Tom,
I cannot help but strongly agree with your remarks about both Russ and Claude. I owe Russ the most gigantic debt of gratitude for having made me aware of the extreme value of the juniors/explorers 3 years back. Claude's newsletter is the best of its kind that I know of and has helped me make a lot of money.
That said, I believe that value opportunities 2 years ago were much more extreme than they are today. I remember buying huge amounts of CBD @ $C.70-.80, BAY @ C$1.25, BGI @ C$.15, ELD @ C$.25, and FGX, GBG, even MNP at 1/3 the price (do I sound like an old man talking about "the good old days"? <g>). These exploration companies already had large, known deposits being valued at something like $3 to $20 an ounce, mostly in relatively safe countries. All you had to do was wait for investors to discover them.
At this point, I consider most explorers to be more like leveraged versions of HUI stocks, but with the possibility of further discoveries. Their trading cycles sometimes differ from the HUI stocks which provides additional trading opportunities.
My personal records show that my profits (almost entirely from PMs) were 24% from all of 2001, 100% from the 1st half of 2002, 10% from the 2nd half of 2002, and 10% from the 1st half of 2003. The 1st half of 2002 was the anomaly, otherwise it looks like a consistent 10% every 6 months. No complaints, but I also don't think I would have done nearly as well without a lot of trading (despite my many miscalculations). There is still good money to be made as I believe that this is now a bull market in gold with many turns along the way, but I have adjusted my expectations downward.
Regards,
vt |
