Safer For Metals: Miners’ Greater Cash

TCRs, thank you for what is 
a 12th year of our subscriber 
reports. -- Thom Calandra

Questions this New Year of 2024

A brief year-launch catch-up for us here at The Calandra Report:

1. How long before gold‘s spot and futures prices notch fresh and all-time highs in USD?
   Soon, I believe. This week looks in the cards. Still, refer after 6 p.m. ET to this futures link (MarketWatch) to check how gold opens in Asia, then draw your own answers as you scan the continuous futures chart pictured here.
2. Saf(er) commodities-linked choices for January 2024? Platinum at $1,006 an ounce is twice the “buy” as any precious metals. I buy it through Aberdeen Platinum Trust, which is actual platinum; through platinum coins; and through two stocks of platinum metals mine projects in RSA South Africa: real-deal Ivanhoe Mines IVN IVPAF and speculative Platinum Group Metals PLG PTM. See platinum futures contract here please.
3. Gold? Silver? I own one silver explorer whose shares are minced, Summa Silver SSVR SSVRF, and after a second visit to its Hughes silver project at Tonopah, Nevada, I continue to hold its dieting shares. Next door, and faring much better, in fact, profitably for us as an investment here at home, is sit-and-wait West Vault Mining WVM WVMDF, whose sparsely traded shares mostly get the cold shoulder from exploration drilling poised developer.We also own many, many pounds of silver, junk silver coins, silverware, silver sets.As TCRs know, I prefer gold and have at least since London 1999. Still, the physical trust I own used to be called Central Fund (Ottawa repository) and is now Sprott Gold-Silver Physical Trust CEF CEF.A. It is 60% gold and 40% silver. We own a bunch of gold coins, nuggets and so on, too.Also in my prized possession are two mid-tier producers (200,000 to 500,000 ounces) with growing revenue as gold’s price continues north: Alamos Gold AGI and Victoria Gold VGCX VITFF. As a basement investor who almost always purchases investments of any type when they price out as ‘cheap-heap,’ I bought more AGI today-Tuesday, January 4, 2024, as mining equities take it on the chin. Alamos Gold is the gold star among fast-growing, multiple cash-reaping mines in Canada and Mexico, and I expect a dividend increase this year. Victoria Gold‘s Eagle Gold Mine is seen as more speculative by some, but its approx. 175,000 ounces yearly can only ride formidably if no weather, power or labor issues interfere.
4. Saf(er) specs among non-producing miners? There are few; one must accept wild swings in the values of small (sub-$200 million) explorer-developers I cherish, and hold them for years. The few I rate as having been profitable for us here at home do not whack their shareholders with continuous equity financings; these are led by Xtra-Gold Resources XTG XTGRF, which has been gathering income for about a decade from its clockwork sale of Kibi Gold Belt alluvial ounces, of which there are many. Jim Longshore, CEO, co-founder and hands-on country manager, today landed in Ghana for one of his five month-long stays there. I expect groundbreaking exploration results from its most recent drilling at Boomerang in Kibi.Contango Ore CTGO and its Kinross Gold partnership for mining in Alaska will see sturdy gold sales as soon as spring 2024. CTGO shares on NYSE-AMEX behave like leftover Baked Alaska and look cheap-heap. I have been adding lower and lower-priced shares to the mix (December, November 2023).
5. Copper? Yes. The active futures contract shows $3.88 a pound. Copper, I say, deserves to be precious as a global growth glue. Ivanhoe Mines is our largest resource holding with about 82,000 mostly long-held shares. I recently purchased sister-brother-co Ivanhoe Electric IE. See report please. I also own a small amount of Yukon developer Western Copper & Gold WRN.
6. Outside of gold, copper, platinum? DHT Maritime Holdings‘ DHT oil and nat-gas carriers are amidst what will be and has been a decade of steady and in some cases spectacular growth of its fleet, its quarterly dividends and its lease rates. Houthi-rebel attacks in Red Sea shipping lanes lend what likely will be sharp price swings in the NYSE-traded stock.

 

— Thom Calandra