moore_capital54

Gurjot, I am not as bullish as Rule on geothermal. He has lost a ton of money on RAM and has gotten a lot of people into it. The fundamentals of geothermal are analogous to Solar in my humble opinion. I would rather buy some of these solar co's at a fraction of tangible book as a hedge for higher energy costs. Or out of the money options on Nat Gas such as MGM Energy (MGX CN). I believe Rule's favourite gold plays are Lydian and Atac. We own a nice chunk of Lydian and have been buying more even last week. There is no doubt they have an incredible mine there. Atac is very expensive and lacks the ounces at this point to convert me into a believer. Everyone is so excited that they found Carlin style mineralization but I would much rather own Lydian or even Carpathian than Atac here. One more thing, I am going to make a prediction here that I think Dundee Precious Metals will make a run for Lydian. It is right up their alley and Jon Goodman has unlimited capital from daddy.

Also need to mention Cardero Resources, which has kind of by accident become a resource holding co as well. Cardero latest 10Q is that not the sweetest balance sheet you have seen? $122mm in assets vs $800k in liabilities: http://www.cardero.com/s/financials.asp Checkout all the liquid stock positions, IE: ITH - which provides great leverage to gold. Cardero is trading roughly at the value of their liquid investment portfolio giving you their assets for free.

The only issue I have with SCP is their lack of exposure to gold, besides their bullion stake. Also I forgot to mention Pinetree capital in that list. Nobody can disregard that Pinetree provides incredible leverage to the junior market, its currently trading below NAV.

Everything that Santayana mentioned Eric, but a few things happened this week that kind of caught me off guard. The first was I was talking to a friend in London who was fired, he has worked at the same firm for nearly a decade, and is an amazingly intelligent person, great education etc. He worked for a well known firm that has not even publicly announced they were firing yet. For him to be out of a job, is nuts. The second was the amount of redemptions I have been seeing both internally, and with some of my colleagues that are very successful managers. The investors redeeming, appear to be going through a sincerely difficult time with their real economy businesses, guys that I never imagined would find themselves in a position where they are illiquid but they are. In our main fund we are down -1.2% for the year, in our resource fund we are up about 8%, and both got hit with redemptions. My colleagues that manage funds have performance ranging from -20% to +12% and have all been hit with serious redemptions. Serious as in greater than 10% of AUM. One of our investors owns one of the largest trucking companies in Canada, the guy is as good a barometer as rail car loadings, he is talking about business being as dry as it ever was. Don't get me wrong, we are going to finally face the music and go through the original deleveraging that we needed to. I am all for this, it's just that the FED made us believe we could get out of it with QE, it seems to me the cycle is only in the 3rd or 4th inning as we are now seeing the cycle felt by even the upper echelon wage earners and what appeared to be "High Net Worth" Individuals. This is healthy but when you put it all together you realize no exogenous event is going to be the catalyst for a knee jerk reaction to the upside ala TARP or March 2009. Just as the HFT trading activity controls the decline throughout the day (I am sure you have all noticed this) setting lower highs on down days and higher lows on up days almost like clockwork every 15 minutes, that is kind of how I feel about the next stage of the Macro Economy, its going to be another wave down and another wave down and another wave down. We will bottom no doubt, but I don't see facts supporting that we are anywhere near the bottom, and I have lost faith in the long-term potential of QE. Morever, I do not know of any value managers with the exception of Loeb and some posters on this board that have any significant cash to deploy, and if they do they will most probably be hit with at least 5% redemptions this coming quarter. Mutual Fund redemptions may be worst.

Altius, Aberdeen, Primary Capital, Natural Resource Holdings, Sprott Resource Corp many of them.

In fairness, I have never been more worried about the Macro than I am going into this weekend. I have been processing a lot of data that looks absolutely terrible. I sincerely think we need QE3, otherwise its going to get really ugly out there.

I just read the entire case against BAC and other Banks. I Am obviously biased being a BAC long, but doesn't it strike you all as a lot less severe given the total claims against BAC are for $30B? The stock has lost way more than that in market value.

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I have respect for Tilson as he does organize the VIC, and I attend at least one event every year. That being said I think Tilson is not a great investor at all. His track record speaks for itself. And even moreso due to the type of access he has to some of the greatest players in the game, he is one of Ackman's best friend and can't seem to get even his piggy back trades right. I am not impressed with Mr. Tilson. I would take Pabrai over him any day.

Indeed

Feeling really good about our BAC today :)

More Junior M&A Today, Aurico Acquiring Northgate: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/aurico-gold-to-buy-northgate-minerals-2011-08-29 As I explained, things tend to get busy towards the end of the year. Why did Aurico acquire Northgate? It's because they want to become a mid tier producer (500k ounce+). Meanwhile, Northgate which was about to acquire Primero, another interesting junior with some good assets, has broken off that deal for Aurico, and will pay a $25mm breakup fee. The demand comes from the actual commodities, which are supplied by the producers, who themselves are supplied by the juniors. It's the circle of life.

Here you go sir: http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/08/05/idINIndia-58628820110805 And: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/texas-short-seller-fights-china-fraud-in-20-billion-u-s-shares.html There are many more, they are a dime a dozen, and if you add all of them up they might equal one of Burry's farms :) (IE: they are small time) I have nothing against this guy I just didn't agree with your headline.

http://www.mining.com/2011/08/28/no-double-dip-says-cat-ceo/ I think the CAT CEO is a good person to be hearing this from.

Why? this guy is just another chinese short seller, they are a dime a dozen. Not impressed by these guys at all. Michael Burry has one of the best track records managing money (significant sums) in the game. Not to mention, having put on the trade of the decade.

With respect, after reading the article I find it almost Blasphemous to compare this individual to Michael Burry.

We should start a thread discussing our best and worst investments. My best in terms of dollar profit was Arizona Star, I built a significant position in the company right after 9/11 and held it until the buyout by Barrick. At the time we were purchasing shares at a valuation that implied less than $5 per ounce of gold in the ground. Worst investment was WAMUQ, after Lehman, we had built a large position thinking it would not fail. We lost 95%. I still believe WAMUQ based on it's projected Loan Losses/ vs equity at the time should not have been allowed to fail and was stolen by JPM. Several weeks later TARP was announced.

In my case Luck probably played a part, although I don't often risk even tiny amounts like that on something unless I believe the risk/reward is tilted in my favor. With regards to my friend, his franchise was doing $4.5mm EBITDA so I don't think luck played any part in his ultimate sale. He built a great business.

Thats why I only risked $16k. A friend owned one of their franchises and was very adamant about the fact that they would never go bankrupt, He bought a lot more shares, not to mention selling his franchise back to DTG for $20mm a year later ! :)

I wont forget getting filled 10,000 shares of DTG @ 1.60 and 30,000 shares of DOW @ 7.55 lol (I still own both)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY8g_IsI_gY This ties in well with some of the debates we have been having here about fiat money, etc. Also for those that don't believe in the Junior Market, another consolidation occurred last week. Cameco, one of the largest uranium producers in the world acquired Hathor for $520 million. Hathor, for almost a decade has been developing a large 17mm ounce uranium property in saskatchewan. Since inception, Hathor has raised $112mm from capital markets, while it retains $17.2mm in cash. In other words, with about $95mm Hathor has created $520mm in value for its shareholders (Buyout price). Why did Cameco buy Hathor? Because they need more Uranium resources to produce!

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I read the post PlanMaestro and just couldn't disagree more. I think quite frankly that this is just another example of a Value Investor that missed the boat and is looking at the glass half empty. True Contrarian Value Investors buy more when their positions go down, and are happy to do so as was demonstrated in real-time on this thread by several investors. The guys waiting on the sidelines for more data and confirmation will never be Great Investors.

I don't think its that cut and dry Merkhet but I will also cede to Bmichaud and agree that this board isn't the kind of outlet for macroeconomic debate so I will just leave it at that :)

Spoken like a true academic zarley. I bet you studied Economy at the University of Chicago or berkeley? I am on my way out to a dinner party so I am just going to say, that I think your explanation of the way the system works is naive at best. You act as though you did not witness the actions of men only a few hundred days ago when they rushed to conjure money at a pace never before seen and to do one thing and one thing only: SUBSIDIZE THE DEBTORS.