Personal Message | Purchases-Sales

Returning from time off: 
Adirondacks, Hudson Valley,
Manhattan.

Next fundamental The Calandra Report 
in several days (next week). More below.

First the Purchases-Sales …

TCRs, briefly: I sold my Victoria Gold VGCX shares, some held for four-plus years; the recently added shares were speculative, acquired after the Eagle Gold Mine disruption in Yukon.

The shares, sold this week, were all deeply in the loss column.

I am finding much anxiety in the sales as I care for the leadership team at Victoria and consider myself a friend of CEO John McConnell, of his wife, Tara Christie, of Banyan Gold BYN, Jasmine Sangria, Adam Melnyk, Paul Gray, Mark Ayranto and other members of their teams.

As I transmitted to John and Tara, I’ll either be buying them back cheaper, or dearer, and either is OK with me.

I am finding it difficult to separate personal feelings from sound investing. Proof that like you all, TCRs, I am human.

I also will be selling this week, and-or have sold, three-quarters of our shares of long-held Tara’s Banyan Gold, also Yukon but not physically affected by the Eagle failure.

My concern is that regulatory and financial challenges in the territory will continue to batter the region’s mining community. As with VGCX, I will in future be replacing the BYN BYAGF shares either dearer or cheaper. As stated here, I have been to the two companies’ properties three times over the years.

The money from these trades, 75% less money than, say, 8 weeks ago, went into Xtra-Gold Resources XTG XTGRF and Aberdeen Platinum Trust PPLT.

… And The Personal

My wife and I spent time with family and with friends who are like family — all in New York state.

Maura and I stayed with Xtra-Gold’s James Longshore and his wife, Mariah Casserly, at their splendidly rustic cabin at Saranac in the Adirondacks. Now I can say that I have been to the XTG Ghana properties five times and to the mountain cottage once.

We also spent a couple of days with cousin Peter Calandra and his wife, Nadine Thomas, in the Hudson Valley. We attended a jazz-blues performance that composer and piano player Peter played in Gardiner. Nadine is a master gardener; Peter is a well known New Age and jazz and blues composer — films, 21 albums, and much work on Broadway. See more here please.

Then, to NYC to visit the sobering yet expansive 9-11 Museum and Memorial downtown. Also: the Metropolitan Museum; a kick-bum Bway play, Stereophonic — a 3-hour rock and roll studio biopsy that this year won the Tony Award for best drama.

We did not know until we saw the powerful play that much of the action takes place in Sausalito at a famous old recording studio (The Plant?) — a short bike ride from where we live in Tiburon, California.

Also: a visit and brunch (Rue 57) with a now 90-year-old former SF biotech exec who is near and dear to us, Paul Freiman. Paul and his wife, Anna, now live on the upper East Side. But not too upper.

Yeah, and getting drenched in two downpours. Seeing my high-school mate Anthony (Tony), at Brooklyn Diner on 43rd Street off Times Square. Tony is a rocker himself and just attended Green Day at Citifield in Queens and The Doobie Brothers’ 50th anniversary show at Madison Square Garden. He’s also a NY Mets fan, as am I.

“Aging is not for sissies.” — Attributed to Paul Freiman’s late cousin, Ethyl.

Neither is investing these days.

Still, I had a little time to think on this 8-day visit.

I am going through some light (I hope) health challenges that have me scheduled for tests back here at home.

I am at the same time trying to consolidate our The Calandra Report coverage and our own investment ownership. Too many companies, too many of the fierce downs, ups and downs. Way too much anxiety, weight loss, lack of focus. You get it.

Jim of XTG has a suggestion for reducing The Calandra Report map. Please stay tuned for that.

Your queries always get a response from this corner.

I still believe, and have for a l-o-o-o-n-g time, that the safest way (is there one?) to achieve way-above-average investment returns is through metals, real estate, crude-oil shipping.

I still see the reciprocal gold theory shoving aside the tremendous successes of non-mining Fortune 1000 companies in favor of gold, copper, silver, platinum, zinc, tungsten, nickel, even molybdenum. See: Reciprocating Those Blue Chips.

Regarding the purchases, I am preparing, after seeing yet another quarter of decade-long gold income and zero dilution from Xtra-Gold earlier this week, to boost our XTGRF stake above 100,000 shares. Just have to find the cash.

See XTG’s Q2 — a gold resource upgrade likely this year for Kibi Gold Project in Ghana.

We also here at home have our largest and longest-held holding, Africa’s Ivanhoe Mines IVN IVPAF (83.500 shares approx.), doing copper backflips one day, and China swan-diving the next.

If need be, as I said, to reduce the size of our map, I will consider dispatching, not Ivanhoe, but other small holdings in order to build larger stakes in XTG, PPLT, EMX Royalty and DHT Maritime Holdings DHT. Still, I may take off the table a couple thousand shares of IVN IVPAF, some held since 2003 as a private-co — in the interests of raising capital to smooth out our trek up (or down?) Mount Olympus. I will inform our The Calandra Report subscribers beforehand if that occurs.

Call all of this in the interests of peace of mind and larger pieces of mines I believe in.

Bear (no pun here) with me.

— Your Thom Calandra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John, Tara, Jasmine, just a note to say I am retreating from the VGCX shares, for now, and the BYN shares. SOME I have had, most I have had for 4 plus years. I’ll either be buying them back cheaper, or dearer, and either is ok with me. I feel deeply for all of you. I am finding it difficult — lotta anxiety of late — to separate personal feelings from sound investing. Proof that like you all, I am human. xo xo TC