Clinton Cash

A Breitbart hitpiece movie on Hillary, released today and nicely timed for the DEM conference of course, but interesting because it features Frank Guistra, Lukas Lundin, Ian Telfer, Frank Holmes and others. But lots of Frank Guistra.

This video is unlikely to be featured on CEO.ca. Youtube here

UPDATE: Apparently the Clinton Cash video link doesn't work any more. You can still watch it from this download link, though. 

UPDATE 2: If that one doesn't work, try this one. It does.

Daniel Ameduri's paychecks

Thanks to reader MB for the heads up on this, the disclosure section of the latest promotional pump bullshit from Daniel Ameduri and his pumphouse, Future Money Trends. You'll find it in tiny tiny lettering in light blue ink at the bottom, but when you take a good look at the contents it's pretty impressive stuff. 

To give you an idea, just the cash dollars add up to U$1.467m, that's aside from the warrants, options, shares and other derivatives. Here are some of the highlights on the cash he makes from promoting these worthless pieces of crap to idiot greenhorns:

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Future Money Trends LLC has been compensated one hundred and seventy thousand dollars for a one week marketing program, paid for by K92 Mining.

We were previously compensated one hundred and seventy thousand for a two week program that has since expired. We have also been compensated one hundred and forty five thousand options by the company for a six month video advertisement campaign.

We are also actively marketing First Majestic Silver, and received twenty five thousand options and up to eighteen thousand dollars.

We are also actively marketing First Mining Finance, and have received six hundred thousand options, and and up to one hundred and seven thousand dollars.

We are also actively marketing Nevada Exploration, and have received one hundred thousand options, and and up to two hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars.

We are also actively marketing Golden Arrow Resources, and have been compensated one hundred and eighty one thousand dollars.

We have previously been compensated by Brazil Resources, Auryn Resources, and MX Gold Corp., including fifty thousand options from Brazil Resources and one hundred thousand options from MX Gold Corp.


We own shares on both the public market and via warrants received through private placements in First Mining Finance, First Majestic Silver, K92 Mining, Golden Arrow Resources, MX Gold Corp., and Brazil Resources.

Gold Standard Media (GSM) is currently marketing Brazil Resources, GSM is a media company with the same members as FMT. We have received up to one hundred thousand dollars for our current program paid for by the company.

GSM is currently marketing K92 Mining,  we have received two hundred thousand dollars for our current program paid for by the company.

GSM is currently marketing First Mining Finance  we have received one hundred and sixty thousand dollars for our current program paid for by the company.

Wealth Research Group (WRG) is currently marketing K92 Mining, FMT has a majority ownership in WRG. WRG has been compensated forty thousand dollars for a two day investor awareness campaign.

WRG has been compensated by First Mining Finance forty thousand dollars for a two day investor awareness campaign.

FMT and its management may benefit from any increase in the share price of the profiled companies and hold the right to sell the shares bought at any given time including shortly after the release of the companies profile. When it comes to buying or selling shares.  Please assume we are buying and/or selling before, during and/or after publication of the discussed Company.  FMT will not advise as to when it decides to buy or sell and does not and will not offer any opinion as to when others should sell; each investor must make that decision based on his or her judgment of the market.

But to give Ameduri credit, he saves the best line until right at the very end of his mailer.

 "Never base any decision off of our website or emails."

On that I can only agree.

UPDATE: Reader C sends in some visual commentary on the contents of this post:

Notice how words are superfluous sometimes? Nicely done, C.

The top three most visited IKN posts this week are...

...in reverse order:

Third Place: "A message to the Athabasca Basin juniors". Because the best jokes are based on truths.

Second Place: "Regarding morale at Kirkland Lake Gold (KGI.to) head office". Because you like the catty gossip posts.

First Place: "Agnico Eagle (AEM) and another armed robbery of gold". I'm pretty sure we weren't the first to report this in English, as  there was a wire story going round as soon as the news hit in Mexico in Spanish. But we were one of the first, IKN added the detail about the injured security guard before anyone else in English and the post was way ahead of the standard media channels in Canada (G&M, FP etc). That's why it got the most hits.

In The IKN Weekly on Sunday...

...the main event will be a look at Atico Mining (ATY.V). Because it's about time.

The Friday OT: Johannes Brahms; Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77, Sayaka Shoji

A sublime version:

The famous bit that you hear in other places, adverts, movies etc is the second movement adagio. And she nails it, but even before then watch and listen to the way she takes over the whole show at 3:00. So hit play and listen.

Chart of the day is...

...the gold/silver ratio, five years:

Two options:

1) This time it's different.

2) We're going to see 70X again. After that, we'll see whether the last couple of months are a real trend change or not.

As silver stocks have been extremely over-priced, if you're interested in taking a position in any given name, you're probably better off waiting a month while sentiment blows off. Or you may want to do the more sensible thing and buy gold exposure instead.

Gold Reserve (GRZ.v): How much trading halt?

Gold Reserve (GRZ.v), that thing with the Venezuela property and the International Arbitration award, went on an IIROC trading halt on Monday and is still halted. Word from the company is that "they're working on a news release" though one has to wonder whether the person writing it needs to learn the English language first.

Fun fact: Long halts are rarely good news.

Guatemala: Tahoe Resources (TAHO) (THO.to) Escobal mining permits are under threat

Tahoe Resources (TAHO) (THO.to) has a problem.

First, the anti-mining anti-mining legal pressure group CALAS managed to use the Guatemala courtrooms to close down the El Tambor/La Puya mine owned by KCA. Now it's after Tahoe Resources (THO.to) (TAHO) and its Escobal mine. This week CALAS submitted a formal petition to demand the immediate revocation of the Escobal mining permits (along with those of another mine, Sechol) to the country's Ministry of Energy and Mining (MEM) because it says that its permits were illegally granted during the previous government of Otto Pérez Molina (who is now in jail due to the "La Linea" corruption scandal). It works like this:

• According to CALAS (translated), "Under article 50 of the Mining Law, the Ministry of Energy and Mines has the obligation to declare non-substantial any right of mining operation (i.e. permit) when it has been granted without fulfilling the established requirements in the Mining Law and its regulations".

• In December 2015 The Constitutional Court of Guatemala ruled that the Escobal permit had been granted without fulfilling all requirements of the Mining Law. Specifically it stated that the MEM had "Violated the administrative procedure for the permitting of these mining projects" (i.e. Escobal and Sechol).

• Therefore yesterday CALAS submitted its formal demand to revoke the Sechol and Escobal mining licences. In this report in Guatemala's national daily 'La Hora', its legal representative Rafael Maldonado said (translated), "With immediate effect, during the next month, we ask that the mining operations are halted", and he added that if they weren't shut down CALAS will take legal action against the Minister of Energy and Mining. Using a legal action against the minister in question is, for what it's worth, the same strategy CALAS used in March 2016 to get the MEM to first suspend and finally annul the El Tambor/La Puya mining permits.

Escobal is of course the same mine where an employee was killed in a workplace accident in November, but instead of admitting the fatality TAHO decided to bury the story and not mention it to anyone anywhere.

The latest from Porter Stansberry

As part of his ongoing quest to bully IKN into submission, the filing made by proven securities fraudster Porter Stansberry's lawyers on July 18th makes for really interesting reading. I won't bore you with it all, but here 's a screenshot of the last page of the PDF copy:

It would seem poor little Porter has had his feelings all hurty wurty.

Regarding morale at Kirkland Lake Gold (KGI.to) head office

It's never an easy thing for an office to adapt quickly to a new CEO, but the way that Tony Makuch has decided to treat employees at Kirkland Lake's head office like children has really rubbed people up the wrong way, with the phrase "out of the frying pan into the fire" coming to mind. Just one bone of contention is Makuch's insistence in taking a roll call twice a day; a member of staff has to go round early morning and then in the afternoon with a list of all people working at the office, from janitor to VPs, and check off the names of all those present. This hall monitor's list then goes straight to Makuch's office (not even human resources) for his personal perusal, presumably to note any serial absenteeism.

Pour encourager les autres, I suppose.

Agnico Eagle (AEM) and another armed robbery of gold...

...in Mexico, this time at the AEM La India mine in Sonora.

We don't know how much gold was stolen yet, perhaps AEM might tell us some time today. We do however know that one security guard was shot and injured by one of the robbers and was treated in hospital for his non-life threatening wound.

Bargain hunt

Enjoy the day, bargain hunters.

After making a nicely timed sale on Monday, your humble scribe has munneh burning a hole in his pocket too.

Chart of the day is...

...gold:

Which has corrected. As if on cue.

"Bottom line: Putting all those bits together, unless a new event comes along to justify a new move in the price of gold we’re going to be stuck where we are for a while and will probably see it move back to U$1,300/oz, too."

Just sayin'

The Sprott Natural Resource Symposium...

...happens next week in Vancouver July 26th to 29th. As an example of what to expect, here's the schedule for the morning of Tuesday 26th

Looks good.

There will be no more posts on the blog today

For secret reasons.

Colorado Resources (CXO.v) and another proof of the maxim...

...that the worst thing you can do to an over-hyped project is drill it. 

So far this year CXO has been pumped by the Canadian BS peddlers up to here...

...and now it's going to "go into a period of price consolidation" as the market digests the "geologically fascinating results" from the first drill numbers out of its KSP project. Two metres of mineral under several dozen metres of rock. Bless em all.

The good news for the fanboys is that these results won't kill the project. In fact, I'm sure if you own and you ask around you'll be told that Voisey's Bay wasn't discovered until drill hole six hundred and fifty or whatever it was. And so the world turns.

What gold has been doing and a guess as to why (from IKN375)

This was the main intro piece to this Sunday's edition of the weekly.

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What gold has been doing and a guess as to why

"As above, so below,

as within, so without,

as the universe, so the soul"

Hermes Trismegistus

First, a basic fact about last week at the market; Our preferred ETFs for following the broad spectrum of the PM sector and its companies all lost ground. The gold ETF GLD dropped 2.8%, the precious metals miner ETF GDX dropped 2.1% and the junior miner ETF GLXJ dropped 1.3%. In other words we’ve seen a correction going on in front of our eyes and as noted last weekend when musing on its possibility in IKN374, that’s not a bad thing.

Away from the world of gold permabears, that group of shining individuals that make even the prepper end of the goldbug world look intelligent, it would be tough to find a comment saying that what we saw last week was The Top and it’s all going to go wrong for gold from here. But a correction it was, gold backed off from the U$1,400/oz level very easily and its action reminded me strongly of May 2016 and the sentiment at the time. Use charts, money-flow data, group psychology studies or whatever you prefer, but the general consensus in gold back in May was that gold’s move to $1.3k was “too much too soon” and the metal needed another good reason to go higher before it could. We saw it get oversold back to U$1,200/oz as well (and I even remembered a few of those gold bears trying to raise their squeaky voices again right down at the bottom) but we rebounded from that level too. Then came the Brexit event, a two stage affair with sentiment pre-Brexit that showed growing fear of a Leave vote, which waned the week before the vote took place. Then the big whammy on June 23^rd and the result day of June 24^th, which shot gold through the U$1,300/oz level with a vengeance. Since then it’s stayed there but as we’ve seen in the last few days, it’s also dropped from highs.

Okay, that’s the scenario to date. Now for a few statements mixed with a few working theories to get us to a gold price forecast for the near future:

1) Gold is bullish, period. It will take a lot more than a retrace from U$1,380/oz to change that, so the “It didn’t break U$1,400/oz we all gonna die” brigade can stick their whining where the sun doesn’t shine. This is the single most important point, I urge you not to lose sight of the forest for the trees and therefore repeat: Gold is bullish, period.

2) The action in the last two months, from mid-May to today mid-July, has been dominated by Brexit. The pre-vote sentiment that moved from one side to the other and then back again, the big shock of a result the market wasn’t expecting. And of course while we’re on the subject, count me in as I got my call 100% wrong and was way too confident about a Remain result all the way through the process (and being long the gold sector was one of my all-time best “right for the wrong reasons” moments).

3) It’s therefore no coincidence to see gold drop from its highs in the same week in which “Brexit Fear” (or maybe that’s “Brexit Fear!!!”) abated on a worldwide level. There’s plenty of financial sector evidence for that away from the gold market, just look at the S&P hitting new highs or the way the British Pound has reverted its drop (people calling “parity with Euro!” less than a week ago have STFU en masse). The world has vaccinated itself against Brexit fallout, the EU isn’t facing a new series of referenda (no sitting government leader will be as stupid as David Cameron was, they tend to value their jobs) and now it’s only a major headache for one small island sitting off the coast of continental Europe. Over in the UK the appointment of a new Prime Minister and her big ministerial re-shuffle has brought in a pro-Brexit team to lead the Brexit talks, but even the top man among them David Davis talks about 2018 as the earliest date to trigger the Article 50 leaving clause and that’s from the most aggressive end of the pro-Brexiters in the new government. People, two years is an eternity in the financial markets, it’s hardly a shadow on the horizon but even then, the way in which the new PM has played the Scotland card (1) (quite brilliantly if you ask me) means even 2018 looks too close for any formal Brexit negotiations to start with the EU. I could go on and on about this so I won’t, the bottom line is that Brexit Fear has all-but disappeared under the new reality of “two years minimum” (and it’s a fair bet Brexit will never happen).

4) In a bull run in any issue, large or small, asset or equity, we’d want to see exactly the type of pulse-retrace-pulse we’ve seen this year in gold. Discount the trend-breaking moment in February (clear as a bell in hindsight) and considering March to July 17^th, the way the gold price has moved has been obviously and clearly bullish, you couldn’t ask for more. Well, you could if you’re one of those “Wheee To Da Moon Alice” people but here at The IKN Weekly we prefer to hold on to our profits after making them.

5) The hot speculative money washing through gold that I mentioned in last week’s opener showed itself again in no uncertain terms. Here’s an update of the GLD bullion inventory chart of last week, Brexit-to-date, and look how nearly 20 tonnes was taken off the top of holdings last week, 16 of them in one shot. That’s not the type of action you get from people wanting to protect their asset value with a long-term position in the world’s historic keystone store of wealth.

In the great scheme of things, 20 tonnes of gold is neither here nor there but in the short-term, particularly in the current strange days, it matters.

Bottom line: Putting all those bits together, unless a new event comes along to justify a new move in the price of gold we’re going to be stuck where we are for a while and will probably see it move back to U$1,300/oz, too. And before you say anything under your breath, sorry Turkey and its attempted coup this weekend doesn’t count, we’ve already seen a dozen geopolitical events come and go (Greece, Cyprus, Ukraine, Israel, ISIS, Syria etc etc), they all threaten to destabilize EVERYTHING for a while and then they don’t. The reason Brexit has been different (or if you like, affected gold for a couple of weeks rather than a couple of days) is that it had (has?) a direct world-scale financial effect, not just a political one. Summed up, Brexit shot gold higher because the world was afraid of Brexit. Now the world isn’t afraid any more. What goes up comes down, Hermes said so. On the other hand gold stocks have two modes of impetus, not just one. The money now moving into the sector is more than enough to make for a vibrant bullish market even if gold consolidates for a while, so I fully expect the good times to keep rolling for the gold stocks even if the underlying metal treads water a while. I own gold, I trade stocks. Two different things.

That’s enough for one day but before we move on, please note the use of the word “guess” in the title line of this intro piece. I’m under no illusions and I’ve been wrong along the way in 2016 too, this may be another one of those moments. I’ve had to keep questioning my attitude towards gold (market leader it is) and the mining stocks. As an example see my bad Brexit Remain call above, for another please recall the way I fixated on gold re-tracing back to U$1,180/oz in March and lost a few good entry points on stocks as a result. I finally got that out of my system in IKN361 dated April 10^th (before too much damage was done). Today’s piece can be summed up by “near term gold sideways and stocks bullish” but it’s just another working theory, subject to change and so forth.

Enjoy Peruvian taxi company

"Impact Taxis".

You can't make these things up.

The Angry Geologist does Corvus (KOR.to)

TAG does what somebody should have done years ago; rip this Corvus (KOR.to) Northern Bullfrog joke that will never be a mine into a thousand shreds. Go here, get all the fun.

Rick Rule & Amir Adnani - "Selling Snake Oil to Idiots" Part 2

They're calling this one "How To Play The Next Uranium Bull Market" (and that's the link), but I'm sticking to the more accurate moniker. And bless their hearts, they still think UEC is a buy even though it's 33% down YoY. Anything to do with the large slug of financial debt Rule has in UEC? Nah, surely not!

Part one of Selling Snake Oil to Idiots was here.

INV Metals (INV.to): higher and higher

The market loves INV Metals' (INV.to) new pre-feas:

BOOM SHAKALAKALAKA!

Chart of the day is...

...zinc, 12 months:

Ding Ding Ding! Ring the bell, Zn hit the buck level.

A message to the Athabasca Basin juniors...

...currently working the zone and offering us news release after news release of "Off Scale" readings and returns and hits and whathaveyou on the rocks you're all exploring there.

Your scale sucks. Get a new scale, idiots.

The IKN Weekly, out now

 Mine Porn

IKN375 has just been sent to subscribers, old and new. Another week, another 16,200 words with the main event a good old chat about B2Gold (BTO.to) (BTG).

Herbalife (HLF), John Hempton, Bill Ackman etc

Ever since the HLF ruling last week I've been waiting patiently for John Hempton's take over at Bronte Capital. He posted today and anyone who's been following the story won't be disappointed. Here's the link to "The Herbalife Rorscharch test", go have a read.

And let's recall what HLF shorter Bill Ackman said about Hempton last year:

"With respect to John Hempton, I have never met him or spoken to him. He happens to be long Herbalife and certifiably crazy."

Like a fox, maybe.