Vancouver, British Columbia, December 11, 2010 - Midas Letter Report - Drill Intercepts Make Gold Shares Go Up - There is a basic fact of mining investment that many investors fail to embrace, and geologists loathe. And the fact is that good drill results make shares go up, regardless of the context of geology. An excellent case-in-point is Seafield Resources (TSX.V:SFF), which last week announced a drill interception of 449 meters grading 1.29 grams per tonne gold including a 23.95 metre segment grading 9.18 grams per tonne gold. The shares closed the day at $0.23, and opened the next morning at $0.35, touched a high of $0.77, before settling at the end of the day at $0.55. The stock traded 70 million shares, which amounted to 29% of the day's volume on the TSX Venture Exchange.
Seafield has (or had, rather) 47.9 million warrants and options, all of which were issued between $0.10 and $0.25, which would go a long way towards explaining why 70 million shares traded only took the stock into the $0.60 range. The stupendous volume and stellar intercept immediately drew critics, primarily geologists, who warned that the deposit had limited geological merit, and that the drill hole was essentially anomalous.
Now as widely regarded geologist Brent Cook of Exploration Insights correctly asserts in his piece, "Beware of Geologists", geology is "as much an art as a science."
He goes on to caution: "As most of what is of interest to explorationists is hidden under dirt, rocks and water, they're usually dealing with only a small sampling of the data required to "know" what really lies below the surface. Interpreting this limited, and often contradictory, data then becomes an exercise in "seeing the unknown" through the crystal ball of one's own experience. In other words, making an educated, or as is all too often the case, an uneducated guess."
Which demonstrates succinctly one of the catalysts of the herd instinct, a critical component of human nature, itself arguably more important than geology when it comes to successful investing. If a result is perceived to be good, then the enthusiasm generated by that result will manifest itself in the desire to own that result. So it doesn't matter if the Miraflores deposit, that is the subject of Seafield's stupendous drill hole press release, is characterized by the fact that "Drilling, mapping, and underground sampling have essentially defined the limits of the body at about 250 meters by 280 meters."
According to Cook's own statements, this is either an educated or uneducated guess. In either case, nobody cares. As investors, our goal is to make money from our investments. That's it. Nothing more. So if the share price goes up to $0.77, and I can sell what I bought at $0.35 for, let's cut it off at $0.70, then I've just about doubled my money, minus fees and/or commissions.
Beware of geologists indeed, for they are in the business of being right, whereas we investors are simply in the business of making money.
Now that being said, I would caution investors that you also need to Beware of Promoters.
A promoter can be described as anyone who has a vested interest in the company he promotes, which is nothing more than trying to attract investors to a company¹s shares by making "forward looking" and generally very positive statements about the prospects of a company.
Promoters can also be "negative promoters", or "bashers" as they are more commonly known, who are typically investors who have gone "short" against a stock, borrowing shares a current price on the assumption that, because a company's share price is going to go down, he'll be able to buy the borrowed shares at a lower price and make the spread in between. When you hear a voice that is describing a company in negative terms, you have to bear in mind that the source of information might just have an interest in making sure the shares go down in price, as opposed to up.
When a stock trades as liquidly as did Seafield's shares last week, traders, who are happy to make a few cents on large volumes traded, and shorts, who need liquidity both to be able to borrow shares, as well as generate downward momentum in the share price, are attracted like fruit flies to lemonade.
These are just a few of the booby traps that can cause a share price to boomerang around in an apparently senseless pattern, and snare bewildered investors like deer in headlights, invoking irrational and emotional buy and sell decisions that cause losses.
In Seafield's case, there is some cause for concern in that the company wasted no time in announcing first a 20 million share, then upgrading it to a 30 million share private placement at $0.50 just as soon as they could.
To me, this indicates the company has little faith in the remaining 9 holes that it has to release from this drill program, and therefore scrambles to raise money before the bloom is off the rose, as it were, from what just might be the best drill hole that the Miraflores deposit is capable of producing. Furthermore, the announcement of a 30 million share private placement at $0.50 gives investors who paid more quite an incentive to sell their shares, as that $0.50 often defines the cap of a share price after such a financing.
But that has not happened at this point. Friday, the shares closed up $0.04 on the day at $0.68. That indicates there is a great belief in more to come.
And let's keep in mind, the Miraflores deposit is far from the only flower in the Qunchia garden.
The company announced a trench result that assayed 1.75 grams per tonne over 94 metres at the Dosquebrados prospect 3 kilometers from Miraflores. Geologists have yet to weigh in publicly on the quality of that deposit, though it is common for the critics to grow silent as discoveries gain momentum, and hang together from a macro-geological viewpoint.
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