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 [Music] I'm Char McLoud with investingnews decom and here today with me is Carrie Stevenson host of making money matter and founder of the Australian Gold conference she also is of course an investor really good to have you here thank you so much for joining hey Charlotte it's great to be on your program and nice to see you again the last time I saw you we were over at uh the Rick Roll conference in uh Florida that was great fun it was a lot of fun and it's really good to be catching up with you again

after that I was thinking it's it's clearly it's not our first time talking we know each other but just for those who may not be familiar since you haven't been on this channel before if you could start by giving just a brief introduction to who you are how you got involved involved in the resource sector hosting conferences and and what you doing out thanks Charlotte uh well I do host a YouTube channel called making money matter where we do talk to like yourself we talk to a lot of resource companies

or companies that investors might be interested in hearing from but also looking at the macro picture as well why do I do that because I've got a really curious mind and as you said at the start I am an investor uh so for me I'm always looking for what's happening out there and I thought well why not share it with other people as well so I do that um but how did I get involved in resources well I came back from Europe uh in 2003 and I couldn't get a job and it was actually uh my ex-husband that said to

me why don't you start a mining conference and my first response to that was I have no clue about mining except that's a very large Diamond um and he said you're smart learn so I did and what I realized Charlotte was that here in Australia if it's not agriculture it's mining that this is mining is what built and gave Australia Its economic wealth but many people in Australia have no clue as I did at the time back in 2003 so I started to learn so it's been 20 years now I find the industry

fascinating and as I said just a moment ago everything is mind or grown so I'm an investor I host a podcast and I'm the found of the Australian Gold conference it's the only conference dedicated to Precious medals in Australia thank you for going through that I think it's always great to get the origin story and that's that's a really interesting background so where I want to start now is so I know that you are in touch with investors you're speaking to companies all the time

you've been doing some recent traveling so I was hoping you could give me an idea of how investor sentiment is looking right now now in Australia I know over here in Canada and North America people are feeling pretty downtrodden as they look at the mining sector so what are you seeing uh I'm seeing a uh a bit of struggle Street happening at the moment Charlotte in terms of cost of living in Australia is going through the roof we all know the inflation story it's here it's sticky it's not going away so

there's there's a I guess a little bit of pressure on people as to The Fear Factor worrying about prices and where they're going and that's not just general day-to-day living it's the fuel prices etc etc from an investor point of view I'm I'm finding that people are almost confused and not looking at the fundamentals of companies be that in resources or biotech it doesn't matter which sector people are it's almost like they're going into a gambling mentality

rather than looking at the fundamentals of a company because some companies with great projects uh their share price is tanked or really not in my opinion showing True Value and then you have others that are running through the roof uh and I and I'm looking at thinking is that day trade is just pushing that price up back to remember when uh that silver squeeze and the and the Reddit what was it GameStop remember the gametop story um and I wonder whether some of that has something to do with it and so the

fundamentals out the window to a certain extent during this time and speculation is the name of the game along with a lot of people sitting on the sidelines sitting in cash thinking there's no real direction to this Market at the moment so they do nothing yeah we were we were talking a little bit about this before we turn the camera on and I think it is really easy for people to get stuck in that you know looking out there it looks confusing things aren't moving as Maybe they should maybe it's easier to stay put and

stay in the sidelines so maybe this is a good transition to ask you what you're doing with your money right now where you see opportunity and and how to take action oh that's a very good question Charlotte uh what am I doing with my money right now well while everyone is you know gold you know I'm wearing my gold jacket um I am known as that gold lady I'm looking at gold and if you if if gold and gold Equity is very unloved at the moment you know people are looking at tech stocks they're looking

at you know they're even looking at putting cash in the bank and getting 5% return and as Warren Buffett once uh said famously said you know owning gold is just a big hole in the ground looking at some metal that does nothing do doesn't give you a return well my opinion is that over time gold does what it always does which is it keeps your purchasing power and while governments around the world uh uh printing money like drunken Sailors and spending like drunken Sailors I look at gold as my safe haven so what am I doing

I am still I'm not going all in I'm not saying you know I'm selling my house and my my my child to to purchase gold but I'm certainly diversifying so that I'm looking at different ways so that if for example um something in the Mar in the share market starts to move I've got exposure to that I've got exposure to physical gold and physical silver as well as gold Equity so for me it's all about diversification because my V my view is that if you keep printing like drunken

Sailors then hard assets is is something that you really strongly need to look at and by the way as you know Charlotte this is not Financial advice this is just what I'm doing and I always say to people do your own research and don't put a dime of your hard-earned wealth into this Market without doing research and I think I think Charlotte I think half the issue is that people use social media uh to tell them what to do you know they're listening they're listening to people on Facebook and I'm like he

they they don't read reports uh they don't understand quarterly reports uh they don't call the company they don't look at who's running the company and where they come from you know do your research yeah I think it's so important to do your research do your due diligence take ownership of what you're doing with your money in that way and you know of course you know everybody should take a look at what they want to do with their money they don't have to listen to you they should look at a

diverse array but so let's so you're looking though at you're looking at hard assets you want to diversify maybe we can look on the company side as well and look at when you are evaluating companies in the resource sector what are you looking for uh well the first thing I look for the first thing I look for is who's behind the company who who's running the company what's their track record um are they coming from an uh from uh outside the resources industry and they' they've

they've just gone in and thought well I can I can probably make some money by raising five million $10 million from unsuspecting investors and it doesn't really matter whether I get this project off the ground so the first thing that I always say to people is who's running the company so people first project second jurisdiction third so there are certain areas where you know I've had someone say to me well we've got this project in for example and I'm not saying that this for everybody but for

me uh papy New Guinea is a difficult jurisdiction some parts of Africa are a difficult jurisdiction so that does play into the way I look at it but as I said right at the start it's the people behind the projects that you've got to look at yeah I agree that's that's so important and you know I want to go back and look at gold a little bit deeper so you mentioned gold is so un love right now certainly we can feel that even though the price is historically high and I actually before this call I was looking

at the price of gold in Australian dollars and it looks like it's it's reached new highs even so where do you see us as being in the gold cycle right now in the gold cycle right now I think that uh the shiny lithium sector is the one that's that everyone's looking at and so they're looking at you know we all know that we're going through this energy transition and people are talking Rare Earth which by the way are not rare uh they're talking lithium uh they're talking all this sort of Green Tech you

know areas and they've forgotten again goes back to what I said before the fundamentals you know gold is money uh in my opinion everything else is credit and comes with that asso that that I guess um what's the word I'm looking for can't think of the word but um the associated challenges with that so for me I like gold but that's physical gold when you look at gold equities and and and gold itself again a lot of the the uh ASX listed companies in Gold they're doing okay but I would have thought they

would do a lot better there is there are a couple of standouts um and am I allowed to mention companies is that okay but yes if you would like to definitely welcome um well you know Spartan resources now this is a this is a a fascinating one it was formerly known as gascoin now Gasco resources over in in Western Australia great project uh they they had a plot and they went into Administration uh so they were under some management they they didn't quite uh un potentially understand what it is that they had in

their on their hands enter Simon Lawson formerly with um northern star resources uh he he understands different ways of looking at things and he came in with a new set of eyes very very smart guy now what is he finding right now he's finding extraordinarily High grades of gold at their never never deposit and in fact they came out this week with over a thousand grams per ton of gold now back in May I think uh the share price was trading 11 12 cents I think they closed yesterday about 42 have they got a lot

further to go well uh the managing director Simon Lawson as he says to me all the time this is a business I am here to to make sure that we give value back to shareholders that's what you want to hear you want to hear that the person running the company understand that it's a business looks at what what they're doing and where they're going to find things and not going at it in a scattergun approach and as he said to me recently um he said you know rather than me coming in and telling the guys that are there and know

what they're doing the GEOS he looked at all of them and he said well where would you drill and all he said all of them just turned around and said well we drill right here so he said we go do it and guess what they they've got a discovery on their hands and the company has a complete turnaround there are others in the gold space are yeah and there are others in the gold space like for example Evolution mining great company um executive chairman Jake Klein really good operator but I I think it was back

in oh it would be 2020 their share price was running at about $6 and and today we're in about the $3 range um I would have thought that given the the price of gold uh over $3,000 Aussie I think it's 9 1977 us so it's a it's a play on currencies at the moment uh that that would have a bit of a stronger share price but that they do give a dividend so you go from the the really big guys like the evolutions of the northern stars and the reges which are a strong company's producers right down to the little guys

but you know as you know Charlotte if they make a discovery then it's goes back to the lon curve that Discovery moment is when that share price can really start to move yeah okay that was really interesting and it sounds like you know when you're talking about which companies are seeing success right now in the gold sector it sounds like it does go back to that strong management idea first that you were mentioning so definitely good to follow I wondered if there there are any other trends that

you see in the gold sector right now that you think investors should pay attention to that might have bearing on you know what people want to do with their money heading into 2024 I I always uh it's it's what they want to do with their money it's it's funny this is just me I call what do they want to do with their currency because I always say gold is money everything else is credit what do you want to do with your currency what's the currency going to be doing look I don't

know I have a feeling that the the you know there's people turning around saying the US dollar is going to be stronger for longer I suspect that's right you know I don't believe that the US dollar is to collapse anytime soon there are people out there saying that that's what will happen but I think the US dollar is a reserve currency it's it it might not be as strong in in the future but I do think that uh you've got to look at where you put your currency and how you're going to do it now where

what do you do goes back to what I said right at the beginning not just gold you've got to look at Trends and we all know Charlotte right now the trend is towards this zero carbon emission what I'm seeing right now is zero carbon emission from a commodity sector and an energy sector because we need more and more energy to transition regardless of which way you look at it this energy transition this zero carbon world that people want us to live in uranium uranium in my opinion is is a commodity to really start to have a look

at and the highest grades of uranium in the world are the Athabasca Basin so you've got a lot of companies out there such as you know from an Australian point of view a lot of Aussies up in the Athabasca at the moment doing work and the uranium price is I think it's just about to hit 80 $80 a pound and it wasn't it wasn't so long ago that it was 49.50 so clearly there's a little bit of a turnaround that aabas Basin High grades you've got companies like Terra uranium um 992e there's um a number of

good Aussie companies up there and then you've got Aussie companies uh working in Africa as well as Australia now I suspect I don't know but I think there's going to come a time in the not too distant future where the Australian government will have to turn around and say do you know what for us to get to zero carbon emissions as we keep saying we want to we're going to have to start using uh nuclear energy it's just a fact and what what do you need for nuclear energy you need

uranium yeah and it seems like so many governments around the world have come to that conclusion so it does it does feel a little bit inevitable that that's going to be coming at some point in the future and you know uranium our audiences are really strong interest in uranium so I'm glad that you brought that up one thing that I find really interesting so I think you mentioned some companies that are kind of more on the exploration side you can correct me if I'm wrong about that so how is that

how you're approaching the sector because I know some people right now are saying you know it's so small there's so few players we rather just go with the the large companies I think that depends on your uh your investing appetite you know the Explorers there's always a lot more risk when it comes to exploration will those will those companies ever get into mining well again it comes back to people doesn't it and I look at somebody like John borof for example um he's his company deep

yellow uh assets here in Australia big big big uh believer in the uranium story John's done it before he'll do it again so again you go back to people what are they doing how they have they done it before but um these are all in the expiration phase the supply side in uranium is a real challenge so I tend to agree with you Charlotte that if you want to stay safe and just like go into those that are producing already I think you'll do very well but there's also I believe and correct me if I'm wrong um and I believe

he's and I can't remember his name um Amir Amir adani I think it is that's got the uranium ETF and I think if you want exposure to uranium that's potentially a very clever clever thing to do as well down here in Australia of course um we do have the honeymoon mine which is boss energy uh they're they're looking really good and their their their boss uh Duncan uh he Duncan cray uh he uh when the uranium price was really unloved he actually went out and bought yellow cake as as a

as a support for those that would need uranium and as a shareholder shareholders did extremely well out of that strategy that he had back in the day when uranium was really not being looked at as it is today okay I think that's really helpful thanks for going through all that uranium information I also want to ask you a little bit more about how to approach the lithium sector so of course we know Australia is a major major producer of of lithium so lots of companies over there in Australia that

people could look at at probably all areas of the food chain also we're seeing Australians come over to Canada and pursue lithium a lot of the time over in Quebec other areas so I wonder how you're approaching the lithium sector because I think lots of people want to hear about that uh how do I approach the lithium SE sector I approach it with confusion and I say that Charlotte because um there's there's a great story and and and I'll I'll um I'll I'll just go through it there was a there's a

company called TG Metals now TG I love it stands for the goat TG medals the goat the tethered goat um now they've got greenstone project over Lake Johnston in West Australia when I saw one of the um original founders of the company um uh in I think it was May or June here on the G Coast uh was talking about it now they hadn't got their permits at that stage this was back May June of this year share price was running at about 8 cents permits come through assay come back world starts getting very excited

about it stock closed at 92 cents yesterday now admittedly not that many shares on issue kind of like a Canadian company earing about I think it's 57 million shares on issue of which approximately 50% of those are estro for a couple of years so it doesn't take much to move that share price up to 92 but you know again buyer beware if the set next set of assay results come back and they're not what the market is expecting then that share price could go from 92 to 20 so that's the the massive changes that you can see

and then you look at um other companies in the space such as ironer which is actually over in the US they've got the lithium Boron project in uh at riight Ridge in Nevada great company being run extremely well the Boron is going to help offset the cost of um getting out the lithium but their sh share price which got to as high as I think it was about in their 60s is now languishing at 15 cents so that shows me that that Discovery Model you know when people find a discover dely and and everyone

gets over excited that's when that share price can really move but then when they're in what we call the boring bit you know the construction and the getting into mining because I'm I'm look nothing is absolutely certain in this world Charlotte but I'm pretty sure that riight Ridge will become a mine but they're in the boring part of spending money getting into construction so the market doesn't like it so how do I look at lithium skepticism and with hop ism yeah that makes a lot of sense to me I'm

sure many investors feel the same way for me you know when I look at lithium I I often get overwhelmed because you know we always talk about uranium as an opaque Market but lithium is the same you know different types of prices uh we have right now interesting Supply demand Dynamics where we had previously such highs in the price that have now pulled back but meanwhile looking out further of course we have the very strong electric vehicle demand Outlook so any any advice for navigating all these

different nuances of the market well it's interesting there's a there's another company um which I find fascinating because again going back to ESG going back to um zero carbon emissions um if you've got a project that is close to a manufacturing Hub that Peaks my interest and so there's there's a company list on the ASX called panasia Metals now where are they they're In tha a lot of people go oh it's Thailand and they worry about that and I say well and they also worry

because it's lepidolite well lepidolite has been lithium from lipolite has been produced in China for a very long time um there's nothing to be scared about people just don't understand it they understand brins they understand spodine but they don't understand lepidolite it's absolutely fine the key with panasia Metals is they're very close to a very large Manufacturing which is Thailand a number of the cars the electric vehicle cars that we see here in Australia such as the Mercedes-Benz

and others are actually manufactured in Thailand now Pan Asia Metals projects are not that very far away they and in fact the other thing that I like about them they're just 40 kilometers north of puket in Thailand what a place to go but that aside they're in Thailand they're close to manufacturing so the cost of getting that that Supply to that manufacturing Hub is going to be very key but along with that they're being very um strategic in turning around and saying well we're going to be

doing joint ventures and becoming a chemical company as well so they're looking at that that value chain and not just going well we're just going to blast out of the ground they're looking at the added value of of making it into uh the the the the carbonate rather than just lithium supply I think that's a really great Point especially as we've seen definitely over the last several years how supply chain issues can quickly cause instability so very good point there I wonder so we've

gone through gold we've talked about uranium we talked about lithium any other sectors that you feel investors should be keeping an eye on right now uh I think again going back to the fact that we're we're we're doing this energy transition you've got you cannot go past Dr copper you know they again these these Minds people people that don't actually watch this space and don't watch it closely the majority of the world um are not aware of just how much copper is needed

for an electric vehicle how much copper will be required for all of this transition that we're going through and that these M you don't just turn the copper tap on these mines take potentially decades to come online at the moment where mining uh lower and lower grades of copper in the mines that are currently on stream we've got to really start to look at where do we find new copper now Chile is one area uh but there are places here in Australia in Queensland we've got some good

potentially some good opportunities for copper but yeah I like the copper uh opportunity I think uh Eagle Mountain Mining which is over there in the US uh that's that's one to watch but the copper thematic has got to be one to have a look at but you know me Charlotte I'll always go back to Gold because to me uh gold is money and everything else is credit so as an investor I always say physical gold is your friend that is what will protect your purchasing power you keep it you hold it you don't spend it that's

like your it's not savings per se but if you got into a heck of a lot of trouble you could then sell that for currency uh but from a speculation point of view or investment point of view um gold equities I think because no one's looking be a contrarian and Rick rule always says this he's always a contrarian investors when everyone else is looking left he looks right so right now I'm loving gold no one loves it I think that's that's a perfect place to wrap up unless you had anything else

to add any any events that you are hosting in the future any any final thoughts that we should add on oh thanks Charlotte uh well we've got the Australian Gold conference I'd love people from Canada I'd love to see half the audience be Canadians or from any other part of the world quite frankly because Australia does produce a lot of gold it's where we created our wealth there's some great opportunities so the Australian Gold conference will be in Sydney on the 26th to the 28th of August

in that's next year because we're coming up to the end of 203 so next year 26 28th of August gold events.com is where you'll find all the information and yeah we look forward to that and I think gold equities will be very very different in August of next year perfect and we will we add that link to the video description so people can check it out if they want to I still haven't made my way over to Australia maybe next year I'm crossing my fingers we'll see what happens but thank you so

much for coming on to talk about what's going on in the resource sector really good to have you thank you Charlotte been great to be here and great to chat of course and once again I'm Charlotte cloud with investing news.com and this is Carrie Stevenson thank you for watching if you like this video make sure you subscribe to our Channel we'd also love to hear your thoughts so leave us a comment below we'll see you next [Music] time