal projects are likely to see some interest from potential suitors on the heels of the Grande Cache deal?
GM: The first that comes to mind is Xinergy Ltd. (XRG:TSX), a company that produces thermal coal, but which recently acquired two metallurgical coal projects. One already produces high-voltage metallurgical coal and Xinergy aims to bring the other into production next year.
Another name is Corsa Coal Corp. (CSO:TSX), which is in production at its own metallurgical coal projects, both surface and underground, in the U.S.
TER: What about Coalspur Mines Ltd. (CPT:TSX; CPL:ASX)?
GM: To put Coalspur in context, it helps to talk about thermal coal. The company’s Vista Coal Project is a strategic asset as there is still underlying, increasing demand for seaborne thermal coal, especially in Asia.
TER: This is coal that is used primarily in power plants, is that right?
GM: Yes, its predominant use is to provide base-load for electricity generation. Coal remains the largest form of base-load power in the U.S. Almost 80% of power in China comes from thermal coal; Japan and India are also very big thermal coal consumers, and importers.
We see Coalspur being able to introduce itself into the thermal coal space through its Vista Project in Alberta, Canada. Coalspur just tied up a contract through the Ridley Terminals in Prince Rupert for up to 8.5 million tons per annum in export volume starting in 2015. Furthermore, the company also signed a memorandum of understanding with CN Rail to co-ordinate coal transport to Prince Rupert starting 2015. The project is right next to the railroad, so it is ideally positioned to add high-quality thermal coal into the seaborne market over the next few years. The large scale of this project, with such high-quality product, and advanced stage of negotiation for infrastructure support, is unparalleled in Canada. We expect Coalspur to make big inroads over the next few years. We have a 12-month target of $2.80 on Coalspur, and it is trading around $1.80.
TER: There is a lot of negative news about the pollution that coal-burning power plants produce. Are you saying that, despite the headlines, the thermal coal market isn’t going away any time soon?
GM: That is definitely what the projections tell us. The International Energy Agency predicts increases in thermal energy consumption over the next 20–25 years. I don’t see thermal coal—the largest form of base-load power across most economies—going away anytime soon as most of tomorrow’s growth is expected to emanate from the Advancing Economies.
TER: Do you have confidence in Coalspur’s management?
GM: Absolutely. The management team has built and run mines in the coal space in various jurisdictions. I am very comfortable with what they will be able to achieve.
TER: The last 12 months have not been kind to uranium companies, especially juniors. Year-over-year, the share price for Denison Mines Corp. (DML:TSX; DNN:NYSE.A), a mid-tier uranium producer, fell 36.5%; Uranium One Inc. (UUU:TSX) dropped 46.2%, and Paladin Energy Ltd. (PDN:TSX; PDN:ASX), a uranium project developer, lost 63.7%. Over the same time period, the TSX Composite Index slipped a mere 4.4%. How do you pitch uranium equities to retail and institutional investors at this point?
GM: The equities have taken a very big hit over the last year, despite the uranium spot price being around where it was a year ago. This equity market artifact is more related to sentiment, I think.
We still see uranium very much as a strategic commodity, even following the nuclear accident in Fukushima. This view is supported by the acquisition and offer activity in the sector in 2011. The sector’s growth outlook looks solid, driven by expected demand increases in China, Russia, South Korea and petroleum-producing nations such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
TER: The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economy estimates that roughly 107 thousand tons (Kt) uranium will be needed to meet demand in 2016. That is about 20 Kt more than the 86 Kt yellowcake expected to be consumed this year. Is an extra 20 Kt a year enough to drive up the share prices of uranium juniors?
GM: I think we need some other catalysts. We need to remove the negativity sentiment toward this sector. For example, we need to see new reactors being built. We need to see a timeframe for non-operating reactors, say those in Japan, to be put back online. Investors need to see more usage of existing reactors and new growth coming into play.
We’re starting to see new demand. A couple of new reactor proposals got the go-ahead in China recently, with construction for the reactors expected to start next year. Progress is starting to be made, albeit on an incremental basis.
The strategic nature of uranium is highlighted by recent interest shown by Cameco Corp. (CCO:TSX; CCJ:NYSE), the world’s largest uranium-only producer, and Rio Tinto in Hathor Exploration Ltd.’s (HAT:TSX.V) Roughrider asset. Rio Tinto’s involvement in the space is very interesting because that company deals with a range of commodities, and it allocates capital across geography and across sectors. By taking an interest in North American assets, Rio Tinto is increasing its stance in uranium.
TER: As I understand it, Cameco came in with what Hathor considered a low-ball bid. Then Rio countered. Has Cameco countered yet?
GM: Cameco has upped the ante and offered an increased bid of $4.50 per share. Cameco has more operational synergy in the region than Rio Tinto, given Cameco’s infrastructure and expertise in the Athabasca Basin. Ultimately, Cameco could provide a greater offer for Hathor than Rio and still maintain similar future margins on the operation.
TER: Does the bidding war for Hathor tell us that the major uranium producers place a premium on jurisdiction?
GM: Yes, but we also have to be cognizant of the inherent quality of the asset. For Rio and Cameco, it’s about where they see the equity markets valuing assets today versus the long-term outlook. It’s a combination of being comfortable in the jurisdiction and in the sector’s value.
TER: Do you expect takeover offers for more juniors with significant high-grade resources in safe jurisdictions, like Canada and the U.S., in the year ahead?
GM: The other situation that has investors’ attention is the potential bid for Kalahari Minerals plc (KAH:LSE; KAH:NSX) and Extract Resources Ltd.’s (EXT:TSX; EXT:ASX) Husab uranium resource in Namibia. Extract Resources is the world’s third-largest uranium company, based effectively on the valuation of the Husab uranium project, which has more than 500 million pounds (Mlb) uranium.
Right now, Kalahari Minerals, the largest shareholder in Extract, is in negotiations with state-owned China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp. where a potential all-cash offer of £2.4355 per share is potentially on the table for Kalahari.
TER: Another significant project in Namibia is Bannerman Resources Ltd.’s (BAN:TSX; BMN:ASX) Etango uranium project. China’s Sichuan Hanlong Group made highly conditional proposal to acquire Bannerman, but Bannerman recently announced it must do further due diligence before committing to the financing. Is this an indication that Bannerman needs to continue to derisk Etango or that Hanlong simply wants Etango at a steep discount?
GM: Hanlong’s proposal was at quite a low enterprise value per pound rating, much less than $1/lb. That was already a fairly substantial discount to other acquisition metrics in the space. For instance, Hathor and Mantra Resources Ltd. (MRU:TSX) were north of $9/lb. Bannerman’s management and board were talking to many parties subsequent to Hanlong’s proposal. Bannerman’s board considered it to be a low offer for the company. Time will tell.
TER: Do you think Bannerman will find another bidder?
GM: There is a lot of interest out there in the sector for advanced projects, but I think that there needs to be a resolution with the potential take out of Kalahari, and by extension Extract Resources, before focus may move to Bannerman.
TER: Moving back to North America, are there projects here that you expect to generate takeover interest in 2012?
GM: I think people will wait and see how the dust settles for Hathor Exploration, but consolidation is probably the name of the game in the space for the time being. We’ve seen that in the in situ recovery space in North America. There is synergy between Uranium Energy Corp (UEC:NYSE.A), Uranerz Energy Corp. (URZ:TSX; URZ:NYSE.A) and Ur-Energy Inc. (NYSE.A:URG; TSX:URE). Uranium Energy Corp is in production now. Uranerz Energy is in the construction phases, and Ur-Energy awaits a final permit prior to commencement of construction. Then there is the potential merger of Energy Fuels Inc. (EFR:TSX) and Titan Uranium Inc. (TUE:TSX), announced at the end of October.
TER: What did you make of that deal?
GM: I felt it was a positive move for Energy Fuels, in that it gives the company access to a broader resource base, particularly in the uranium mining state of Wyoming. Energy Fuels has potential access to future production through its planned Piñon Ridge uranium-vanadium mill. The Sheep Mountain uranium project in Wyoming is a moderate-sized, defined resource of more than 30 Mlb uranium, and Titan’s management team has a clear objective of progressing the project through permitting and development over the next several years.
TER: What more can you tell us about Uranerz? Do you think it is undervalued?
GM: Uranerz is fully permitted for construction for Nichols Ranch and its Hank satellite facility. Both are on time and on budget. The company has a rich history of developing similar projects—six times in the U.S. There is a lot of confidence that Uranerz can do this. Production is expected to commence in Q312. That timing would make Uranerz the world’s next uranium producer.
The company is being derisked through the construction phase; moving into next-producer status will be very positive for the company.
TER: Uranium Energy Corp is up and running in Texas, where it is working on a second in situ operation there. Given that the company is recovering significant amounts of uranium, is there a likelihood Uranium Energy could see a bid?
GM: You typically see bids coming in after significant milestones and de-risking have occurred. If a bid were to come in, I think it would be after UEC has permitted, built and started production on its second main project, Goliad. There will be a wait-and-see period in terms of external acquisitions.
TER: Why is Uranium Energy Corp a good buy?
GM: First off, UEC is in production. Second, it has a very clear plan for developing its portfolio of assets to increase its corporate production rate. Goliad is at the mature state of permitting and is expected to enter the construction in H112. The company also has the Salvo Project, which could be Uranium Energy Corp’s third project to come into production in a couple of years. The company has a clear strategy to increase production from an existing plant that is already built, permitted and operating.
TER: Until the last few years, few uranium projects have been developed into producing mines outside of Kazakhstan. Other than the price of uranium, why is that?
GM: The lack of new project development is a combination of the long lead times typically required to mature projects through permitting and construction, as well as fluctuating commodity prices and access to project financing. Lack of project development appears to be also an artifact of sector focus. In the last 10 years, a lot of money was spent on brownfields projects that were marginal in earlier periods of exploration, and less focus was placed on greenfields projects. Greenfields discoveries have the potential to add low cost output to the future production project, but discovery and resource definition can take time. I think that it is interesting to observe that despite market sentiment, acquisitions are still on the table in the sector, and these are focused on the few new discoveries (e.g., Mkuju River Project, Husab Uranium Project and Roughrider Project) made over the last several years.
TER: One new discovery is Strateco Resources Inc.’s (RSC:TSX) Matoush Deposit in Central Québec. Do you think that will ever become a mine?
GM: Matoush certainly has potential with just over 20 Mlb U3O8, at grades and close to 0.6% uranium. Because it is in Canada, the permitting process is known, although it takes time to go through and meet all the requirements. The company is in the permitting phase now.
TER: Geordie, thank you for your time and your insights.
Dr. Geordie Mark, a research analyst with Haywood Securities, focuses principally on iron ore, coal and uranium companies involved in exploration, development and production. He joined Haywood Securities from the junior exploration sector, where he served in an executive role concentrating on exploration across Canada. Immediately prior to joining the exploration industry full-time, Dr. Mark lectured in economic geology in Australia and served as an industry consultant. He completed his doctorate in geology in 1998 at James Cook University’s Economic Geology Research Unit in Australia, specializing in aqueous geochemistry and igneous petrology applied to ore-forming systems.
By Bron Suchecki, on October 31st, 2011
Shall we count how many bloggers pick up on this news item Chinese silver imports decline 39% y/y; exports tumble 44% y/y:
Silver imports in China fell by 39% y/y and 16% m/m to 264.7 tonnes, the lowest level since February, while silver exports declined by 44% y/y to 83.5 tonnes, keeping China a net importer of the metal for two consecutive years on a monthly basis.
On a product basis, silver powder, unwrought silver, semi-manufactured silver, and silver jewelery all declined y/y in September with the latter two products suffering the steepest decline and silver powder only falling by 4% y/y. Indeed, silver powder is the only product that has grown for the year-to-date.
And from the “Chinese love paper more than physical” department, see China’s gold frenzy gives birth to small bourses:
The emerging exchanges offer a lot size as small as one ounce, which lowers the capital needed to begin trading, even though the margin requirements can be as high as 30 percent. With lot size set at 10 ounces and margins at 20 percent, the initial capital requirement to start trading is about half the amount required by the SGE.
Emerging exchanges claim to trade physical gold, but most investors are not interested in taking physical delivery. Some exchanges make it difficult and expensive to take delivery. …
“Who would want to take physical gold? People just want to speculate on price moves and make a profit,” said a customer service representative at the exchange who gave her last name as Chen.
Analysts compared the gold investment spree to the wave of retail stock market investors in the last decade, who rushed to a bull market with little know-how, only to suffer huge losses during later market turbulence. …
Although China’s central government has vowed to open up the market, and has made progress by allowing more foreign banks access to the two Shanghai exchanges, an open market for retail investors is yet to take shape. …
But it was unlikely to happen as long as the country’s foreign currency exchange remains tightly controlled. Until foreign exchange controls are lifted, Chinese gold bugs would continue to need tables to put down their bets. “The Chinese love gambling,” said Hou.
Doesn’t sound like China’s exchanges are any different from COMEX. If the Chinese Government wanted its people to buy physical gold you’d think all this paper gold would be shut down. I suppose we will have to wait until the much hyped PAGE is up and running [sarcasm]. 
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