₪ David Pescod's Late Edition December 19, 2007
LATIN AMERICAN MINERALS (V-LAT) $0.80 +0.15
Latin American Minerals has a chart like that of many junior miners over the last while...it’s been ugly. Yesterday though, it proved that things still can go up in this kind of climate as they announced they intersected visible gold in its drilling on its Paso Yobai gold project in Paraguay.
According to the news release, Dr. Waldo Perez, Sr. VP Exploration reports that “the mineralized zone is hosted in a 6 meter interval from 86 to 92m and consists of visible gold in quartz-carbonate veins and stockwork…”
“All holes intersected the mineralized zone ranging in width from 3 to 10m. This confirms that the high grade gold found on surface with visible gold...has continuity at depth and is not supergene.” The announcement continues, “This has profound impact in the tonnage potential of the Paso Yobai camp since we defined the gold bearing mineralized zone along strike for at least 4km.”
This is pretty interesting stuff and more than a few people think Latin American has a more than competent management team. Which is the good news.
The bad news is visible gold can mean something ... or nothing at all when the final results are out. Those actual results are expected sometime in January, so I suspect when those numbers do come out, this will once again become a story of the day.
Latin American had been one of the top picks of Kevin MacLean of Sentry Select, but lately it doesn’t matter whether its been Latin American or Teck Cominco or Breakwater, it’s been that ugly for anything in mining.
For those looking to see what visible gold actually looks like in a drill core, Latin American has just added some pictures (go to their website at www.latinamericanminerals.com). It gives you a first hand idea of what “visible gold” actually looks like, but of course trying to guess what the gold could grade just by looking at it, is more an art than a science and as experienced mining folk will tell you, these cores could run just about anywhere. But it sure does look nice, don’t you think?
We find it interesting the number of mining folks that figure this play now has to be watched because of the tonnage implications...With potentially four kilometers of length so far and up to eight kilometers traceable, tonnage could be there...the question is, is the grade?
LULULEMON ATHLETICA (T-LLL) $44.40 -0.22
We make one of those rather silly mistakes ... with nine days to go before Christmas this past Sunday we decided to go to West Edmonton Mall to do a little Christmas shopping. Like how crazy was that to go shopping at an enormous place like that at the busiest time of year, with all those frenzied shoppers?
But for different reasons, we were off to the Lululemon store, a store that we had written up once or twice before when they became an IPO because so many assistants, gal friends and the like, swore by their clothes. It was quite a shopping experience we went through...they didn’t even have the name of the store out front, just simply its symbol! Once inside it was like a feeding-frenzy and half the shelves if not three quarters were simply empty.
The place was packed, at times you could barely move. Obviously a popular phenomenon. Inside, we met several neighbors and women folk that are the type that love to shop for fashion and they all told us similar stories. The quality was top notch, you had to go their frequently because they were always getting new material and they just loved the clothes!
The other thing we noticed was that while you go past many stores offering 25% or 50% off, once inside Lululemon, you’d swear they’d taken the opposite tactic and decided to double the price on their clothes if not triple. There was nothing in there that was cheap.
Anyway, it was obviously a story we should have followed up after the IPO after all we knew, but don’t be surprised if in the New Year, we follow up more special interest stories that are not involved with natural resources.
In the new reality, suddenly Alberta-based oil and gas companies (particularly the gassy ones) don’t have the interest they used to have with low gas prices (unless this changes of course) and much higher royalty rates.
Also in the mining sector we’ve seen lots of junior companies destroyed and their ability like many of the gassy stocks, to raise money in this kind of market, has just gone out the window. So come the New Year, more special situation stories and hopefully we can find some analysts with some hot hands in the different sectors out there.
A sign of the times! Today in the National Post as most days, they give a list of stocks and other financial instruments that are hitting new highs and those that are hitting new lows. We’ve mentioned repeatedly how ugly its been and one wonders how soon it’s going to be over.
Today, we see 9 new highs and 86 new lows.
When ratios get at extended numbers like that, you wouldn’t be surprised to be too far away from the bottom ... one hopes! Traditionally when things are ugly and stocks sells off, that’s the time you are supposed to be buying mutual funds and your favorite stories, hoping to get them cheap as folks try and find the bottom, but one still wonders just how much longer this asset-backed credit mess will hang on for.
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