Traveller's photo quiz

This was taken by your humble scribe about three hours ago.

A pretty (in)famous landmark in South America.  Know where it is too? Good, so answers on a postcard to

Otto Rock
Behind the bike sheds
LatAm

Update: Want another clue? Ok, this photo was taken at a different location on the same road.

Translation: Your author.

The Friday OT: Limp Bizkit; Take a look around (theme from Mission Impossible II)

Movie soundtrack songs usually kinda semi-suck. This one doesn't suck, not even a tiny little bit.

And not only does it seriously rock, the video is great fun too. All from the time when Fred Durst & Limp Bizkit had something to say musically...seems too long ago now. Please you to be enjoying killer track thank you.

Chart of the day is...

...copper, dailies.

The new normal. Have a good day, people.

On the road

Things will be light, not vacant, for the next few days as your author goes traipsing round bits of South America that he hasn't traipsed before. And I know the Jack prose coming up has made it to this humble corner of cyberspace previously, but it's just so damned breathtaking I can't resist going with it again. Catch you later.

"...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!""

The Street Sweeper does its bit to alert about the Portage Resources (POTG.pk) scam

Here's the article, go see for yourself.

And yeah, your humble scribe is quoted. All good clean fun

Marin Katusa: Fact and fiction

This, from his latest heap of laughability linked here, is fiction. Your author highlights in red.

Investment Analyst Marin Katusa is the senior editor of Casey's Energy Report, Casey's Energy Opportunities and Casey's Energy Confidential. He left a successful teaching career to pursue what has proven an equally successful—and far more lucrative—career analyzing and investing in junior resource companies. With a stock pick record of 19 winners in a row—a 100% success rate last year—Marin's insightful research has made his subscribers a great deal of money. Using his advanced mathematical skills, he created a diagnostic resource market tool that analyzes and compares hundreds of investment variables. Through his own investments and his work with the Casey team, Marin has established a network of relationships with many of the key players in the junior resource sector in Vancouver. In addition, he is a member of the Vancouver Angel Forum, where he and his colleagues evaluate early seed investment opportunities. Marin also manages a portfolio of international real estate projects.

This, the chart of his Top Pick for 2010 Ram Power (RPG.to), is fact:

That's Jan 1st 2010 to today, folks. Look like a winner to you?

My thanks to the many people who have sent in the above link to The Energy Report. Your humble scribe is heartened to note these days that there are more and more people calling BS on this snake-oil salesman. And as more than one of them noted in their mails, advanced math skills my ass. I know the BCSC is looking more closely too so here you go guys, he's now openly lying on his pump material and you can get him on that. DYODD

Gold-Ore Resources (GOZ.to) quarter

Gold-Ore Resources (GOZ.to) reported last night and the numbers are solid. Here's the link to the NR, here's the more detailed info of the financial & MDA PDF, here are a few charts updating the numbers.

By the way...

....your humble scribe....

...invites subscribers...

...to check back at the forecast we made for GOZ.to in IKN108 and then the slight upwards adjustment in IKN110. Happily, we were damned close to reality and all the rest we noted in those two issues is reaffirmed here. Hey, y'know what they say about stopped clocks....

Chart of the day is...

...the SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GDR), 12 months.

It's a new record. Whoop de doo.

Anyway, when all this stupidity about the US debt is behind us, expect gold to get jawboned down a bit. Might be over 1.6k by then, though.

Question of the day WIN

Jesse over at The American Coffee House made me laugh out loud with this, so it gets an airing here.

Question of the Day: Does Dennis Gartman really post at the Kitco forum under the name PwnedNoob?

Go see all the post by clicking through via this link.

snippets and snappets

Why is Malaga Inc (MLG.to) failing to rally into the new highs for tungsten prices? Probably because production numbers at Pasto Bueno suck. Here's the updated monthly production chart that uses the numbers filed to Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) yesterday, and April/May output at MLG.to totally but totally sucks. Whatever happened to all that talk about upgrades and higher thruput, dudes?

Bear Creek Mining (BCM.v) files suit against Peru over Santa Ana. Logical enough move from the corporate perspective, don't hold your breath on this one, though.

An excellent interview with the head of Colombia's Large Scale Mining government department. Lots of insight on the state of play in the country. Spanish language and I can't be bothered to translate it today.

Hugo Chávez talks about his cancer. It's not colon cancer, it's not stomach cancer and these two quotes as well. 

"I'm in the second stage of the (treatment for the) illness, an evaluation organ by organ and other factors. I mustn't give any more details." 


"I have an optimum level of recovery at nearly a month after the first operation."

So now you know.

UPDATE: Did you see the Ron Paul Ben Bernanke show too? There were a couple of moments back there that made me laugh out loud. Great entertainment, even funnier that people think it's serious.

UPDATE 2: Market Commentary found it, so let's add to the fun by sticking it here too.

As Market Commentary says, "Not enough comedy posted today."

A little-known junior silver mining factoid

The ticker symbol for junior silver miner U.S. Silver (USA.v) on the Frankfurt stock exchange, Germany, is QE2.

Just sayin'.

The Banana Republic July 2011 Sweepstakes

With Keiko Fujimori appearing on Peru morning political radio shows today and giving it a big whine and whinge about how her father is a high risk cancer victim (even though doctors have clearly stated that he is not a terminal case at all), IKN opens up the big will-he-or-won't-he question to a wider world* with this chart:

Meanwhile, the chances of Peru remaining a Banana Republic for the next five years, irrespective of the measures taken by incoming Prez Ollanta Humala, are firmly locked in at one hundred percent. DYODD, dudette. DYODD, dude.

*that doesn't give a toss

Chart of the day is...

..the five day chart of scam stock Portage Resources (POTG.pk).

The only people that know when a pump'n'dump scam changes from pump mode to dump mode are the scumball criminals running the show. The rest of you are playing doubledogdare with your own money. You make money and it's dumb luck, nothing else. In fact it's more than dumb to be playing around with these shows in the first place, the very best thing to do is avoid by a few nautical miles and go find a decent company to work with.

So anyway, yesterday Paul Luna decided to cash in a few of his multimillion shares and run away with your cash. It's up to you to decide if you'll let him do it again. After all, it's your money and you can do with it want you want, including donating it to a thief. DYODD.

Ecuador difficult for mining deals? Now there's a shockah..

Taken from Bloomberg wire service today (sorry no link but source impeccable):

Wire: BLOOMBERG News (BN) Date: Jul 12 2011  16:09:24
Ecuador May Sign Mine Contracts with Kinross, Iamgold This Month

By Nathan Gill
     July 12 (Bloomberg) -- Ecuador said it may sign new mining
contracts as soon as this month with Kinross Gold Corp. and
Iamgold Corp.
     Contract talks so far have been “very difficult,”
Ecuador’s Minister of Non-Renewable Natural Resources Wilson
Pastor said today at a conference in Quito.

Link to Company News:{IMG CN CN }
Link to Company News:{K CN CN }
For Related News and Information:

x

Gold Bullion Development (GBB.v) defends normal industry standards

Rant alert

And thus your humble scribe received a mail from Frank J Basa, President, CEO and Chairman of Gold Bullion Development Corp (GBB.v). Mr Basa wrote to complain about this post featured on IKN dated July 8th (i.e. last week) that pointed out how GBB.v was smearing its drill results to try and make them out to be something they're not. And oh-amaze-me-again, his company is pumped by that prize fool and scumball liar, Louis 'Lobito' James of Casey Research

So to Basa's mail. As well as requesting that the post be removed from the blog (you gotta be freakin' joking, dude), Basa defended the NR about his drilling by explaining that (and we quote) "What we do is normal industry standards."

That was interesting to take in context, and the context is the accusation of 'smearing' (i.e. taking a short, higher grade intersect, adding in the worthless rock around the hit and making it look like a company has a whole big wide meterage of economic rock on its hands when in fact it's all a big crock). In the main news release of GBB.v in question (though there are plenty of others displaying the same level of BS) the headline offered to the world was that GBB.v had found "80 metres of 1.36g/t gold". But in fact, if you run the breakdown of that 80m intersect through Brent Cook's handy-dandy drill hole interval calculator, you'll see that what GBB.v really has is one single metre of a vein hit at 322.5m downhole which grades 89.83g/t gold, and all the other 79m of width come to a piffling, measley and totally uneconomic 0.24g/t gold. Screenshot for your pleasure:

This is a classic, typical example of smearing, ladies and gentlemen. That 79m of 0.24g/t would cost far too much money to bring it overground for the tiny amount of gold it contains, but that doesn't stop Basa and his crew from making out that it's all lovely crunchy goodness. And if you think a major mining company is up for clearing away a third of a kilometre of hard rock in order to access that 89g/t vein that's a metre wide, I'd really like to show you a bridge I have for sale right now. Low deposit, friendly credit terms, low interest rate, call now.

I digress. This smearing is what Frank J Basa of GBB.v defends as "normal industry standards" and that's really the whole point, isn't it?

• It's normal industry standards to have 1000 prospects and deposits out there and only ever get one of those 1000 into production.
• It's normal industry standards to take a crappy drill intersection and make it look like something else.
• It's normal industry standards to pull the wool over the eyes of people who know no different.
• It's normal industry standards to rely on paid pumpers with no sense of geology to promote companies to the masses.
• It's normal industry standards to regard your own patch of moose pasture as the next Voisey's Bay.

What passes for "normal" in the wild'n'whacky world of Canadian junior mining isn't normal where the vast majority of humanity operates, namely in bleedin' reality mate, so we thank Frank Basa for his solid defence of normal industry practices. Meanwhile we at IKN will continue to search out and recommend companies that go far beyond such mediocrity. We prefer to reco those who give existing and potential shareholders something far above the crummy Canadian norm and more akin to respect and proper treatment. GBB.v is highly unlikely to be included in the list.

Know any gold miners with Sweden exposure?

Because if you do, it's fair to say that margins are improving for their business.

UPDATE: What? You mean people are actually bothered about fundamentals these days and not just charts, "spidey senses" and oogabooga we-all-gonna-die stories?

Hoodathunkit, eh?

Endeavour Silver (EDR.to) (EXK) and Great Panther Silver (GPR.to) (GPL) 2q11 production critique in a straightforward and short sentence

They sucked.

Here's Endeavour's (EDR.to) quarterly numbers as published yesterday morning....

....and the quarter just gone is lacklustre compared, which showed itself in the pressure on the stock yesterday.

Meanwhile, even more sucky is the NR just out from Great Panther (GPR.to) that you can find here. From the data here's the silver production evolution....

...but even more interesting is this paragraph in the same NR:

The market for high grade precious metals concentrate sales became more difficult during the quarter as a result of a global surplus of concentrates due to the general upsurge in mine production in response to higher metal prices. Great Panther has secured a contract to sell the Guanajuato concentrates through a trader to an overseas smelter. However, the smelter has an oversupply of concentrates and has reduced the quantity of purchases, such that inventories of unsold concentrates at Guanajuato were higher than normal at the end of the quarter. While this will influence second quarter revenue, it is considered to be a short-term issue and negotiations with alternative buyers are being pursued.

So GPR.to has a whole bunch of unsold inventory from the quarter. Fair enough, but why haven't we heard anything like this from any other junior recently? A question of lower quality concentrates getting rejected by the market first, perhaps? DYODD. 

Disclosure: No position in either stock, cos little leagues get tiring after a while.

Chart of the day is....

...a return to the Gold/Silver Ratio, as after last week's airing, reader TL asked for a close up on more recent movements.

Here you go, TL, make of that what you will.

What I did tonight

Watched some wonderful TV

Good to have you back, Pulga.

Market Narrative

A second call to follow the site linked here, just right for trading junkies into junior miners. Market Narrative is good thoughtfood. I RSS it, you do it your way.

And who is Francis Dollarhyde?

Copper Fox (CUU.v): Where's your sense of humour, longs?

And in a strange turn of events, the market decides that valuing a very low grade copper property in the middle of freakin' nowhere up in the land of frost at 10c/Lb in situ is a bit rich. NR here.

CUU.v has more to drop, folks.

Peregrine Metals (PGM.to): A nice way to start the week

Here's the NR, here's a paste-out:

BILLINGS, MT and VANCOUVER, BC, Jul 11 (MARKET WIRE)
-- 
Stillwater Mining Company (NYSE: SWC) ("Stillwater") and Peregrine Metals
Ltd. (TSX: PGM) ("Peregrine") today announced that they have entered into
a definitive agreement (the "Agreement") pursuant to which Stillwater, by
way of a Canadian plan of arrangement, will acquire all of the
outstanding shares of Peregrine. Under the terms of the Agreement,
Stillwater will exchange 0.08136 shares of Stillwater common stock and
US$1.35 in cash for each common share of Peregrine. Based on the closing
share price of Stillwater common stock as of July 8, 2011, which was
US$23.72, the Agreement places a value on Peregrine common shares of
US$3.28 (CDN$3.16) per share. This represents a total purchase price of
US$487.1 million, and assumes the exercise of all outstanding Peregrine
options and warrants resulting in a CDN$34.4 million (US$35.7 million)
contribution to treasury, and implying a net equity value of US$451.4
million. Upon completion of the transaction, Stillwater and Peregrine
shareholders will own approximately 89.5% and 10.5%, respectively, of the
combined company on a fully diluted basis. 

Your author is long PGM.to and at the moment it's the only pure copper exploration play we recommend at The IKN Weekly. And it's now officially a big win, which is good. DYODD, dude.

UPDATE: Whoosh!

Yup, when one of your positions goes up 240% like that, it counts as a win. FWIW a Flash update went out to subscribers concerning PGM.to at the bell this morning to discuss the news and strategy going forward.

Minefinders (MFN) (MFL.to) 2q11 production

Minerfinders (MFN) (MFL.to) just came out with its 2q11 production numbers. Find the NR here, find two pretty charts generated by your author below:

Two words on the numbers this morning; In Line. Not bad numbers not a blowout, the upside is that if this keeps up, MFN might start getting a reputation for reliability. That really would be refreshing. It's noticeable though that these days MFN is a silver producer with gold credits, not the other way around. The company says that's due to the rocks its been putting on the pads happens to be richer in silver than the normal for Dolores and I say OK fine, just tell us when the mix is going to change again.

Chart of the day is....

...gold futures, 5 day chart.

Somebody forgot to tell gold that QE2 was over and it has to go down now. That's according to the same dumbasses in suits that told us housing wasn't in a bubble.

The IKN Weekly, out now

IKN114 has just been sent to subscribers. It has 11,939 words, most of them spelled correctly (and yeah, I know I've used that line before...waddya want on a Sunday evening, originality?).

Large-Scale Mining to Test Rights of Nature in Ecuador

This links through to an interesting article written by Carlos Zorrilla, one of the key figures in the protests in the Intag region of Ecuador that stopped the erstwhile Ascendant Copper in its rather dirty tracks. The article is anti-mining and as such well worth a read by all sides of the debate, because it sets out in clear terms what the anti-mining brigade in Ecuador see as happening on a national political scale and the grassroots opposition that is developing against the Correa government's stance on mining.

Go read it all (here's the link again), but to get your mood on here's paragraph one:

Ecuador is the only Andean nation without any large-scale metallic mines (such as gold and copper). This unique state of affairs is about to be tested in the next few weeks when the Correa government signs exploitation agreements with Chinese and Canadian transnational miners looking to exploit the country's copper and gold reserves. More importantly, the legitimacy of the nation's Constitution, which grants nature rights, will also be tested. 

CONTINUES HERE