I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and here today with me is David Irley, editor and founder of Junior Minor Junkie. Thank you so much for being here. Great to have you. >> Thanks for having me. Always great talking to you. >> Yes, good to see you in person. We are here at PDAC. We made it to the morning of day three. So, how are you finding the show so far? or what is sentiment like? >> Yeah, sentiment is is the best I've seen in at a pedak in a while. I we were we


were speaking off mic and you asked me why I came to Pedak because I think I missed the last two. I used to come every year and um they're they're pretty grueling. So, I missed the last two, but I I at the last minute I I I I changed my mind. I said, "Okay, I I want to experience Pedak in a bull market for the first time." And it's it's been worth my while. It's it's it's nice to see everybody happy. It's nice to see everybody financed. It's nice to see


everybody being able to to drill their projects. Now they have they have the cash to do so. >> Yeah. I've heard from a number of people that they they made that snap decision to come here just to feel it. And I wonder is it is it too good? Is it too good? >> Well, judging by the action today, it looks like it might be too good. We're having a pretty strong correction today in the market. kind of a kind of a sell the news situation uh in the in the gold price and in in the miners, but uh you


know, we've had a really nice run and we're due for a little correction here. So, I mean, we had a 20 we had a 20% correction recently. I mean, the the gold price corrected $1,200 in three days. It corrected 21% in three days and silver corrected uh silver corrected 47% in six days. It was it was quite incredible. I mean, you had a silver price that took 45 years to get above $50 and then it corrects over $50 in six days. So, but the miners kind of yawned at it. They kind of blew it off and said, "You know what? We're


still catching up with the metals here. We still got a long way to go to catch up." So, um, but today we're having a nice little correction in the in in the miners, it looks like, but it's early. The weakness has been bought really quickly during during the correction recently. So, It might happen again today. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting circumstances and just for context for everybody, it's Tuesday. It's March 3rd, so that's the day we're talking on right


now. And I wonder if we can talk a little bit more about that. I don't know if it's right to call it a disconnect between the metals prices and the miners. But I have been hearing about that, how the metal is maybe volatile, but the miners seem to hold up. So that I don't know if that's typically something that we see. >> No, it's not. I mean, for the first time in quite a while, we're seeing generalist investors finally get into this sector. I mean, if you take a look


at these stock ratio charts, they're pretty incredible. Look at the the uh the ratio of the GDX against the stock market, it's breaking out of a huge 12-year base, you know, and if you take a look at the gold price against the stock market, it's doing the same thing. So, and and meanwhile at the same time, you've got the AI sector which has driven the stock market for the past several years. It's created this huge six-month top. And you've got when Nvidia came out with their results last


week, right? They they blew their profits out of the water. They had their best quarter ever, right? And then the stock corrects over 5%. Right? So when you have, you know, the the Wall Street's darling Nvidia having its best quarter and losing over 5%, that's like $260 billion of its market cap and gone in one day. And yet the precious metals mining sector, the entire precious metals mining sector is about1 trillion dollars. So that's how tiny this sector is and that's how big this the AI sector


is. So on once you take take investors out of the equation as far as the AI is concerned, they're looking to they're going to be looking to park their money and is something that's going up while everything else is going down. I mean, this is how I discovered the sector in 2003 when the when the uh the.com bubble burst, right? I mean, I I saw my friends making all this money and I said to myself, "Wow, these these knuckleheads can make money in the stock market. So can I. So I'm going to do what they're


doing." Well, I promptly lost half my money. So, I said to myself, hey, I better if I if I really want to be a smart investor, right, I better I better turn off the the TV and start doing some contrarian thinking. And I came upon this sector. And I saw that this was only the se this was the only sector going up while everything else was going down. So, I think we're we're starting to see some sector rotation. So when that sector rotation really picks up, then you're going to see the miners


really start to catch up with the gold price because the miners are basically trading as if the gold price is still below 3,000 and the silver price is still below $50. >> Yeah, I think at this event in particular, rotation has been a key theme that I'm hearing about. And you mentioned generalists are already starting to show up in the space. Are these early entrance, do you think, from from AI and tech who are coming over now? >> Yeah, I think so. Oh, and I I didn't go to Beimo, but from people I speak with


uh that went um they said that there was like 30% of generalist uh capital there and uh they saw a lot of interest generalists that they normally see at Beimo. So, and and others I've talked to here questions that I've, you know, asked people, you know, how long have you been in this sector? Are you new here? They say they say, "Yes, I I saw how much the gold price has gone up. I've seen how much the miners have gone up and you know and people that read uh my column that I point out the fact that


hey you know this is you know if you take the entire uh global equities right uh mining is only 1% of the entire global equity. So it's it's still infant it's still infantile and it's it's the lowest participation it's ever been. So, that's pretty incredible when you take a look at the gold price at where it is and where and where it's come from. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to then I'm going to give you my fun question. I've been saving this for the


end. I'm trying to ask everybody this question here at PDAC. So, it's if there was a young investor, they are new to the resource space as many people might be right now. They have $10,000 that they want to allocate to the mining sector. What what how would you direct them? Well, first of all, you want to put some of that, you know, a small that small bit of that capital and in a strong base, which would be minor or or a royalty company. And if you got 10,000, you know, pick pick one one


major minor. I would pick something like a Nikico Eagle. I think they're the the gold standard in the space or a royalty company like Wheat and Precious Metals or Franco Nevada. Um, and then you also and then you go down the food chain a little bit, maybe pick uh a mid-tier minor or two. And then you go into the into the uh higher quality juniors into the later stage companies, the companies that that that have that have gotten to the feasibility stage and they've they've already financed their projects.


They're waiting for permits and they're they're pretty much derisked. And then take some of that capital, you know, a small amount of it and put it into higher risk juniors. But you really have to do your homework and put it into the right ones because, you know, it's it's almost even more difficult now because, you know, at at this time last year, you could pretty much sling a dead cat and and, you know, and not miss an undervalued junior and these latest stage companies with all this gold in


the ground that were derisking these projects, they were so cheap. But now they're not cheap anymore. Um, I I still think they're undervalued, but they're not as cheap anymore. So where you get the multibaggers now are in the higher risk companies and and they're higher risk for a reason because they're basically just they they've just put out a mineral resource or they're just about to put out a pea so they still got a long way to go. Lots of dilution and lots of things that can go wrong.


So, um, that that's that's where you, you know, you invest in in a newsletter like mine who can help you, direct you in in into the right, you know, point you in the right direction and to get into the right companies. >> Yeah, I've been talking a lot about that with people here at PDAC as well. If we're in a situation where maybe a rising tide is starting to lift all boats or it actually has sent these companies up so they're expensive, how are you focusing? So, are you looking at


some of those higher risk plays right now? >> Yes. >> Yes. Yeah, that could be dangerous cuz we're, like you said, we're in that rising tide lifts all boats, dart throwers move where you just throw a dart and you and and you hit a junior that's going up. That could be dangerous because, you know, eventually this this strong up leg that we're having is going to end and we're going to have a really sharp correction. And that's it's like the old Warren Buffett saying, you know,


when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked. So when the when the minor tide goes out, you see whose projects are are naked. Basically projects that shouldn't have got funded because we've we've had a a finance window now that's wide open. Everything is getting funded. So that could be dangerous because just just if you look at a junior and you say, "Oh, wow. Look, that junior got a bunch of money. That project must be good." No, you have to look where that money came from, right?


And if it's all all it's all retail investment and you have to look at the project and you have to look at the at the management team, right? I mean there's all these things you have to look at. You have you have to back the right horse still ju just because we're in a bull market, you know, I mean sure you you I mean when I got into the sector, you know, the famous Rick ruralism, I I I confused a bull market with brains. I thought I was the smartest man in the room even. But I realized now that I do know a lot more


than I knew back then. I didn't know anything back then. I just made a lot of money because it was a bull market. And I would have kept a lot more money than I than I than I lost off the table after the correction if I knew if I knew then what I know now, which is what I'm helping my subscribers do. That's the number one thing I help them do is manage their risk. So risk management is is definitely key in this sector. >> Yes. And I did want to hone in a little bit on risk management because last time


we talked which was back in December. You mentioned the importance of taking profits but keeping your core position. So maybe we talk a little bit more about that because that's that's very tricky. I don't think people always understand when is the right time to do that. >> That's it. Like I always say that any idiot can buy a stock. You could buy a stock at you know and it's really easy but knowing when to sell that is the hard part. That's that's where the expertise comes in and um it's it's


always very difficult. So you have to have as soon as you buy a stock you have to have a sell strategy. What's my ultimate goal for this stock right? So a bit an easy strategy that I use is if a stock has tripled I will take I will sell a third and that takes my investment capital off the table. I don't do that every time, but that is that is a general rule I I I generally stick to. But if I see a company, if I expect it to go a little higher, I might wait for a quadruple to to to get the


money off. It all depends on the situation. That's another thing you have to take. Each stock has its own situation, right? I mean, look at what happened just at the at the conference uh yesterday. We had a takeover of Arizona Sonorin. Fortunately, my myself and my subscribers were in this stock. We got in in in 2022. Um, it it it uh but at the uh at at at uh the end of January, it looked like the sector was was topping. We had parabolic tops in silver and we had parabolic tops in gold. So, I


put out a I put out um a warning to my subscribers. Hey, this looks like a parabolic peak. So, we should probably trim a little some a little from our from our position. So, I I basically told them what I was doing and Arizona Sonorin was one that I trimmed a little bit from. Well, they end up get taken out a little while a little a few weeks later, which is a good thing. And I'm not upset that I trimmed them because it was a smart thing to do. >> Yeah. >> But this company was taken out at at


five times what we paid for it. So, you know, we're all very happy right now, but it's it's always prudent to to have a sell strategy and stick to it because, you know, I mean, I learned from two major lessons. I mean, the first one was 2008. You know, that was that was a I took I took some money off the table, but I didn't take enough. You know, that's that's the old story, you know. You know, you never take enough, but and then 2020 happened in the same in the same thing. I took more off. So then I I


basically created my own sell strategy from the lessons learned from the previous bear traps, bull traps, all these things that happened in this sector because it's very very treacherous. >> I think that's certainly true. So have a strategy but be able to customize it when when you need to. To what extent do you have cash right now that you can deploy? This is a place where we've got all these opportunities out on the show floor. How's that looking for you? I mean, that's another reason why I came


because I do have some cash and >> okay, >> it looks like I'm probably going to have a bit more cash once uh we probably going to end up selling uh Arizona Sonorin. Um I know it's it's it's taken over by Hud Bay and that's that that's a very good marriage. Um but you know, we're my investment newsletter is is a junior newsletter. It doesn't invest in majors. So, I' I'd rather take the money off the table and uh take that investment capital and put it into something a


little that that has a lot more upside than something like a HUD bay. And I think, like I said, that upside is in these smaller in these smaller companies, these market caps that are sub 200 million that are in the earlier stage. And I've met with several this week and and I like a few of them. So, what I'll probably do is what I do is I after I speak with the company and do all the due diligence I possibly can on on this company, I I'll write a full report for my subscribers and I'll send


it out to them and I'll say I'm going to be taking an entry position in this stock. So, we we kind of all try to get in at the same time, which is a reason why I I limit my subscriptions to 500. And unfortunately, right now I'm full, but I do have cancellations from time to time. So, I have a waiting list now. And um if if you're interested in my newsletter, you just put your name on the waiting list and once 10 spaces open up, I I send out an email and and uh it's kind of a first come first- serve


thing. And it's uh it's it it works really well because if I have more than 500 subscribers, then these these higher risk companies, they're a little less liquid. So we don't want to become too much of the of the trading volume of that stock. >> Yeah. Well, if you are full, that seems to also tell us something about where we are in the cycle right now, perhaps. >> Right. Exactly. That's it's a good indicator. >> Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. All right. So, we know a little bit about what


you're doing right now. I want to take a moment at least to talk about the metals prices because a lot has happened since we spoke in December. We had that big run up in both gold and silver correction and now kind of maybe they're finding >> extremely volatile right now. It's >> Yes. So, where are you seeing support and resistance for gold and silver at this point? >> Well, it looks like gold is trying to test support at $5,000 here. I mean, I once we came on the air, I looked at at


the gold price right before we we started talking and it's I think it was down at like 5,60 something like that. And silver had lost $80 an ounce. So, >> there was strong resistance at 90. Silver made it above 90. I got like 95 96. And then the the the gold price, there's there's resistance at the all-time high right around 5,600. It didn't quite get there, but the gold price is is basically consolidating in in another bullish symmetrical uh triangle consolidation pattern. That's what it's


what's been doing. It it goes up, it gets ahead of itself. It corrects really it has a sharp colle correction and it starts to build out what is what is known as a a symmetrical triangle, which is generally bullish. Okay? because they they generally break out in the direction that that the trend is and the and the trend is definitely up for the gold price. So, um but I see really strong support down at like the 4,300 level, 4,400 level and um I but I wouldn't like to see $4,000 gold lost


and then I think then we'd be in for a sharper correction. But, uh but we're still in that symmetrical triangle. So, um it's it's but it's gotten very vol but but the interesting thing is about the volatility. It's usually the gold stocks that are more volatile than the gold price. It's the other way around now, right? The gold price and the silver price have been extremely volatile, but the miners have pretty much shaken it off. Like I said, the reason for that is because I think


there's so much money on the sidelines waiting to get in. >> Yeah. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that volatility. So, we're used to it for silver. We know that happens, but for gold, I've seen comments people saying, "Well, it's supposed to be a safe haven metal." So what is what is going on here? Is that just something we need to expect right now at this elevated? >> Yeah, it's it's I mean and the dollar right now is is is acting as a safe


haven, right? And that's what's that's what's hurting the silver price right now the last few days because the dollar has gotten a strong bid as a safe haven. It's bump the US dollar index is bumping up against that 100 level which was really strong support and now it's really strong resistance. So if you get a if you get a weekly close uh above that 100 index, you might see the silver price get get even lower. >> Pretty interesting. And I just briefly want to talk also about gold and silver


price drivers. I know last time we spoke, we focused a lot on what was going on at the Fed and we've had new developments there. We've got the new Fed chair nomination. Anything further you would add on that note as we move forward? I guess clearly we're going down in our interest rates. >> Well, yeah. I mean, last week we got more stagflationary economic data from from the US, right? We got a a a Q4 GDP report of just a 1.4% growth. And and yet you had PCE inflation, which is


the Fed's preferred target for inflation. That's up that's uh over three I think it was 3% which is a full percentage point above its fantasy 2% target that they still think that they can get inflation down to. You know, and war is very inflationary. I mean, look at the oil price. Look at what it's doing. This is the reason and the reason why the gold price is is correcting and especially the miners because the miners, you know, half their half a lot of these miners cost, especially if


they're open pit project is oil is the oil price. So, when you have a strong oil price, that that cuts into their that cuts into their margins even though they've been fantastic lately. I mean, look at look at pneumont. I mean, they they they they produced 7.3 billion in free cash flow in 2025. I mean, the miners are just they're they're just they're just puking out gobs of cash, right? Three to five times more cash flow than they were two years ago. And um I mean, if you got an all-in


sustaining cost of of 13 to 14 to 1800, that margin is huge, over 3,000. I think I mentioned that earlier. Sorry. But anyway, I got off the track here. But as far as uh the Fed is concerned, yeah, I mean basically they're you know the another reason why the the gold price is correcting and silver price is correcting is is because now that even though the the Trump administration hired what he what he believes is a yes man, he still is he he still is been uh a proponent of of a strong dollar in the


past. So, I mean, you could see you could see um rate cuts be pushed back even further. But still, even speaking of rate cuts, cutting rates in the face of higher inflation, lower GDP, and a weakening jobs market, that equals stagflation. So, they're lowering rates in a stagflationary economic situation. So, that's, you know, that's that is just music to gold and silver's ears. And that's kind of been lost in the in the Iran shuffle here. It what's happening here. I mean, everybody's


going on about what's happening in in Iran. It's it's because, you know, the terrible situation there and what it's doing for for for everyone. So, it's uh so the Fed kind of got lost in in the shuffle there and the debt especially has gotten lost. I mean, the deficit is still 1.8 trillion per year. The national debt continues to go up a trillion dollars more every 80 days. That's not stopping that the Ponzi scheme that is the the the financial system continues to there's no intention


of paying it off. There's no way to pay it off. And if you take a look at the gold price and the and the and the debt ceiling ledger, it's it's gone up right along with debt. I mean, the debt continues to to to rise and it's exponential and there's no way that they can pay it off and it's it's a sovereign debt crisis in the making and this is a big reason why gold's doing what it's doing and silver what is doing what it's doing especially with the silver deficit


now in its sixth year. >> Yes. >> I mean it's a physical it's a physical problem now. So yeah, it's all these, you know, as I've said in the past that like 2025 was the perfect storm for gold. Now it's a category 5 hurricane in 2026. >> Yeah, I think that is how it's lining up. And it's it is interesting. These usual factors, the underlying drivers that we've spent so long discussing in the past, they keep getting overshadowed by all these big events happening. So


I'm glad we took the time to go over them. I will I will let you go. I promised I wouldn't keep you too long unless you had any very final thoughts you would leave investors with. >> I think we covered pretty much everything, but uh I just I just want to thank you for having me on. It's always it's always a pleasure to talk to you and your audience. >> Oh, well, thank you so much. Good to have you in person and I hope you have a great time at the rest of PDAC. >> Thank you.


>> Okay. And once again, I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and this is David Erley with Junior Minor Junkie.