[Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and here today with me is John fenick portfolio manager and consultant at fenic Consulting thank you so much for joining me great to have you like West nice to see you again really good to be catching up and of course our last conversation was at pdac right at the beginning of March when this rise in the gold price was just beginning so of course I think we should start by checking in on gold and what's been happening over the last couple of months


and perhaps where now you see upside and downside for the metal sure um well if I remember correctly the downgrade on Newmont was February 26th and I mentioned on your interview the following week that was insane um given how much money new mon would be making at higher gold prices and uh if you caught newmont's earnings last week uh whoever that analyst is is is not feeling very good about their decision to downgrade Newmont um newon is the largest holding in GDX GDX is about a 15 billion doll ETF and newon is


one of the poster children if you will for for large gold stocks right so you know we thought they had a good quarter in January they had a good quarter in April um We're Off to the Races in Gold producers you know in terms of doing well at the earnings level and that gets the attention of big money and that's what's needed you know we've said this in your show probably for three years now that's what's needed to generate more interest in the space because we get that question all the time it's you


know good earnings you you have to have good earnings to to attract big money in the institutional world and now we're seeing that but we're seeing that while Newman has a big yield btg has a big yield you know there's other there's other stocks that have decent yields alongside of beating earnings and that's very attractive to large C value managers or midcap value managers out there so I think the sector is going to get a lot of new flow this year and um you can see that already that agnico


eagle amem is leading the sector there so getting back to the gold price you know we were a bit surprised by how quickly things took off as you know I'm very measured about gold and we've been talking about it on your show now for quite some time time but you know we we said at the last PC that 1800 would hold in 2023 we were correct this time around we were saying there's a higher floor on gold which means that it it it won't go down as much to the the $1800 level that 1900 was really a floor for all of last


you know five months of last year with no no days closing under 1900 which is amazing and then we have brief spurts where it would go above 2,000 and fail around 2075 2100 come back down retest um but this time we broke through with authority in March of 2024 and we went all the way north of 2400 now as we're sitting here around whatever 2285 it doesn't matter you know if we lost a few percent from the top you can still see these companies printing money you want to see gold at a at a nice


level for a sustained period of time that will help these companies generate a lot of free cash flow and beat you know earnings and beat on rev um which is what you know Wall Street wants to see for a sector rotation to occur so very bullish on gold um that has led us to buy more gold stocks you know we probably have about 40% of our portfolio in Gold equities right now um which is a little bit higher than usual I picked up some Dakota gold since we met last which is symbol DC uh DC is um in South Dakota uh the


chairman is Bob quter who who's been in the mining business for many many years um and Jonathan odd the CE CEO and I had a first conversation April 24th and it's on my YouTube channel fed Commodities report um Don DED and I I actually interviewed him jointly and excuse me Jonathan was saying that they were going to come out with their mineral mineral resource estimate M on Richmond Hill sometime in the coming weeks which has now been released uh they show that they have over 2 million ounces of gold and


and U they want to consolidate the entire District right so when you look at a stock trading at $245 with a New York Stock Exchange listing that hit you know $3 regularly a couple of weeks ago um we think it's going back to three plus and so as value managers we look at that and say the Market's just missing this one um what else do we like well I met Frank Callahan for the first time at the conference I was just at two days ago he has been in the mining business gosh 20 25 years at least and um he's been out


of the business retired for about the last 10 he told me and he came out of retirement to kind of get the band back together and you know with his same exact team that he delivered value uh to um to the market back you know a decade ago he's now back in Canada drilling a new project called Golden caribou and one of the things we look for Charlotte is people that have had success in mining previously and gez if they have the same team in place that generated that that Alpha for investors that's really positive so with


very few exceptions he has that same team in place Drilling in Canada right now um the symbols gccf in the states and um it doesn't trade with a lot of volume right now because it's a newer you know entity but um I think they're going to produce some really good drill results because Frank seemed very excited about the prospects he's seeing there uh so I would keep an eye on that one too okay okay really interesting to go through what's been going on in gold and and the new opportunities that you're


seeing there so thanks for going into that I think I've got a number of Pathways to follow down here so in terms of gold I think during that last conversation we had we were talking about the FED as we usually do and you were telling us that the meeting that was going to happen end of April early May the one that we just had was going to be really key so of course that recently wrapped up and we had the FED hold rate steady and PO said okay before we do anything we're still looking to see more evidence that inflation is


really moving down so want to check in with you on that and see what your thoughts are on when we may actually get those cuts yeah so when we interviewed at the beginning of the year you know January 1st to vck let's say many Market participants were calling for four rate cuts and that quickly changed as we started to get more economic data uh in February and March and um when we sat down the first week of March I thought May 1 would be more important than it actually was because we kind of knew


through March and April that may 1 would be kind of a no decision by the FED in terms of raising or cutting meaning they just did nothing but um the verbiage this time around wasn't really inflammatory in either direction in my opinion I mean I I I'd say one of the biggest changes was was pal is sort of putting all his chips on the table here and saying I don't see any stagflation whatsoever um which a lot of people in the mining space obviously disagree with and that will be interesting to see how


that plays out I think we're right and he's wrong um but let's see how that plays out over the next six to 12 months answering your question about how we see Cuts I looked at the uh fed watch tool this morning it was showing June 12th with about a 15% probability of a cut so that's probably off the table at this point um which brings us to July 31st and July 31st is looking about a 35% chance of our first rate cut um so that's still on the table but if we don't get July 31st that brings us all


the way to September and that one is going to be really important um because obviously the broad Market not just our sector is expecting cuts and has been elevated in my opinion because we're expecting Cuts right so if we don't get a cut in September uh I could see a September October for the broad Market that looks pretty bad in certain names you know because it's it's going to be just you know a disappointment okay okay good to get your thoughts on what's Happening they're always interesting to hear and


one thing I want to bring up is you know I think at the end of last year into this year I was hearing a lot of like okay the gold price is really going to move when the FED starts cutting and clearly it started to move without that happening so for you you know we talk about the FED is so important for gold are there other things right now that are more important for us to pay attention to well what's interesting is that we've had this explosive move in Gold without World War World War 3 3 or any type of


fed Cuts right like these are some of the catalysts that people have been talking about is you know a bigger Middle Eastern conflict um something happening like a Black Swan event none of this has happened in gold is still done what it's done so I think that's really bullish for anyone involved in gold or gold equities because I don't think a broader conflict is off the table by any means we've we've sort of just you know seen some type of respit in the headlines for a week or so but


that doesn't mean things are are hunky dory in in the overseas world and how it relates to us you know at least in this country with America you know fighting Wars quietly through other means right I mean if you look at the the aid package we just put together $95 billion doar I think it was um I mean not another small number that was passed here in the states um to support Ukraine and Israel in their you know fight so I I I think that we're just muddling along with those type of um conflicts


and they're only going to I mean I I think the Middle East is going to get worse I mean just from the the stuff that I read and I read a lot of different things that try to educate myself um it just doesn't look like this is going to to resolve itself you know I mean both sides are really digging in so I think that could be a potential Catalyst for gold Charlotte because gold and silver unfortunately love fear and we have very little little fear right now in the markets we're seeing you know


protests at UCLA and different schools but that's not going to drive you know gold um what's going to drive gold and silver is is actual you know stuff like we saw with with Syria Iraq different players getting involved and you're like whoa I didn't realize this was going to get this you know broad this quickly um so I still think that that's on the table I think gold is proven that it's a safe haven asset and you're starting to see more smart money be attracted to that meaning that you know you you had a


rally in the broad Market that started March of 09 I mean we are 15 plus years into this and I don't understand how we're there over there um and I think some people are just taking a breather from buying Tech buying the S&P and saying hey let's let's get in some asset classes like Commodities that are completely trashed and make some money here right and we call that a sector rotation away from things that are traditionally in Vogue and moving towards more conservative things like


our sector okay and and one more broader question before we move on to talking about some other metals and just because you had brought up stagflation did say you know here in the Ving industry yeah everybody's talking about that and they've been talking about it for quite a long time but just over the last couple weeks or so I've seen that popping up in kind of more mainstream ways so are you in that stagflation Camp I guess is the question well we one on your show last May I guess it was and we said um that


we were kind of dialing back our recession call because I saw Tech and AI just taking off I mean you can't really get behind a recession call when you're seeing the kind of extreme moves we saw uh in a sector that's so dominant in the market right um so I'm not really banging the table on the dollar crashing on stagflation necessarily right away you know um down the road absolutely um but but the dollars actually remained really strong you know and I think I mentioned that on your show as well it's


like we're not one of those gold and silver you know entities that says you have to have a crashing dollar to have good prices and gold and silver and look I mean the prices speak for themselves Rick rule has taught me that like gosh seven eight years ago he said there are times when the dollar will run alongside of precious metal prices we're seeing that it doesn't happen often but what that's telling you I think is that the dollar gold and silver are all being viewed as more of a safe haven trade


let's look at the price action we saw today for example non-farm payrolls come out they miss pretty badly broad Market loves that right because that might might indicate that rate cuts are coming sooner than later interestingly gold was flat like right to the right on like almost the to like no activity but was up and down a ton today but it finished flat um GDX finished about flat as well so is that you know a real a real you know bullish sign for for our sector no I mean we would love to have a good day


after something like that but it's our sector is now acting differently it's it's it's zigging when the markets zagging that's exactly the kind of you know price action you want to see as an investor in this space because our our sector is now you know reacting differently to news in other words we're not just you know following the S&P and the NASDAQ up um which is really positive we call that decoupling okay okay really good to go into that as well and I think I have one


last question on gold more specifically on on the gold stocks so you mentioned I think since the beginning of this year we've seen GDX and gdxj on the move but it doesn't seem quite yet like we're into that kind of FAL moment that we've talked about in previous interviews when people see gold and they really Pile in there so when do you think that might start to happen well I will say that we called for that 2550 to 26 level on GDX the whole which it did multiple times and then it just took off right and we said


once it got above 30 30 it would be really good um it has gotten above 30 now and we're around I think 3350 as we record this maybe a little lower um we tested that 35 level which is sort of major resistance and it failed you know it did pop for a couple days above there but it didn't hang out there very long at all so 35 to me is sort of that big number in the sand that you've got to get through with some closes uh and some confidence some volume um but nonetheless I mean it's been a really


good year depending on you know what you're in I mean we we own GDX and J as core Holdings in our portfolio it's about 12% of of all of our Holdings um but we have a lot of different satellites around uh that those type of core Holdings to generate Alpha in our portfolio which is our performance right and um names like um I'm trying to think here like I'll just give you one so platin x uh is now called PTX Metals we mentioned it once on your show before it's right around the same price it's


trading very very low versus the peer group it's 024 cents right so two and a half cents let's Round Up um you know on the chart it can get to three and a half to Four Cents very easily it got there on heavy volume over the last few months right so buying it here let's say it even goes to five cents which is not outrageous at all you're making a 100% gain right like the difference would be that Newmont would have to go from 40 to 80 to get 100% right like that's going to take a


while um and so we tell people yeah we love numont we're going to hold it as a core holding but this could double you know in in the course of a year and that's what we want to see as um as portfolio managers we want to see that you know kind of outperformance uh alongside of our core Holdings that are more conservative okay okay I think we'll move over to Silver now and this is an interesting one because I think last time we talked about silver probably many times in the past you had mentioned


that 25 26 dollar level is really key for silver it would need to get through and of course since the last conversation we've seen that happen and like gold silver is pulled back again since since going above there but I'm I'm curious to what you make of Silver's performance so is this this seems to be a positive step forward I would think absolutely um we said all of last year that 26 was not going to get broken and many of our peers were at the 30 to 35 camp and we never saw it broke 20


never saw a break 26 with any Authority on the second half of the year uh on a closing basis at all I mean it was just really heavy resistance um since we last met in March it broke through 26 like butter I mean it was like immediate break to the upside which is really bullish activity and then we saw it go above 29 briefly and now it's consolidating ated back right so let's say it's around 2615 2620 right now not wonderful I would have loved to see it held hold in there a little bit better than this but will it


hold that 25 to 26 range again because remember that was resistance all of last year and now it might act as support and that from a technical perspective is really bullish so I'm in the camp that it will you know 25 will hold um we'll see I mean a couple of spikes below 25 who cares if you remember silver you know spiked below 18 for like two days uh about a year and a half ago and it doesn't matter I mean even though 18 was support you know if you have a couple of days below that or above resistance it


really doesn't matter in the big picture the the the positive takeaway is that silver was able to hold 21 22 23 make a run at 25 to 26 break through it and almost get all the way to Major resistance which is 30 oh okay and of course I should ask you if you had any updates on Silver companies that you're watching at the moment I think we mentioned Guan silver on our last one GS vrf and I just had dinner with James two nights ago at the conference uh spent about two hours together and I mean again four producing


properties uh this isn't a silver Explorer this is a silver producer right so they they produced about a million ounces last quarter which was a nice little bump from you know the previous two quarters um so they're headed in the right direction uh they need a higher silver price because their costs are a little bit higher than the average silver producer so let's say they're all in sustaining cost is$ 23 to $24 an ounce at 26 or 27 you're making money and it's not Handover fist money but once you get


to 30 plus this is the kind of stock that will have a ton of torque to this silver price so we've been buying that on dips here um we you know continue to think places like Peru are much safer than they were you know under Castillo's Reign Castillo has been in jail for 17 months now so I mean you know it's time to move on as an investor and look at Peru I think in a different uh way meaning like it's a much safer place than it was under his under his Reign um so Jose Garcia who is


the silverx ki uh CEO actually lives in Peru uh the ticker is AG xpf and we had dinner at pedak and he was saying look John you know everything is in place for a rally here not only in sober but in Peru so you know that's the kind of stuff we like to hear from a a small producer in Peru um so you kind of get the theme Here Charlotte we're not going just for the big cap silver stuff we're buying smaller cap silver producers that have a lot of torque to the silver price and someone like Jose owns you know over


10% of the company right he's got a ton of skin in the game so it's you know doesn't mean it's going to work but it means that you have someone alongside you as an investor that really cares about the projects yeah certainly I can I can see the theme there and all right so gold and silver definitely that's where a lot of the excitement is right now but we've been talking literally for months about at this point about your energy transition medals event that was happening in Washington DC and that


actually just wrapped up so I wanted to check in with you on key themes or highlights that you would want to share from that well um it wasn't my event I just to be clear I was an adviser to the event uh Misha and Jessica levall put it on and this is um a Mother's Son Duo that that hosts Bieber Creek every year in Colorado and uh they do other conferences as well in Zurich Sydney Etc but I thought they did a great job of Hosting about 60 companies in the the copper uranium lithium you know uh space


if you will the transition metal space nickel um and it was an awesome conference I mean there were no uh bad moments and in the entire two days I mean it just went very smoothly and quickly and I was able to bring my daughter to that for her first conference at 11 years old so we had an awesome time together and uh she met a lot of my um uh CEOs that I talk to regularly as well as some of my clients so it was a lot of fun um but I think it was a very positive event um one of the cool things was that c CEOs were able to


talk to their constituents in DC you know around the conference so I think people got a lot of that a lot of a lot out of the trip in general um to and the theme you know coming out of that Charlotte is that the US government is actually well aware that China is is ahead in the Commodities race so to speak in a lot of these Commodities and they have to do something differently and that I heard from three different CEOs independent of each other that they had very positive meetings and were kind


of surprised by the fact that you know individuals at the dod doe and other agencies were aware that hey we have to do something and and grant money isn't going to be handed out tomorrow or next month but it's coming and um I think a lot of these companies are well positioned okay okay really interesting and my apologies I think we've talked about it so much then in my head I was like yep that's your conference but of course all the credit where it's due so really to hear that that was a success


and just on the note of energy transition medals I was going to bring up copper so you know I've said the excitement within gold and silver so far this year but copper has been moving as well so of course wanted to check in with you on what's going on with copper and any copper Holdings that you are watching at the moment so copper is around 451 a pound um when we last met I think it was struggling with $4 I mean it's been a pretty quick move uh and and to see it approaching five you know it hit 469 a


few weeks ago um is very bullish and the large cap copper names like uh free Port Arrow all this stuff is already taken off not to say it won't go higher but we're looking you know below and cap again like we do in gold at some of the midcap and small cap names because a lot of those names haven't moved much yet and so we want to get behind those projects now before they take off because I think copper is going to have a good year this year and a great year next year um so we like you know Nev


gold that's a new name for us uh naff I met with Brandon at that conference we just talked about two days ago uh for the first time and um his dad was chairman of copper bank which is now Faraday uh when I was investing heavily in that company and um still owned some CPP KF but um in looking at their news flow in April got me really interested because they are only they have a copper project called Zeus which is 20 kilomet away from Hercules and as you know Hercules is getting a ton of news


especially last year about what they're doing in Idaho um so yes it's a proximity play but I think it's a little more than that when you look at the news flow um so I think Brandon is excited about you know getting more news to the market this year and um you know they they did a raise probably about four months ago so they're not in need of immediate cash which I also like um so I've been investing in that and um on the copper side as well I would say take a look at Vortex Metals uh VM ssf um I


know I mentioned that one other time on your show and um Michael Williams who founded aftermath silver co-founded this company so one of the things I like to do is go with someone who has helped me in one investment to their next investment and so Michael and vas ranan you know co-run this Pro this project uh they have two deposits in Mexico which are getting zero love from the market right now because of course we've got the Mexican elections coming up early June so that will be interesting to see


how that development plays out I'm sure it's going to be bullish for a lot of Mexican copper silver gold stocks if we get you know a an outcome there that's positive for minors but they pivoted in November Charlotte to no to to H Chile which I thought was really interesting because a lot of people are just holding on to their Mexican assets and and kind of just waiting and seeing they actually did something about it and um picked up some some ground right next to a producing mine in Chile from a a local


family so there's no overhang from First Nations from any other you know people this is not you know right near a big populated area area um and I talked to their goo John lson gosh guess about a month and a half ago and he walked me through their deck for about 40 minutes and I think they're just going to do really well on their first drill drill program so I've been buying that stock in advance of them drilling uh they just got cashed up here literally like a week ago and the ticker is VM


ssf okay really good updates on copper and before I let you go last but not least we should take a look at what's going on in uranium and my apologies to our audience I know this is a sector that I've been neglecting in favor of gold and silver so if you can highlight what you see going on there that would be great well if you look at January's price action uh was very bullish um broke $100 I think it got to about 109 110 if I'm not mistaken on spot and um that got the attention of a lot of


investors really you know even last fall as the ascent to 100 plus was happening you saw uh fishing um uranium royalty a bunch of companies cash up in Q4 of last year leading into that rally which was super smart um because their stocks recovered very quickly and um they were able to raise a lot of cash on the back of that um we're still seeing the Junior market underperform the large cap stuff meaning like the cicos of the world um so we're very interested in uranium Jr right now um two that come to mind would be F3


uranium uh that's fuu FF uh they just did announced an offering here a few days ago to raise just over 7 million um and that would cash them up for quite some time but you know they made a major discovery not long ago um the stock peaked out at 41 cents us it's trading now at. 266 uh which is I think the weekly low so you know there is support around 24 25 us we've got orders out there to try to buy at that level and if we're not successful we'll raise our bids but you know I think uh Deb and his team do a


decent job there uh and they're getting overlooked by the market um another one is standard uranium I just met with John Bay at the conference two days ago that that ticker is stdf and they too just announced the financing this week so both are in the mode of cashing up what does that mean for investors well it means that companies that are explorers constantly need money right so when you can buy a stock that's slightly depressed because of that situation where they have to dilute existing shareholders a bit it's


a real positive I think and and uh John has 11 projects all in the athabaska Basin he's got a unique model in that he's not trying to drill like 11 projects by himself he's got a lot of JV joining Venture Partners on these projects if you go to their website and take a look and that gives you know Sean hiliker his Geo a lot of you know as he puts it shots on goal gives you a lot of chances to be successful and um I think that stock trading at 033 us right now is is very undervalued so um those are


two names there all right well as usual I think we've covered a lot of ground but before I let you go I'll put it back to you and ask you if you had any final thoughts that you would want to leave with investors right now sure well I did my first um gold event last month um which was a webinar I did on different websites that I use on a daily basis um I was pretty heavy on technicals so if people like technical support and resistance kind of coaching I went through a number of different charts


probably 20 different charts on showing people via different stocks what I would look at as entry points and exit points um that's available on my website fenic consulting.com uh if you go to the events tab you can buy the replay um I'm doing a live event with Don durett uh my buddy who um uh is the founder of Goldstock data.com and uh don doesn't really do live webinars that much I think it's a great opportunity for investors to check us both out at the same time you know we see the world a


bit differently but we get along really well we really want investors to learn from what we're doing and we we share a lot of our our ideas you know we don't try to hold a lot back so that is going to be a cool event and that's happening May 16th at 2 o'clock Pacific it'll be 90 minutes there'll be a live Q&A and um realizing that that's a little bit late for European investors um we're offering the same price if they were to buy it on the replay so you know um it's going to


be $110 to to do the 90minut webinar with Don and I and that's on my website as well in the top right corner you can see gold and silver event just click there and register if you'd like okay very good and if you if you get the link over to me I'll put it in the video description so people could find it okay perfect okay well we will we'll leave it there for now I'm sure we'll be checking in in another couple of months or so but really good to have you thank you so much thanks a lot Char


of course and once again I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and this is John F 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 for