Jeff Phillips: 2 Details That Make or Break a Mining Bet

My most controversial view is I think they should go back for the year hold. I think all the exchanges that say, look, if you're going to get warrant coverage, you at least have to be able to hold the stock for a year. And a year is going off that long period of time, especially when you're getting some sort of warrant coverage.

Jeff Phillips, he's been financing and backing resource companies for more than 30 years, sat on both sides of the table, broker, funder, investor through every mining cycle. No spotting serious teams early, walking away from bad paper even faster. You've Jeff, you've been behind a bunch of a bunch of names that have gone on to have great shareholder success. Almadex, Riverside, Headwater, those are those are the North American names and, and down

under. I'm sure we'll explore some of the ones you've been involved in too. But in short, you're a bit of a seasoned sector insider who invests your own money. You tell it straight and you understand how value actually gets created. And the challenging small cap junior mining end of the business. Jeff, thanks for joining us on Money and Mine. Thank you for having me guys.

Really appreciate it. I am thrilled to, to kind of peel into your, your brain, Jeff, on, on some of the things that are just part of your, your investing DNA or, or part of your screening process. And they can't be erased. And I'm talking about things like like alignment management, alignment, capital, capital structure, like, what are these things like mean to you? Because you know, I, I know that without them, it doesn't matter how good the rocks are. It's it's just a no. Yeah.

Basically I look for two things, share structure and people. When I say share structure, you said capital align and that's a good way of putting it. I like to see that management has what some people call skin in the game. I like to make sure that they don't have skin in the game, but

they're fully reporting. You guys are different in Australia because you can see all the shareholders, but in the Canadian markets, you know, unless you're fully reporting, you can do what you want with your shares. So I like to see management that's got a sizable position

that's fully reporting. That means they're reporting to Cedar in the Canadian markets or the equivalent in the US markets, their position and you're going to know if they decide to sell stock or, or you know, and so forth. So the other thing I like to see with shareholder alignment, and I think that's a great term, is I like to know who the other

shareholders are. You know, a lot of these, it's the same in Australia, although I'm more focused on the North American markets, but obviously there's crossover. I like to see that the other shareholders are like minded to me that they're, they're in the, you know, investing in a company for a period of years, not months. So, you know, the development and exploration business is very

difficult. So here in the Canadian markets, you know, it used to be back when I first came in the business in the 90s and, and had quite a bit of success when you did a private place when you had to hold the stock for a year. That's why you got some warrant coverage. When I retired after selling an oil and gas company off of the NASDAQ, I came back in the business in 2004, 2003, started financing companies in 2007. I was astounded to learn that the whole period was down to four months.

I don't know what you guys do in Australia, but but even now, you know, there's these life financings in Canada which are no hold and they still get warrants. So you, you get a lot of warrant collectors. I want to make sure that management is, is, you know, I like to use a boat analogy. I'm getting on a lake to get to the other side in a boat. Now I want to make sure management's going to row all the way to the other side and they're not jumping out when I don't know it.

And I want to make sure the other shareholders are also pulling the Ords. You know, I want to know everybody's in that boat trying to get to the other side. So that's, that's share structure. And obviously having good people who have a track record of of growing companies, growing market caps or are the ultimate thing selling an asset to another company is, is what I'm looking for. You you'd be disappointed to hear that people can flog their stock within about a day of

getting it here in in Australia once the racing's done. But we don't have, we don't have, we don't have the yeah, like the prevalence of like attaching warrants and warrant collectors that. Nowhere near as as strong as it sounds in in North America and Canada in the resource market, yeah. Well, look there, there may be, there's slight differences obviously, but at the end of the day, the resource market is is not really investing.

It's educated, speculating and and again, you know, whenever you have things that can go up and become billion dollar assets in any type of market, you get the people that aren't necessarily the long term shareholders or people trying to do what's best for the group. So. Jeff, I'm really curious, like what Trev said to peel into your

investing framework and, and in particular your, your psychology, because having done a bit of digging, the the way you sort of frame it is, is, is simple, but simply an investing is often the hardest thing to do. Being patient and hanging in the name for for two to three years at a time. But you don't seem to, you don't seem to have a an awful lot of trouble sort of doing that.

You, you, you seem pretty sort of down, down to earth about all of it. Do you, do you still feel you have that internal struggle, you know, holding on to things, being patient, checking the boxes? Or do you think over time you've just become quite at ease with it all? I think you've become more at ease with it over time and you learn from past mistakes. You know, I've been doing this for a long time and it just depends on what you're trying to do.

People have different goals. If my goal was to make the most money possible, there's ways to do that, that I can make a lot more money. Part of my joy. And still, again, I'm essentially retired working full time right now, but because it's because I enjoy it. I mean, I, I, I, I enjoy working with management teams. I enjoy the, the hunt. I enjoy, you know, as long as we're looking for something meaningful, you know, I, I enjoy

that. And, and more so than making money on a great deal, it's being part of a team that makes money and, and, and having that connection. And some of the people we talked about earlier, like Michael Hudson, you know, we've been friends now for 15 years and we've had some great wins together. And I'm sure we'll have some more in the future. He's a great Australian geologist.

But at the end of the day, the friendship and the camaraderie and the, and the past experiences are what really make it fun. So. This is. Yeah, this is an interesting feature of like the part of the market that you focus on.

I think Canadians like it's even more prevalent than maybe Australia, but we, we all like both, both mining centres have, yeah, these like kind of individual high net worth financiers who have like a, they might have like a mining house or, or, or a bunch of kind of relationships with geologists.

And it's the, the kind of like tying the geologists with the individual with their own connections that can, that can maybe, you know, seed some, some new project in a, in a, in a public vehicle with, with some kind of story. And it's like, wrapped around it. I'm, I'm kind of just like curious how all of that comes together? Like, how do you, how do you actually like identify, like, I identify a project worthy of, worthy of, of investing in the 1st place.

Be be kind of cultivate a network of finances alongside you who you know are like motivated to be there for the same duration and and see understand the opportunity. Well, over time, you build that network up, you know, again, and, and sometimes people fall out of your network because they're not exactly what you, you thought they'd be. I, I don't you again, I'm not Canadian.

I'm, I'm based here in San Diego, CA, not a mining Mecca of the world, although obviously Rick rules operation was based here for a long time. And but, but, but again, you build up that network of people and you build up teams and there's all kinds of, you know, I liken this to, I think I'm

used to analogy. I don't know if you guys have fantasy, fantasy sports there, but all my friends here play fantasy football and they're, they're on teams and they pick their teams and they're every weekend, they spend all weekend talking about their teams. I play football and I enjoy the sport, but I don't play fantasy football cause all week long I have fantasy resource stocks in the market.

I have friends and teammates. And you know, again, it's like you said, it's a shareholder, you know, capital alignment and you know, but again, there's lots of good groups, you know, even here in North America, America and Canada that, you know, do great jobs and I respect them, but I don't necessarily work with them because I have my own network.

If, if I like think more deeply about the the point on on alignment, just just one small like if you, if you like, if you see ACEO that has like AI don't know like a three $300,000 per year salary or $350,000 per year salary and they own like less than 1% of the stock. And it's like a, you know, 5 to $10 million market cap. What does that tell you? Oh it. Tells me I probably don't want to look at the company anymore. I look at, you know, like deals

today. You know, there are some cases where it's a young guy that's been brought in and he doesn't have a lot of money and, you know, so he doesn't have a lot. But again, you know, but again, if you tell me that same company, the CEO owns 2%, he's a younger guy, but they have, you know, two other directors at each own 15% fully reporting.

And then you tell me that, you know, they've got several funds that own fully reporting and it's 50% of the stock is owned by, is owned by fully reporting shareholders. I know those people are trying to build something because they're not being able to flip their stock. And you know, we're into a market now, which it makes it even harder. You know, we're, we're in a bull

market. So, so again, you know, the hardest thing is if you've been in the business a long time is you see the stocks go up and you have to remind yourself what a bull market looks like. Because again, otherwise it's kind of like, well, Gee, are these things really worth 4 times what they were 12 months ago? But the fact is in a bull market, and the last one I saw was the 2008 to 2011 bull market, which really was just a continuation of the 2003 to 2007 with the real estate bubble in

between. You know, it's pretty amazing in a bull market. So I think this is going to be a really big bull market. And I think, you know, a lot of the people that are short term players, they're going to be real happy they're finally getting bailed out or going to

get out early. And I think they're going to find this thing has a long way to go. How to to sort of further Trav's question there, how do you think about options, performance rights and these things? Do you kind of comb through them quite carefully and and make sure everything is sort of on side with how you think about alignment? Yeah, well, mostly options to management are fully reporting, so I can see what that is.

And you have the problem that, you know, when those are expiring, sometimes they have to exercise those and sell some for tax purposes. So I do keep an eye on that all the time and talk to those companies. I typically have half a dozen companies. I'm a large shareholder and I have, I own more companies, but I mean very large shareholdings and I also consult for those companies. So yeah, I'm monitoring all

that. But again, most of my companies have anywhere from 30 to 50% fully reporting insider ownership. Their main goal is to make those shares worth money and they're not able to sell those shares unless they transact, which means they sell the business or they get into a wild bull market. Again, if I own a stock that's up $0.50 stock, and this has happened many times over 30 years, and we get into a bull

market, it goes to $15.00. It may not get sold it, you know, again, it's got something real, but I'm going to take some profit off the table and anybody should in that situation. I'm not, I'm probably taking it off the table at 4:00 and 5:00 and 8:00 and $10.00. But, but again, I think we're in that situation where it gets very hard.

If you're been in the business a long time and you have evaluated lots of companies, I think this the bull markets always skew, you know, you tend to be too smart for your own good. I had a famous, one of my mentors, I've had a number of them was Jim Dines. You wrote the Dines letter for 63 years here in the United States. Very famous gold bug, Internet bug, first marijuana bug. He had lots of things. He claimed that he was the first in and he was. But one of his things was, you

know, look, don't think. And he was referring to charts that, you know, again, if something's in a bullish trend, just because you think it's gone up a lot, you know, don't think too much in a bull market, you know, So I think we're heading into a market where, you know, I have to remember to look and not think because if I think too much, I'm going to go, Gee, I remember the last 15 years and and it wasn't this market, so. Rains can be the enemy of gains in a bull market, but the.

Absolutely. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah, but it's funny because some of the things that do that they end up, you know, going all the way back down again. And I I'm, I'm certain you've, you've written a few of those in your in your tenure. Jeff absolutely. Yeah. I, I, I always joke. I sell, I sell some of it too early. I sell some of it perfectly and I hold some just because I think it might go higher and I still

have it lower. So, you know, again, you, you never, you know, I mean, the best deal is the deal that sells at, at, at a record, which is very seldom. But you know, and I've had those where a deal sold to another company and it's sold at the highest price the shares ever traded at. And it doesn't get any better than that. I just had a deal that I financed, I was in the financing called Horizon Copper and it was bought out by Royal Royal Gold, the royalty company and and all

cash offer. That's kind of a no brainer. It was bought out at the highest price it ever traded at and that was great. So you, you seem to really

analyze the, the people, the people behind businesses, the people aspect of bull markets. How does the exuberance where we're feeling right now, which is sort of flushed on quite quickly compared to 2007, call it 2011, 96 ish before BREEX, these sorts of things. You know, I was, I was probably your guy's age and, and during breaks I came in the market. I actually indirectly worked for Rick Roll and we were pretty successful and, but had less capital.

So that was a crazy market from, I mean, I started investing in the resource stocks right out of college. So that must have been 92 or three or something like that. I mean, it was a really crazy market. It's hard for me to remember. You know, I'll give you an example that I can remember, you know, in a bull market. I had a company in the rare earth boom, the first boom back in 2008, and before people knew what rare earths were, they weren't even talked about. I'd financed the company at

$0.75. Then the real estate crisis hit and there were no bidders for stocks and the resource sector and I was calling another high net worth individual and we were playing every other day who was going to buy the stock at $0.26. The bull market took off and where it's got, you know, going and, and all the commodities were doing good. No 9:00 and 10:00. And we ended up financing the company after we couldn't find buyers and bought them places shares. We did another financing at a

dollar. A month later we financed it at $1.50 and a month after that we financed it at $3. We never sold any of that stock. It was a bull market. The stock eventually went to $1819 a share. You know, it was trading its entire float two years later every day. So again, from that, that's a bull market from three years where nobody wants to buy the

stock to three years later. It's on CNBC here in the States and they're talking about this little company that you couldn't get anyone to buy three years before. So we're, we're in early innings of a bull market. That doesn't mean there won't be some hiccups.

You know, I think there's going to be, you know, again, we'll, we'll get some of the, the, the, the people that are short term players selling out stocks and you know, it'll be healthy for gold to have a sell off and, and build a new base and then go to new highs. So, you know, but I, I think we're in early innings of a, a major bull market. Yeah, it it sounds like you're pretty, pretty attuned to just the impact that low float or or tight float can have just in in

share price dynamics. I think in, you know, in this bull market, even even my observations on some of the some of the stocks that are most volatile to the upside there, there's absolutely kind of a a low float dynamic to what's going on. Combine that with with a bit of retail energy and it doesn't take much to have just yeah, very outside smooths. That comes back to share

structure again too. And, and that's why it's important because you want to have a lower float, you want to have people that are committed longer term, because when you go to raise money again, remember most of these companies, whether in Australia or Canada, aren't making any money. They, they're spending money exploring and developing a

project. So I want to make sure that when they raise money in the future, that the capital costs are higher, which is good for me as a shareholder, less dilution. And, and a lot has to go. You know, we can use an example of an Australian company later if you want that again, I, I requested a year hold on the stock, even though it was only, or you can do a no hold, but not even a four month. I said, you know, everybody's holding their stock, It's locked

up for a year. It gives the company more room to run. It gives the company and the ability to build out their assets and raise capital at higher prices. So that's why we did that and.

What might that stock be? Kincora Copper, it's actually dualist and it's in the, it's on your exchange there in Australia and it's in on the TSTSXV in Canada. It's a prospect generator which you guys don't have a lot of in Australia. In the United States, we have, you know, more of those. It's a type of model and and it's a model that Rick Rule really pioneered 30 years ago and it increases your odds of success and making a discovery

with less dilution. Dilution is the the enemy of a of a junior trying to make a discovery. And it's, it's unavoidable when you've got yeah, like a, a small market cap and a very capital intensive, you know, binary kind of outcome on, on, on continuing exploration fund. So the prospect generator model, you try and farm it out to other parties to spend the exploration and, and you maintain a very, very low kind of spend at the head code itself.

Like why, why is this like this this like a like more prevalent in in North America than it is in Australia from from your perspective and. Yeah, I can't answer that question why you do that, except that maybe Australians like the the thrill of the chase even more. I mean, you still get that with a prospect generator.

But the difference is instead of raising money to drill your property, which you know, again doesn't always go the way you want it to and can take time, you're like, it's kind of like you said, you're joint venturing your property out, properties out to other people. And again, it's all about the people running the company. Just because you're a prospect generator model doesn't mean you're executing it properly.

Using Concord as an example again, you know, two of their projects are, yeah, two of their projects are joint ventured out to Anglo, a major mining company that's, you know, spending a lot of money on these that you would be a lot of dilution. But at the end of the day, they're giving up a big piece of the property if there's a discovery to that joint venture

partner. But being that Concord is looking for buried copper, gold porcheries, which can take time, it's great to have someone like Anglo with deep pockets who as a potential spender and into those projects of, you know, $90,000,000 or something like that. And they have several other projects joint ventured out with other companies. So next year they're going to see, you know, 345 properties drilled that aren't going to

dilute me as a shareholder. And what's great about Kincora is that it's also very unique for an Australian listed company. It's only got about 42,000,000 shares outstanding. We cleaned up the structure, you know 30% of that's owned by reporting insiders, people on

the board or management. And then like I said, Rick and I and a number of other North American investors that that have experience in this space, you know provided a four, $4 million of capital to them to and we put a year hold on our stock. So you have a float that's, you know, very tight, you have management and board that's aligned with a long term goal and you have a lot of drilling getting done next year that you know, again, there's no guarantee you're going to find something.

But again, in Concordance case, their technical teams, bar none. I mean, you're talking about guys discovered Katie, as you're talking about guys that were high up at New Crest before they were brought by Newmont. They know your backyard, they're Australian and they know in the Macquarie arc. So again, it's a great speculation, but I'm not making stock recommendations. I don't have a newsletter. I don't sell anything. I'm a professional investor and.

You know, I tell everybody in interviews that, you know, and I don't know how this pertains to your Australian markets, but I see it here in the North American markets that, you know, I try to have a position of, you know, roughly 12 stocks that I have a large position in. And again, I have other ones because I know people and I do do financings, but 12 companies that are my my core holdings and make up a bulk of my money

that's in that space. If you have too few companies, you know, again, you run the risk of there's still Mother Nature, there's luck, there's the overall markets. You know, you're not always in a bull market, so you want to have enough companies that you have multiple shots to win. I'm on the other hand, I see so many investors here that I meet at conferences that asked me to look at their portfolio and there's 90 stocks in their portfolio that they put it up

for their brokerage firm. Well, if you have a stock go from $0.15 to $20, that's great. But if you have 90 of those things, it's not going to affect your portfolio unless you know again, so, but a bull market does change that. But I like to follow a model where you don't have too many stocks so and, and you lower your risk.

So I don't know if this is helping you but. How? How do you spread your bets amongst those sort of 12 core names across commodities? Well, again, you know, if you're a, a retailer investor or not a professional, you want to get good advice from a broker or a a third party newsletter writer or show like yourselves, you want to, you know, we've got the Internet now. My daughter likes to tell me when I try to remember things and forget to lick it up on the Internet.

But you can research a lot of this stuff. Do your research. And as far as you know, everybody you know, again, your your natural resource. Polio should be a slice of your pie. It's not your whole pie and it's only, it really is for people that know what they're doing. That's why, again, I'm saying you shouldn't listen to me per SE. Well, you should do your own research. But I personally like to have a basket of companies in different

commodities. I like to, you know, I say 25% and I probably have because I'm a professional, I probably have 16 companies right now. And plus I think we're into a bull market. But 25% of those are prospect generators, which are again, are farming out their projects. And just because something's a prospect generator doesn't make it a good deal. It's how you format your projects. Who are your partners? What is the spend on those projects?

So there's, you know, out of probably 50-60 prospect generators, I know there's six or seven of them that I think you're making meaningful deals that that increase my odds because there's more money being spent on those projects. I also then I then I have the drill hole play.

I still like to be terrified. Then I'd go out and and drill something and, and you know, and usually it's a brownfields type project I'm looking for again with a good share structure and good management that has a past track record of success. So, you know, again, right now I have 3 or 4 companies that are looking for copper, gold. I've got a uranium company, I've got a worth company. I've got, you know, 4-4 or five prospect generators, probably four.

One of them is not really a prospect generator, Mark, but that that's My Portfolio. But just because it's My Portfolio doesn't mean it's the right portfolio for someone else. Sometimes when the prospect generated, when things go right, they pivot and they become not a prospect generator anymore. And yeah, the it's like, you know, it's about the the discovery that was had. But when does a prospect? And I actually, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to catch. You that's OK.

Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll let you finish, but I was just going to add when does a prospect generator go wrong? To the contrary. Well, I, I, I typically like what I call the hybrid prospect generator model, which is a company that's got a number of projects generated out, that's got companies spending, but they do spend some of their own money exploring their, you know, improving some of their 100% own

properties. And if they are lucky enough to make discovery, then they focus on that property. But again, I, I like the balance. I, I, I kind of like the hybrid and Concord is kind of like that, even though they've got most of their projects available for joint venture, they have their gold project which they're keeping 100% and they're going to advance that a little bit further down the food chain, do some of their own drilling.

You know, and normally a prospect generator does the early work and, you know, brings the company in to do the drilling. So in that case, Cancora is a, you know why I have several companies, Cancora Headwater gold, that's a prospect generator here in Nevada. And again, they're joint ventured out Headwater with Newmont, They've got Oceana gold on other projects. They've got Sentara as a 9% shareholder, their producer, but they have several projects that they're going to advance a

little bit further. So Concor and Headwater are two companies that are hybrid prospect generators. Get the best in both worlds. The the the to kind of like, you know, peel it, peel it back a little bit when you see when you see like the market retail enter more liquidity, a lot more volume in the lower end of town. What are your like? What are your instincts tell you to kind of lean in or to lean

back, Lean out. Well, right now I I think the time is to finance companies with good people and good share structure. I think this thing's got a lot further to run, although I think there'll be some pretty good hiccups along the way where people get scared out. Again, there's a whole different mentality of investing in junior resource stocks. If you're investing $5000 to make $10,000 and that's your goal, again, you can do that and you don't have to follow necessarily shear structure.

It's when you have bigger positions that you're not going to be able to trade and stuff. So in this market, I think, you know, it's a speculative market. I think things are going to keep going higher. You know, some of the stuff I would never want to own 9% of the company like I do in some of my companies. You know, doesn't mean they're not going to go up five fold than someone buying $10,000

worth. It just depends on what your goal is, and I guess you have to figure that out for yourself. Well, you often, you know, almost always encourage a a transaction, a corporate outcome. Is that the easiest way for for you to get at or do you sort of see plenty of the time you you managed to sell down as the company just grows into itself? Well, on a bull market you managed to sell down or you know, there's been bull market.

I mean, I say there hasn't been a bull market for 15 years, but obviously there was a lithium bull market. There's been different bull markets in that time. And commodities, the lithium stocks did really, really well from, you know, I don't know, up until two years ago. So four years ago, I guess 4 1/2 years ago, you know, the lithium stocks boomed. And like we talked about, I financed a company called Patriot Battery Metals at $0.16.

Later some Australian guys that, you know, came in and financed it up $0.40. And, and I was also involved in that financing. But that stock eventually went to $16.00 on a major discovery with a management team that's built a lithium company before. And I took profits along the way because again at $0.16, you know, I think I sold stock at $2.00 all the way up. But, you know, again, but I was still selling stock at, you know, 12 and 14. So yeah, it wasn't a transaction.

It's still, it's a tremendous asset. Lithium prices came back 90%. So the stock came all the way back to 250. Now it's starting to move back up with the lithium prices. And if lithium continues to improve, it'll probably be a $16.00 stock again. But, but again, yeah, it's not always a transaction. And but I'd like to see a transaction because the other thing I don't like is when guys are good developers or good exploration geologists try to put something into production

and become mine guys. The transition obviously doesn't always work. So you, you really play by these, these kind of rules. Jeff, I'm, I'm curious to hear if you, if you look back in your career, when did you sort of

land on this kind of model coming out the 90s into that bull run into to the 2000s? Have you been, you know, playing by the same sort of script since then? Or how did it all come about? Well, I think it comes about

over learning over time. I've always tried to, you know, but you can say this, but I, you guys don't know me, but here in the North American market, especially in Canada, I have a, you know, pretty good reputation of following through on what I say I'm going to do, being a good team player. And, and again, that's what's important to me. It's not who makes the most money in the business, it's having a good reputation and also making money along the way. Obviously that's part of the fun.

But so I've learned from experience, you know, when I first came in the market, I was 26 years old and it was a bull market. It was 1994 or something like that. And I thought I found, you know, I didn't know why I went to college. I thought, hey, I don't need to go to college. Everything I buy double S in three weeks. I thought I found a broken slot machine. I didn't realize I was in a bull market.

So I, you know, I learned and I got lucky that, you know, my partner and I ended up starting an oil and gas company with AI. Don't know, a $20 million market cap When we took it public and we sold it 99 for 480 million. There was a lot of luck involved in that too. So I but again, I I thought it was a broken slot machine. I didn't know that the resource market didn't always act that way.

So what, what, what, what? Was the sort of play there, was it just sort of picking up a bunch of land and then the the cycle kind of changed? Or how did it sort of play out in your favor? The play in my oil and gas company or the play in the the reversible market?

The oil and gas play well. Well, that was funny that, you know, we, we were working with a company that was actually one of the most successful companies listed in, in over time, I think the stock went from originally $0.75 to $10 back to $0.75 because of all the, you know, I learned that, that a lot of the people that are big shareholders, even when the assets were incredible, they sold their stock and, and tried to joint venture assets out to their own benefit to their other

companies. But eventually that company went back from 10 to $0.75. The new management came in because the assets were uncountable and went to $200 a share. And because of that company, over a 10 year period, because of that company, we got wind of another oil and gas plant in Wyoming. And we were young. I mean, we were 2829 years old. And we ended up staking as much ground on that hiring land.

And you know, it's a bad episode of a cable, you know, which staked everything because we realized these two NASDAQ companies were and we leveraged ourselves to the tilt. You know, we had so much land. We didn't, you know, you know, and luckily we brought management in it. I mean, the board was a bunch of friends and that, you know, again, we learned through experience, but we brought management and it would actually run a, a, a NASDAQ public

company and retired. But he'd looked at what we had and said, this is pretty incredible. And it was really those guys that 2 1/2 years later were able to sell the company through development for, for, you know, $18.00 a share or something. So again, it wasn't total skill, it was a learning experience at 29 years old. And at that time I thought, wow, I'm going to retire.

We were the largest shareholders of the company, but again you get bit by the bug and here I am but 30 years later still doing this. That's awesome. Jeff, last question for you. What's your your your most your most controversial view in the resource speculating sector? My most controversial view? I have a lot of controversial views. You want me to rank my most controversial? You can just give me one.

I don't know the people's names would be involved in that, you know, you know, you know, my most controversial view is if you're really trying to develop an, a, a, a junior resource company that you know, and, and you really are that's, you know, if you're not just playing the, and really this, this hasn't

changed since the gold rush. And I don't know your Australian history, but the gold rush here in California that built San Francisco. I mean, you know, Mark Twain has the famous quote, you know, gold mines, a hole in the ground with a liar standing over it. What a lot of people don't tell you is Mark Twain actually sold mining claims before he came up with that quote and and ended up writing for the newspaper. But yeah, I mean, the bottom line is the Wild West, this

stuff. So if I my most controversial view is I think they should go back to the year hold, I think all the exchanges and say, look, if you're going to get warrant coverage, you at least have to be able to hold the stock for a year. I mean, it would take the entire Mickey Mouse speculation out of it and you'd actually have people having to make smart decisions. And the year is really not that long a period of time, especially when you're getting some sort of warrant coverage.

So that would be very controversial because most people in the Canadian markets or the Australian markets don't

want to be locked up so. I love it. That's that's one I think we are very well aligned on. Jeff, really appreciate you coming on the show sharing how you think about the markets, how you think about investing in the junior space. And yeah, thank you for for sharing that with our audience. Well, I hope this is somewhat helpful. And again, just to reiterate, I'm not giving investment advice.

Any companies I mentioned or companies that have a large shareholder in and I probably consult for you should do your own due diligence. Look at stuff and and really soak as much information as you can from shows like yourselves and realize that you know you're you're at you're investing, is investing in, in, in earnings and dividends. This is educated speculation, so make sure you educate yourself.

Beautiful. Thanks so much, Jeff. Love the way he thinks about markets, about the world almost

as much as I love our partners. Mate, a big thank you to focus the platform by market tech Sandvik ground support. I mark the conference is coming up very soon, next week actually, we're going to be in Sydney, so check that one out. And last but not least, Intralinks. Who to root? Who to root? Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD is an idiot. If you thought any of this was anything other than entertainment, you're an idiot and you need to read out a disclaimer.