Proper Gold Stock Analysis Does Not Begin with Focusing on the Gold Price | @EconomicAlpha Interview

Luis the @EconomicAlpha, as he is known on Twitter, has been investing in gold stocks for over ten years.  With a background in insurance underwriting and risk management and a degree in economics, Luis’ interest in gold and precious metals eventually lead him to begin investing in precious metals stocks.  Luis originally began tweeting about his mining investment decisions in order to document his investment journey for solely personal reasons, but in the process he has attracted thousands of followers who find value in what he posts online.  In this interview, Luis shares regarding how he began investing in mining stocks, outlines his approach to resource investing, and tells of some of his successes and failures.

0:05 Introduction

2:27 Luis’ background and how he began mining stock investing

4:22 Some of the most difficult things Luis had to overcome as a newer mining investor

7:25 How Luis managed his portfolio through the recent bear market in mining equities

11:13 Does Luis think we are in a confirmed gold bull market?

12:31 What a mining stock trade looks like for Luis

13:56 Breakdown of Luis’ portfolio by mining investment type

15:38 How Luis approaches gold stock investing

22:13 Luis discusses some of his biggest winners & his exit strategy

25:21 What stocks Luis looks to in order to gauge the direction of the sector

29:17 The role of technical analysis in Luis’ investing approach

36:14 Discussing Luis’ online presence and how listeners can follow him

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

Bill: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Bill Powers, your host, and this is the Mining Stock Education podcast, and I have a special guest for this episode that I reached out to so that he could share his investment journey and his approach to mining stock investing. Over my educational career, I’ve sat through a number of lectures in the classroom and a common misperception that I’ve seen amongst students is the thought that the teacher is the fountain of all knowledge. That the teacher knows everything in the classroom when oftentimes it could be a student with a question or a student with an insight, and that insight actually can surpass the knowledge of many things that teacher is teaching about. So oftentimes it may not be recognized as such, just because that person’s not standing behind a podium.

Well, if we can relate that to the junior investment sector, you have the newsletter writers, you have the people with the notoriety that are known for their insights that we look to to gain insights on how to better invest in the junior mining sector. But often because of the rise of the internet, there can be people in the classroom, so to speak, that may at times have more insightful things to say and to offer than the person behind the podium. Well, one person today is Luis. He’s @EconomicAlpha on Twitter, he’s grown substantially of recent. He has thousands of Twitter followers that look to him for investing insights because he shares what he’s doing with his capital as he’s journeying along in the junior mining investment sector. So Luis, thanks for coming on the Mining Stock Education podcast to share your insights with us.

Luis: Oh, well, thank you Bill for that warm introduction. Thanks a lot. And I’m looking forward to this interview.

Bill: Let’s start with your Twitter handle, @EconomicAlpha. What’s behind that?

Luis: Didn’t put a lot of effort into that one, to be honest. It was quite frankly the fact that I have an economics background. I graduated with a degree in economics, and the alpha component to it was just, you know, wanting to make a rate of return in excess of the market return. And so I combined the two together to create the @EconomicAlpha and that’s really the story of my Twitter handle.

Bill: And then can you give us a little more info on your background and how you came to invest in mining stocks?

Luis: So I started my corporate career in early 2000, and I started in underwriting and risk management. Not the investment bank underwriting that most folks think about, it’s really insurance underwriting. And my background consists of risk management as well. So, really the two themes of my corporate career, underwriting and risk management, I apply to investing in general, not just mining stocks. It just so happened to work out where these attributes that I have gained in my corporate career is panning out quite well in the mining sector.

Bill: When did you buy your first mining stock?

Luis: I bought my first mining stock, I would call it more…my first investment in this space in GLD, an ETF, that was around 2006. And I bought my first mining stock not too far after that, a company called Claude Resources, they were out in Saskatoon, Canada. And I ventured into that opportunity, a small junior mining company that was producing 40,000 to 50,000 ounces a year in gold. So that was my first investment in the industry.

Bill: And then as you begin to invest in the junior resource sector, the learning curve, in my opinion, is quite high for this tiny, little, specialized sector. What were some of the most difficult things for you to learn and overcome so that you could begin to do this successfully?

Luis: First and foremost, I think the biggest issue I had was just a technical aspect of it. You know, unlike buying a stock that everyone knows like a Starbucks or an Apple or a consumer stock or even a chip company or anything to that effect, there might be some technical aspects to it, but not the significant amount of technical aptitude that you need for mining stocks. Even in oil companies, it’s the same technical concepts that you have to grasp. And because I don’t have a background in this technical aspect of the industry, it definitely set me back quite a bit.

The learning curve for that was, I think, the highest and biggest challenge. The second issue that I had was the preconceived notion that if you buy a mining stock and the gold price goes up or a silver stock and the silver price goes up, that the underlying stock is going to go up as well. And while that may be true, it’s not always the case. And so, that’s where my background in underwriting and risk management come into play because you really have to look at the company in its totality. Sure, if you buy a gold stock and you catch a gold bull market, chances are that all of the…not all, but the majority of the gold stocks are going to ride as well as a rising tide lifts all boats. But that’s not always the case. And in particular is not the case in a time period like we’re in now where the gold price hasn’t done anything.

I mean, the gold price has been trading in a range for as long as I can remember. At least since my son had been born. I mean, he’s four and, you know, the price of gold is around the same price as it was when he was born. So there really hasn’t been any movement in the gold price. So when you have an environment where price isn’t moving or it’s actually falling or it’s just one tradable range, it’s important to kind of do significant due diligence on a mining stock. So I think those two combinations, the technical side of it plus the due diligence side of it and what to look for and what’s important and all of these different questions that you have to ask yourself while you’re going through the process. And that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and it’s not the easiest thing. And so, it takes time to understand and learn that. And I think that’s why the industry started and came out with these ETFs, the GDX and the GDXJ, but those things have their own issues as well.

Bill: From 2011 and 2012 until 2016 and somewhat carried on to today, we’ve been in a bear market. How did you manage your portfolio during that time period? What did you do with your mining portfolio?

Luis: Not a whole lot. And I’ll tell you why. So, I had bought Claude Resources, I had mentioned it a little bit earlier that I bought that one, you know, shortly after I bought GLD. And that was a stock that I held onto during the bear market and it really took a nose dive. Now, I held onto it because of my own, you know, I guess arrogance, thinking that I thought it was going to do well, and that I thought that things were going to go in the right direction regardless of the market that we were in. And so, I rode that company all the way down to, you know, 14 cents, when it hit 14 cents, I think it was in 2014. But while I was riding it down, you know, I had 75%, 80% losses in the company, I learned a lot.

I think that was the point in time where I learned, I guess you want to call it for lack of a better phrase, the school of hard knocks. I was sitting on a big loss. But while I was sitting on a big loss, I wasn’t just sitting around hoping and praying. I started to then get more involved with the company. I started calling investor relations. I started having dialogue with management. I started asking questions. I started, you know, after conference calls I would call in and dial in and ask questions at the conference calls, and started to build a rapport much more than I had ever done before. And I think it was because I was down so much that I had to force myself to figure out what went wrong and how I could manage to improve the situation. So, you know, right or wrong, I held onto it and that was a really tough experience. But I believe that that experience created the opportunities that I’m going through now.

Bill: Did you average down through the years or did you just take that initial position and then leave it there?

Luis: I had taken probably 25% of the position initially, rode that down as the price kept going down. I did start to buy to buy it as it was going down, but not because I was hoping that that was the right thing. As I was saying earlier, that was when I started to get more comfortable what the company beyond where I was before with it. And they had started to hit some pretty high-grade results at the Seabee Mine, which they called it the Santoy Gap. And I started to see something a little different than what I had seen originally. So the bear market took the price down, the operations of the company took the price down. Everything was going against the company, and so that’s why the stock price went down as low as it did.

But as that was happening, having been more involved in the name and doing more due diligence, I started to get a different understanding of what was going on and actually presented an opportunity. So, I did start buying more and then averaging down even more to a point where I built a pretty big position and took my average cost down significantly from my initial investment. So yeah, I did average down, it probably wasn’t the right thing to do at the time, but in hindsight, it turned out to be the right decision.

Bill: You like gold stocks, and I’m gathering that just from following you on Twitter. Do you believe we’re in a confirmed gold bull market right now or what’s your expectation with gold?

Luis: My expectation with gold is it’s gonna still stay in this trading range that it’s been on unless it breaks, you know, $1365, $1370 on the upside or, you know, the lows last year, I think, were $1125 and then the bear market low, I think, was $1050. Those are the ranges really that I’m looking at it. So as long as we stay above prior year low and don’t break the $1050 bear market low, I believe we’re still going to stay in a range, especially if we can’t get ahead of or above $1370. Now, you know, there’s speculation that the Fed is going to be pausing rates. We’re heading into a seasonal time period where gold tends to do well. So there’s a lot of factors that could affect the price in the short term, but in the longer term scheme, as long as those ranges are still intact from a technical standpoint, we’re still in a very large trading range, couple hundred dollars an ounce.

Bill: You seem to do a lot of fundamental analysis before you take a position and then it appears you take a position more for a long position, but do you trade at all? Like you mentioned the seasonality that we’re coming into with gold. What does a trade look like for you?

Luis: Yeah, so when I started doing it, it was really more concentrated positions in mining stocks, stocks that I had a comfort level in. And then as I began to, you know, build the portfolio a little bit, there was, you know, additional capital that I began applying to just trading them. And so, sometimes I trade in a very short window, same day. So sometimes I’ll day trade something, sometimes I’ll trade into a catalyst that may be coming ahead. And sometimes I’ll just try to create the volatility of technical setups in the chart or technical setups in the price of gold. And sometimes I’ll trade ahead of economic events like, you know, the Fed interest rate decision or, you know, GDP data or something to that effect.

Bill: Do you trade the leveraged ETFs?

Luis: I don’t. I avoid all of those leverage mining stock ETFs just from a decay standpoint. The volatility is just too wide for me and, you know, I mean, I guess I could if I wanted the day trade it, but it’s just something I personally stayed away from.

Bill: What about the breakdown of your portfolio right now between explorers, developers, producers, royalty companies, ETFs, like percentage-wise, what does your portfolio look like?

Luis: So, the portfolio right now, I find that quite significantly over the past six months, if you recall back in the summer the price of gold took a big dip down. Actually, not just during the summer, but since the highs I think that were reached in April, I believe it was like $1360 or so. You know, the price subsequently went down slow, but then I felt like it went down all at once in the summer, all the way down to $1170. And so, I repositioned my portfolio during that time and really just got rid of the explorers and any kind of day trades that I was doing and just, you know, raised some cash and really just kept my core portfolio intact. When I say core, I’m talking about names that I’m very comfortable with, names that our producers that have cash flow, that generate free cash flow, that have somewhat of an agnostic price to gold mentality. And that’s where my portfolio is today. It’s really defensive, but not necessarily defensive where if the price of gold went up significantly that I wouldn’t capture any of that upside. It’s just defensive in nature. And that’s how I would describe it as it stands right now.

Bill: You’re actually looking at gold mining companies as a business. You want to see cash flow and catalysts. Those would be the two things, primary things you’d look for?

Luis: Yeah. I’m not good with just buying a gold stock and hope that the price of gold makes up for all of their issues. You know, mining stocks could have poor management where the price of gold would not help them. They could make poor decisions where the price of gold will not help them. So when I look at a mining stock, the first thing I do is I just ignore the price of gold, and what the price of gold is going to do in the next 6 months, in the next 12 months, in the next 5 years. I take that out of the equation from the beginning and I started to do the due diligence on the management team, on the properties. I look at the risk management aspect of it. What’s the downside here? What’s the upside? Not once in the equation do I factor in the gold price until I go through that process.

Bill: And you prefer to invest in junior and mid-tier producers, is that right?

Luis: I do. And the reason why I do that it’s just because the larger senior miners have had some difficulties in the past years, especially during this time period. They tend to be somewhat more levered than maybe the juniors. They may not be as flexible from time to time. It’s more of a personal preference. I feel like I’ve had more success in the junior/mid-tier crossovers, so I tend to spend more time in those names.

Bill: Let’s say you start to think an investment is going wrong or you’re second-guessing yourself, what does that psychological factor like?  You’ve put yourself out there and you said, “I’ve invested in this company. I think it’s good for these reasons.” Have you had a struggle with that at all because you’re making your positions public?

Luis: I have a struggle with it, and I’ll be honest with you. When I started tweeting about the companies that I was looking at and investing in, it was never intended to…I never thought it would get to the point where it got today. So I’m humbled by the fact that I’ve got a large audience. The reason I started to do that was to help me in my process. And to be able to go back to these tweets that I did, and say to myself, “Compare, you know, what happened after my due diligence and after I took a position, and whether it was a good move or a bad mood and be able to learn from those mistakes.” That was the point of why I was doing that. And then it just started to take off beyond any imagination.

And so now there’s a struggle with ideas that I may discuss and they turn out to be bad ideas. There’s some time to struggle in my mind about, you know, disappointing people and, you know, being upset about it. But I think at the end of the day, for me, it helps me in my due diligence. I write it down, I used to write these things down, and I felt that that was not the best way. And so, when I did it on Twitter, it really started to make sense. And you’d be surprised because I’ll do a tweet storm on a mining stock and they’ll be 15 tweets long and they’re coherent and it’s understandable and you can read into the logic and why I’m interested in the company.

And I look back into it, you know, a year or two later, and I say to myself, “Wow, that was a good call,” or, “Wow, that was a terrible call and look.” And so now I need to learn from those mistakes. And that’s really to me what Twitter has been about. In the process, though, I’ve met a lot of people on Twitter, people that I probably would have never had conversations with in the past. So, Twitter has been a very successful tool for me. So, you know, and I’ll continue to keep doing what I’m doing on Twitter and hopefully people benefit more than they don’t. And, you know, if I can help people out along the way, that’s great because I like to share success. I really do.

Bill: Yeah. You’re very open-handed with your successes and humble with your losses, in my opinion, just from reading your tweets. With your approach, you take a fundamental approach. You’re looking for value, you’re analyzing mining companies as if they’re an actual business that’s supposed to make money, not just take money from investors. Would you say that perhaps the Achilles heel of your approach could be being caught in a value trap?

Luis: I would agree. I have examples of ideas that I invested in that turned out to be value traps. Sometimes you look at a company and you say to yourself, “Wow, the valuations on this are tremendous.” You know, what is the market not seeing that I think I’m seeing or vice versa? And so, you can take a position because you think it’s undervalued and the market’s missing it. And then whether it’s a combination of timing, or just bad luck, or the fact that the market was right all along, it’s definitely been a scenario…there’s been scenarios where I have had some deep losses because of the philosophy and the value trap that went along with it. So, what I’ve learned is, you know, you’re never going to be 100% right.

And so, you have to be able to take losses and confront yourself and say, “I made a mistake, I need to move on.” And so, I’ve been doing that recently too with some of the stocks that I bought that look great on the screener, the profile checked out, and it just didn’t turn out to be that way.

Bill: Can you talk about some of your biggest winners over the years and your exit strategy for harvesting and realizing the gains on your winners?

Luis: Sure. So, I have a few that I like to mention, and I’ll start with that first one that I invested in, Claude Resources. As I said earlier, that was initially my biggest loser and eventually turned out to be one of my biggest winners. So with Claude, it was really averaging down into it, which is not necessarily a strategy that I recommend because, you know, it’s just you’re going against the tide at that point and I feel like luck went in my direction with this one. And as I was buying it and then the share price was going down, they discovered a very high-grade gold mine in the process, the Santoy Gap. And that discovery transformed the company.

So when it was trading at 14 cents, 20 cents, 25 cents, I was buying it. And the reason why I was buying it was because I was in the name already, I knew the management, knew the company and was there when they made that discovery. And when they made that discovery, it really fundamentally transformed their business from a free cash flow perspective, from a valuation perspective. And so, I started to buy 75% of the position under 50 cents a share. Eventually, the company got bought out by Silver Standard at a price that was, I believe, $1.35 Canadian and it was an all-share deal. And that one really worked out for me.

But there’s a third piece to that, and it’s the hindsight is 20/20 piece, you know. So they were purchased by Silver Standard. I made a 200%, 300% return on it. It was a long investment. I was in the name for quite a long time. If you think about the fact that I first bought it in, you know, early…you know, before the 2008 financial crisis. And my exit on that one was when they were acquired by Silver Standard. There’s a lot of time in between that was lost, a lot of a hardship. But like I said, I learned a lot through that. And the exit on that one was pretty easy. Silver Standard made the exit for me.

But, you know, I look back at that scenario even from the exit, had I just accepted Silver Standard shares in exchange, hindsight’s 20/20, but I would’ve been so much better off because then as soon as that deal closed in 2016, the bull market or the period in gold that took it from $1050 to $1300 or so took Silver Standard stock and almost tripled it. So, you know, hypothetically would have had a huge windfall had I held. So sometimes I think it’s difficult because I tend to dwell on the what ifs a lot and that catches you a lot as well.

Bill: Yeah, the sector can turn so quickly. With that in mind, are there any junior gold stocks that you monitor to kind of gauge the direction of the sector? Like a Bellwether junior gold stock that you pay attention to?

Luis: Typically for me, I’m looking at the seniors to give some sort of direction in the market because they tend to move first in the early stages of a bull market.

Bill: Like a Barrick?

Luis: Yeah, like a Barrick but, you know, with Barrick and the Randgold merger, you know, that seems to be driving a lot of the price movement in it because I think the market sees a lot of value in that deal. But I’ll look at a Newmont, you know, I’ll look at a Barrick for sure, really the seniors and kind of see what they’re doing. But a lot of the seniors like, you know, Goldcorp has had their share of issues. And so, it’s really tough. So, you really have to look at some seniors, you have to look at what the ETFs are doing to kind of get a sense of what the market is doing as a whole, and then you have to look at the price of gold as well. But the seniors typically tend to lead in a bull market, in the early stages of a bull market, at least from my opinion.

Bill: Do you apply technical analysis to these companies before you invest or do you apply technical analysis to the GDXJ for timing purposes?

Luis: I use technical analysis when I am day trading or when I’m taking a short-term position. I don’t really use a technical analysis as a primary driver when I’m building a position in a company. So I’ll just give you an example of two really viable companies that I’ve invested in in the last three to four years. Kirkland Lake was one of them. I bought that in 2016, well before they became what they are today. It was a company that just had the Macassa Mine and then they had some other mines that they bought from St. Andrews. And so, it was really just a company that had ownership by Eric Sprott and had some decent assets. And then they went on to buy New Market Gold and that gave them the exposure to the Fosterville Mine that has transformed the company.

I say that because there wasn’t really much technical analysis that I applied when I got into Kirkland Lake. I got into Kirkland Lake because it was a high-grade gold mine that was generating cash flow and free cash flow. And then they made this acquisition, which by the way, the market didn’t like when they did it, the stock went on to fall 30% after they announced it. And I bought more. I started looking into the Fosterville story, and I saw that they were hitting very high grades the deeper they went. So I started buying more, had I applied technical analysis to this position, I probably would have missed a big part of the run.

So I say that because I take two different approaches. I take a core approach where I’m building a position, kind of a concentrated position, if you want to call it, in a company that I’m comfortable with. And then I don’t use a whole lot of technical analysis in those positions. It’s mainly a fundamental analysis and just overall comfort level. And then on the trading side, that’s where I apply all my technical analysis because they’re really short-term in nature and, you know, I want to get the best buy point and, you know, the best exit that I could possibly get.

Bill: In terms of portfolio allocation and position sizing, when you do get a winner, that winner obviously is going to become a greater percent of your overall portfolio. What do you cap a winner at, you know, 35% of your portfolio? And then how do you begin to exit that stock?

Luis: Ah, man, Kirkland Lake was my best success story and is when I learned a lot from it as well because I was buying Kirkland Lake at $6 a share initially before they merged with New Market. After they merged with New Market, I was buying it at $5 a share, at $6 a share, at $7 a share. And, you know, it took some time for the stock to gain traction, it finally did and it started to move quite rapidly. As it started to do that, it was a concentrated position for me from the beginning. So obviously, the portfolio, Kirkland Lake as a percentage of the portfolio, grew significantly. And I wasn’t overall too concerned about it. Yes, it was probably something I had to address. But the story was intact, the fundamentals we’re getting better and the valuations were still supported.

So I kept holding onto it. And then, you know, within a year it hit $15 after it listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and I had a nice little gain there. Re-examined my portfolio again and I said, “You know, I probably should be selling some here, given the relative size to the overall portfolio.” But I didn’t, it went up again, $16, $17, $18. Finally, at around $18, I started saying to myself, “I have to start taking some off the table.” So I started selling a little bit at $18 and then I started to trade it more regularly, so I kept a core position and then just started to trade the ups and downs on it. And then as it kept going higher, it’s now about $24, actually hit $25 a few days ago. I am probably…I don’t have much left of KL.

I’ve got probably 10% of the portfolio and KL now. So, for right or wrong reasons, I had to take profits. You know, and I can’t look back and say, “You know, I regret that decision.” Again, hindsight’s 20/20. It’s one of those situations where you’re like, “Had I held, I could’ve made a lot more.” But I needed to free up some capital to buy up some other names. And so, the exit’s always difficult, especially when you’ve got a significant gain because not only is it a big part of your portfolio, but there’s also tax considerations that you have to look into and consider. And so, that was challenging as well. And sometimes too, you know, a stock goes up significantly, it can go up a lot more, but then it becomes a relative value play.

And so, I was fortunate enough to allocate some KL money into Wesdome, which is a company that is a core position now for me. And I started building a position in that when it was Canadian $2 a share. And I did a write up on that on Twitter. It was late May. I did a write up on it as to why I was buying it. And fortunately, it took off not far after that. Insiders started to buy as well. And now the stock is at a Canadian $3.65. So it’s almost doubled from the point of initial purchase. And so, you know, you’ve got to look at a lot of different factors when you’re exiting a position.

And certainly, don’t want to be in a portfolio where one company is a significant part of your overall position. Now again, this is money that is investment money for me. It’s money that I’m comfortable, you know, losing. So, you know, with that in mind, you just have to follow the process and you’ll know when it’s time to exit, whether it’s, you know, too soon or too late, you know, that’s hindsight, you can’t really know if it’s the right time, you just have to do it.

Bill: You know, as U.S. investors, you touched on the tax issue. And here in the States, for those that don’t know, we’re taxed at a lot higher rate, the regular income tax rate if we sell and harvest our gains within a year. If it’s more than a year, then we’re charged at a flat rate long-term capital gains. So, you touched on that, Luis. So, when you had that Kirkland Lake win, were you waiting for that year before you began to harvest some of those gains? Because I know as a fellow U.S. investor, that’s something that I’ve struggled with as well.

Luis: So, I started harvesting the KL gains this year predominantly, so the tax bill is going to be due on that in April. So, you know, it’s going to be…the way I look at it is, you know, I’d rather have a tax bill than not. And that’s why it’s also important to sort of harvest gains because you just never know what’s going to happen in the mining sector. It’s one of those sectors where anything is possible on any given day and, you know, you just don’t want to have a large gain and have it go away because, you know, you were looking to gain a little bit more. So, you know, the KL story is still strong and vibrant. I still own some of it. I think it’s going to go higher. Fosterville and the Swan Zone are pure drivers and will continue to economically benefit that company. But Mecassa is not far behind. They’re building a new shaft there, and they’re going to get to a million ounces per year and be a senior minor in three to five years, and they’re executing.

And the thing I’ve learned in mining is there aren’t very many good mining stocks to buy at any given time, especially as an investment. I don’t look at necessarily mining stocks as investments. They’re more speculation, but then there are a handful that you actually can say, “Wow, this is a legitimate investment,” because you’re looking at it as a business and as a business, they’re doing well, they’re operating well, they’re executing well, they’re exploring well and everything seems to be going right. Whereas some other mining companies, they’re just hoping for the price of gold to kind of offset some of their challenges. And so, that’s why there’s not a whole lot of time that’s required once you find a company that you think is investable because once you find that there may be only a handful at any given time. And so you just kind of stick to those.

Bill: You could follow a Luis @EconomicAlpha on Twitter, as we’ve mentioned. Luis, I’m looking at your Twitter account right now. It says, “Direct message for bespoke work.” Is there anything you want to share about that?

Luis: Yeah, I mean, I get DMs all the time, people asking me questions. I haven’t monetized any of my work. I don’t know if that’s the path I want to take. Again, I wasn’t expecting the kind of success on Twitter that I had received and that I’ve been fortunate to see. So I’m at a point in my life right now where, you know, I’ve got a very good career, and I’ve got this mining situation that has worked out well so far. So, right now I’m at a point where I’m just kind of balancing the two and enjoying, you know, the experience that I’m learning in the industry and the people that I’ve met, and the help that I’ve gotten along the way. So, you know, I believe in, you know, just sharing knowledge.

I do believe it’s probably something that I could charge for, and I know that there would be significant demand for it, but I’m not so sure that that’s the path I want to take right now. And so, I’ll just continue to do what I’m doing now and I know that good things will come regardless of the direction I take. So, you know, the DM aspect is really just people reach out to me and ask me questions about different mining stocks, and I’ll get back to them. You know, I don’t charge them for it. It’s just my opinions. And people really appreciate that and, you know, I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from people where they followed me into Kirkland Lake and they followed me into Wesdome and I’ve gotten feedback from people through direct message or through email saying that, you know, I’ve changed their lives. And that, to me, is probably the best recognition that you could ever get. So, that in itself is motivation for me to keep doing what I’m doing.

Bill: Besides Twitter, are you online anywhere else?

Luis: No. No. And then that’s the thing too, it’s tough. Because if this is all I was doing and didn’t have my career, my corporate career, I could find ways to build an online website, to build a blog, and maybe do some research work for people. But it’s hard to find the time, and with the kids around and we’re expecting a third, so there’s a lot of moving parts. And I feel like sometimes I’m moving in multiple different directions. So, timing has to be right for me to really build an online presence and maybe start doing some blogging or maybe start a service or something to that effect. But I’m still learning in the mining industry. I make mistakes every single day, some costly/ I’ve had costly mistakes.

Ascendant Resources was a mistake I made this year, valuation crap, lost some good money in that. Superior Gold’s another one where I recommended…not recommended because I don’t consider what I’m saying recommendations, I just consider them my opinions and thoughts. And so, I ventured into Superior Gold on a valuation perspective, and it was just bad timing and the market rolled over and they weren’t executing, so I lost some money in that. So, you know, there have been some really good wins, like Kirkland Lake, and Claude, and Richmont, and Lake Shore Gold, those have been my biggest winners. Wesdome, I’m currently sitting on a decent gain on that one. And so that one’s a been a good winner.

But, you know, while there’s been significant winners, there’s been some losers too. And the most important thing for me is just cut losses, especially when they’re not heading in…when it’s going against your initial thesis and why you bought into it. So, I’m learning every day and I don’t feel like I know everything yet and that’s why I’m not in a position in any way, shape, or form to build out anything at this point in time.

Bill: Well, Luis, I know you took time away from the kids to chat with me over these 45 or so minutes. I want to thank you for coming on the podcast and thanks for the chat.

Luis: Fantastic, Bill. Thank you for the opportunity to have a discussion. I’m very thankful for that. And I’m looking forward to having many more in the future, and let’s hope the mining sector is good for us in 2019.

Bill: Sounds great.