Marifil Mines and body language

Ok, I’ve been distracted this past fortnight and have not posted, occasionally even us market watchers need to feed their addictions to a mindless game in order forget the turmoil in the markets. Usually it’s best to do this when everything is in the dumps so you don’t fixate on bad times but some weeks you just want a shelter from too much reality.

I do have several recently promised posts on mining companies nearly finished but decided after seeing a piece of news today from a little known miner called Marifil Mines, (MFM on the TSX-v)
I thought I would write about them.

The article states that Marifil and its Partner Castillian Resources have received a number of cores with what they call “Important amounts of Platinum”

I would not normally hype a company like this over a single piece of news, but with this months run in Platinum to over $2100 I figure that any cores with good platinum numbers deserve to receive some notice. This story obviously did get noticed giving a 12 cent/ 26% bump to Marifil Mines and their partner Castillain (CT TSX-V). Now this is not a resource estimate or a feasibility study, it’s just a series of cores, but with today’s demand for platinum and the added nickel, cobalt, copper, and palladium found on these claims, this could develop into a significant story.


I first heard of Marifil at the Cambridge House resource show last fall. At this show I saw literature and presentations from many companies and while I did not see all of them, I did find quite a few that interested me after I had discarded the overabundant and inexperienced Uranium companies and a handful of diamond plays. (Diamonds only have value on the end of drill in my books, they have limited utility and the fakes are now better)

Of all the companies that interested me at that time I only bought two Acadian Mining and Marifil Mines. Acadian I intend to will deal with in another (almost complete) post next week but for now let me tell you my Marifil story.

The format for company presentations was simply a table with four representatives from four different companies who were each given a few minutes for a promo talk and slide show. Now I had already seen maybe 16 companies at this point and it was all sounding very similar and even with notes I was quickly getting confused as to who said what and I was getting tired and slightly bored with the whole thing.

That said Marifil was different in that it was the only Argentina play I saw, it had a huge number of projects (34) and 425,000 hectares spread around 11 provinces of Argentina consisting of interests in base metals (zinc, copper, nickel,lead) and precious metals (gold, silver and some plat group metals), Indium, uranium, cement quality limestone, natural gas and oil, this company has some of everything.

Now I did not know much about indium but when the spokesman was talking about the results on a zinc, silver, gold property and mentioned $325/t of indium as a by product every head at the table looked up. While I realize he was extrapolating on best intersections he had, the numbers he was tossing around seemed good, their business model invites partnerships and moves exploration and eventual development along at a faster rate than some models and they had a wide assortment of properties, several of which were already showing at least some positive progress. The number of properties could almost be a concern in that they will not be able to focus on any one project but their model of partnering allows them to maintain a reasonable stake while pushing the exploration costs off on someone else lessening dilution.

I liked the variety and size of properties and since Argentina is relatively stable and under explored compared to her neighbors it was enough to add Marifil to my short list, however as irrational as it sounds I finally made the purchase of 5000 shares (I know, I’m not rich) purely on the body language of the other 3 corporate types in response to the presentation. During most of the discussions the other execs looked bored and listless, in this presentation everyone paid attention without there being any extra performance quality involved, these guys seemed impressed. Hell at $325/t of indium as by product, that's about the same as finding 10g/t gold and when it's added to the other metals in the resource it should impress anyone.

It may sound irrational, but not more so than letting someone else do YOUR due diligence and then letting THEM tell you which stock to buy. Read up and take a look. I’m convinced and Friday’s news puts me up 20% , no big deal but at least it's going up, that's a start.

Is there a new currency in our future?

Watch this video on a New U.S. currency

It's only a joke but eventually after default or "harmonization" with Canada and Mexico there will be a new U.S. currency, is this a taste of things to come?

Canadian Silver Bug- Feb Musings

It seems that every day for the last week or so Silver and Gold keep getting attacked in overnight trading in Europe, it would open down in New York and spend most of the day trying to gain back its losses. The good news is they have held up very well and won back their losses every time.

Various chartists have been calling for a correction especially if gold could not hold 900, but in the last few days Gold fought off the attacks and closed above 900, just short of 910 and looks to be closing the week around 923.20. I’m really quite happy about silver recently in the recent attacks it usually dropped less than gold and had robust recoveries leaving us with a Gold/Silver Ratio at 53.74 which is still a fair ways off from my predicted 48 ratio if my target prices of $1200/$25 are to be met but it is the first time in the last year we’ve consistent narrowing which is very promising.


Silver has closed at $17.18 for the week despite the chartists, we’ll see how they interpret this weeks actions and whether they will change their tunes. That said, eventually we will have a correction and provided I don’t get caught in a labour dispute this spring I will be buying strongly again if we should go below $15, and would probably even borrow some small amount to buy under $13.50, but I don't expect to see that level every again.

When an eventual correction does comes it could easily be a 10-15% drop, but if we gain another 10% before that correction arrives it won’t have been much of a buying opportunity, will it? If you don’t expect some calamity (like my potential strike) don’t worry about prices at these levels just worry about how much you have and how much more you can buy. In the big scheme of things, 3-4 years from now the difference between $830 and $930 gold or $15 and $17 silver will be laughable when we are talking $2000 gold and $100 digit silver, buy while you can if you have cash or create a monthly buying plan and average your price out.

There are a few things are a few things I don’t understand right now, the recent reductions in the US Fed rate do not seem to have made any difference to the U.S. dollar index. Is someone supporting the dollar behind the scenes because it should have taken major hit from this kind of rate reduction?

The recent U.S. budget was announced at whopping $3.1 Trillion, up 6% from last year, with claims it will keep the economy and the military healthy and happy. In reality the economy is faltering, government revenues will shrink for the Feds the same way they have for many U.S. states during the last year, there will certainly be more stimulus packages, more disaster funding, more people on unemployment and pensions yet they claim the budget will balance buy 2012. Do they really think people are that stupid???? This is the begining of an attempted reinflation that will cause high if not hyper inflation.

In Canada, the GI Joe wanna be Conservative government has spend so much on new military hardware and tax cuts that we can expect a deficit for the first time in nearly a decade. While I do not agree with their stance on many social issues they are least conservative stances like their name, but just like their neo-con buddies down south this crowd of idiots has no idea what fiscal conservatism is. DON’T SPEND MORE MONEY THAN YOU HAVE. PAY OFF YOUR DEBTS. They are not true conservatives just as the Bushites are not real conservatives, what they are is even beyond what I'm willing to put in print, and my standards are pretty low. Whoever takes over from Harper and his clowns will need reclaim a decade of fiscal progress that has been ruined in 2 short years. For the third time in my voting life, non conservative politicians will be forced to act fiscally conservative to fix conservative mismanagement. What a screwed up world.

It seems the financial woes of the world are beginning to go mainstream with recession mentioned daily in the news and a few brave souls have even said the D word (Depression, and not the kind that Prozac fixes).

A new documentary I.O.U.S.A following U.S. Comptroller General David Walking quest to inform the public of what their politicians will not opened at the Sundance film festival in January. Watch for it to enter general release.

I really have to say I’m quite pleased with this trend of documentaries making the main stream. Love him or hate him, Michael Moore has done everyone a great service making documentaries vogue. It’s a shame however we lost Aaron Russo, Freedom to Fascism was a great movie, I'd recommend anyone who has not seen yet to go out and rent it. Even better buy a copy of both of these movies when available and loan them to anyone you can convince to watch them.

Keep a watch on the junior miners, there are still a couple weeks left for Canadians to buy their RRSPs and there are still some damn good deals out there, make the move while you can. In the next weeks I will talk about several companies I've purchased for this years contributions, including Impact Silver, Farallon Resources, Accadian mining and Silver Corp.

Abcourt Redux?

A couple of weeks ago I did an article Abcourt Mines, or why should I bother? which I thought was a fair but grouchy explanation of what Abcourt has and what I don't like to see in a junior miner. While I'm not ready to forgive or excuse their bad time lines, poor planning and just plain crappy investors relations I do in all fairness need to comment on their most recent news release, dated Feb 1.

The release announced the purchase of "flotation and grinding mill equipment plus all accessories including bins, conveyors, cyclones, pumps, tanks, overhead cranes, lime and reagents circuits, electrical circuits, a gravity circuit with two 30" Knelson separators, spare parts, etc, has been accepted. The whole for an amount of $1,375,000." I understand that this is previously enjoyed(used equipment) in good shape that must obviously have a both a cost and time savings compared to new. As such it should advance the project and spare us from new share dilution, yeah!!

They further state that between this purchase and existing plant they now have 90% of the equipment needed to start productions. The new/(used) equipment will be broken down and shipped to Abcourt starting in May making their constantly pushed out target of production in 18 months seem at least feasible.

My big concern is Abcourt's glaring omission in the news release; what is the 10% of missing plant? How available is it? What is its cost? Is Abcourt in negotiations to get this mystery equipment?

Having 90% of the plant in place is fine and all but if something vital to operations is still unaccounted for, give us the information. Arrgggg!, opps getting grouchy again

This announcement at least gives me some small hope that I will eventually get out from under this position without a loss. Is Abcourt a buy? Probably, but I’m too annoyed to bother right now, if it's still under .50 when they announce rest of the plant purchases and permiting, I'll probably step up and buy some more.

Canadian Blog Awards 2007- results

I'd just like to thank my supporters (your phony fiat money is in the mail) for their votes and hope that my second place showing in the Canadian Blog Awards and my growing number of hits is a sign that people are beginning to see the financial storm on the horizon. I’ve learned much in the last 16 months and hope I’ve managed to pass some of that knowledge along without offending the grammar police too much. This was a widely varied category with a number of strong blogs and since the Silver/Gold niche is still young, so hopefully I’ll be back next year!

Congratulations to Idea Drunk who won this years contest.