 Welcome to the Bull and Bear Show, episode number eight, and I have my very special guest here today, a commodity expert. His name is John Fennick. How are you doing today, John? Very good, Rich. Thanks for having me. Oh, my pleasure. Very excited to have you on the show and excited to learn more about you and your company and all the different things that you're doing and all the different things that your expertise is in. So why don't we start off with the first question, John, tell us a little bit about your background and how you started John Fennick Consulting. Sure. So I started in finance in 1992 with Merrill Lynch Mutual Funds, which is now BlackRock, and I worked on a large equity fund as an analyst and then started to work for the same type of companies like Merrill Lynch Funds, JP Morgan Funds, always in a capacity where I was an intermediary between a portfolio manager managing billions of dollars and going into the field and talking to financial advisors in the US. So I managed the territory when I was at Merrill Lynch that consisted of about 26 different branches. So it was rotating every five to six weeks through those branches telling that story with 250 products. We did everything from 401Ks to 529 plans to AI, just unbelievable spectrum of products at Merrill Lynch and now BlackRock as you're going to manage it, and it's the largest asset manager in the world. So a lot of suitcases to carry, so to speak, and then moved on to smaller boutiques in my career and one of those was Sprott. I started working for them in 2016 and was lucky enough to be added to their portfolio management team when I was there. When I was just before I was hired there, I started my own track record in the mining space because I thought that as I called CEOs at Christmas of 2015, everyone was so head in hands, very much like the environment we're in right now, Rich, where just until the CPI number, July 12th, you had a lot of CEOs really just wondering what it would take to get a gold junior to move given that gold has just traded so well this year. But I think the worst is behind us right now in the sector and I think some of these men and women would agree. So I basically did that 30 or so phone calls with people around December 15, January 16 and just found that common trend of everyone is ready to give up, right? And so as a value manager, we love that kind of environment because you know you're getting close to a low when even smart people are saying, look, this is just I've never seen anything like this before. So another telling thing to me at that time was that if you looked at a Bloomberg terminal, GDX was trading 20% short, which I have never seen the ETF trade much more than 24% short in my entire career. So when the fifth of an ETF is short, you want to go the other direction generally speaking, if you have confidence in what that ETF or mutual funds trying to do. So basically started that track record while it was at Sprott and have been lucky enough to do that now for seven and a half years. We started phantic consulting a little bit later in 2019 because I was at Beaver Creek and was talking with a bunch of CEOs at a roundtable. And three of them came up to me afterwards and said, you know, you really should start your own consulting firm because you have a passion for this and you're well-spoken and blah, blah, blah. So I did that the following Monday with no clients. The first three or four months was pretty tough. It was no longer working for a big brand and getting a paycheck. It was grinding every single day. We were lucky enough to co-write an article for KITCO because in March of 2020, you may remember that we had these triple ETFs in our space that would mimic the price action of GDX and GDXJ. And they were called NUGT, which is the triple GDX and then JNUG, which then was the triple GDXJ. And they're run by a firm that managed about $16 billion in assets. I saw some very unusual price action. We call it slippage where if you're a triple ETF and let's say GDX is down 1% for that day, well then Nugget should be down 3%. It was down, let's say 4 or 5 or 6, it was way off. And this happened multiple days in a row in March of 2020. So I co-wrote an article for KITCO about this and exposed the fact that this company was not returning my calls. I think I spoke to five to seven different people there. I didn't name anyone. But essentially, as an advocate for the space, I wanted to let the average investor know that this was happening. And what was interesting was that that same firm took the exposure down on those two ETFs to 2X because they couldn't keep up with the price action that was happening in 2020. So that's a good lesson, I think, for some of your listeners is that ETFs are tough, you know, like a natural gas one just went under this year that was trading a ton of volume, right? It wasn't the volume, it was just the issuer, the company that was in charge of that ETF just decided to fold. And they gave the money back to the shareholders. But what if you're down 30% or 50% at that point? You're just going to get a check back in your account and there's no recourse, right? So it was a really unusual period of time. I had a couple of large podcasts, you know, hosts like yourself contact me in March of 2020 and say, hey, that took, you know, some guts to expose this company which likes to come on our show. And I started to do podcasts and, you know, I was lucky enough to have a lot of intelligent wealthy people trapped in their homes and basically was able to, you know, garner a decent following. And fast forward to today, you know, we're doing quite well because we've been, you know, we haven't been talking our book rich in the sense that like when I was on Kiko in March and in June of last year doing interviews at conferences like PDAC, I was telling people, look, this is probably going to be an interest rate cycle that lasts longer than you think. That clearly isn't talking your book as a mining guy because many of my competitors were talking about great cuts as early as September, October of 2022, which clearly didn't happen. So what we try to do, Rich, is always tell the retail public what we see better or worse, you know, like it doesn't matter to me if it's going to make me money personally or even make my followers money. We're trying to observe things and try to keep the average investor in what they're invested in because if you don't do that and bought, let's say, March of 2020 or June of 2020, chances are your prices are much lower today, right? Because it's been almost a three-year downturn. So, you know, we try to tell people, look, you know, if you made an entry point that was incorrect, we do that all the time. You know, our first buy on something isn't necessarily our best effort, but we buy three to ten times usually. And if you buy that many times, you get a blended average cost that is reasonable. And, you know, we did this with one we'll talk about later, but my average entry point on that was 11 and a half cents. We doubled everything last fall at three cents. So our blended cost was seven cents and now that stock is trading at 12. So we're able to dispose things, you know, at a profit as opposed to breaking even, right? And, you know, just to finish the thought, we have a website, fenneconsulting.com, that basically talks about our newsletter, which we started about two years ago, Fennec Commodities Report. We cover all commodities in that, so it's not just gold and silver, like so many of my competitors. We talk about nickel, we talk about palladium, we talk about copper, we talk about energy. So hopefully some of your listeners will take a look at that. We also offer a real-time update service and that came in really handy this week because pre-CPI, we'd emailed everyone when GDX was at 2980 and said, look, this could go either way, but, you know, you have to be ready because if we get a really low CPI read, which we did on Wednesday morning to 12th, the US dollar is going to tank because it was already in a downturn and our sector would likely get a bid, which it did. So, you know, it's little things like that where, you know, people are... I know it's hard to pay for advice in a market like this for reminding services. However, I think that is a good example of people getting heads up on something that, you know, maybe they wouldn't have if they weren't subscribers. You know what? That reminds me so much of an ETF I bought called Oil. I don't know if you remember this ETF, but I bought this oil ETF when oil went to minus and I thought I was going to make a killing and I should have because oil went from minus to $130. The oil ETF went bankrupt, gave me my money back at a loss and then the price of oil skyrocketed and I was so frustrated because I was like, man, I made a perfect trade, but it wasn't a perfect trade because the company went bankrupt because oil went to zero and then oil went to 130 and had they knock on bankrupt, I probably would have made like five to 10 times on my money. Instead, I got a little check, I got a little payout and the company, you know, folded. Literally, the symbol was oil. I don't know if you're familiar with that one. Yeah, yeah, I never owned it, but I'm aware of it. And, you know, I had one recently, GAZ that did the same exact thing. I think it was a Barclays product. You know, Barclays is a big name and as an investor, you think, hey, I'm going to be able to make that money back, right? Or in your case, you know, you made a great entry point. Why shouldn't you get paid? But the timing according to that issuer was not aligned. And so there's a lot of things to look for. I remember, gosh, I think it was August of 2015 or 16, there was just a blip there where the ETF market just crashed for about 30 to 45 minutes. I don't know if you remember that, but I happened to be at my desk that Monday because China had was the Chinese market was down 8% on a Sunday night. And I knew it was going to be a really rough Monday, but I didn't think that market makers would back away from the bid that hard. I literally bought an S&P 500 ETF. I think it was State Streets down over 25% in the first half hour of trading and sold it the next day for that same profit because there was this really weird anomaly where market makers just backed away from the bid for nearly an hour. And it was just like catching a falling knife. So that really woke me up to the ETF world. I've spent a lot of time in the ETF world. I worked for a top 10 provider in ETFs. So I know that, you know, when I went to my boss that day, as I actually was working there at the time, and I said, what are we preparing, you know, to put out in terms of a press release about this and they're like, we're not going to do anything. And that also told me that, you know, not everyone in finance has an investor's back, right? And that's why I wrote that article in March of 2020, you know, against a different firm like that because I think, you know, investors put too much trust in these companies. I worked in that sector for 25 years and they just don't care about the little guy in my opinion. That's just my opinion. But, you know, if you really want to play it safe, I always would tell people to gravitate towards a BlackRock or a Vanguard to get a really big name that you know is not going under, right? Like there's no possible way those would go under in a normal scenario. They're just too big. So, you know, maybe, you know, put your money in ETF land with carriers like that instead of just some of the smaller players. Have you ever heard of COMT? No. Take a look at COMT. It's number one investor's BlackRock. I've invested heavily in it. I've got six figures in it. They pay a 30% dividend. How's that? It's amazing. I mean, it's a 30% dividend. It's an oil and gas ETF. They mainly are oil and gas. And I felt like because oil and gas was down this year, this would be a good time to buy in. Oil's been balancing between 65 and 80 all year. I think it's around 75 right now. And I just thought everything else is going up. Oil and gas is going down. This is the time to invest in oil and gas. I feel like over time, oil and gas and commodities would just go higher. So I put like six figures in. They pay out one time a year at Christmas. And I figured like, well, okay, well, if this works out well at the end of the year, I'll get 30 grand at Christmas time. And I could use that extra 30%. And so it's my first time in it. I'm like seven months into it. I get my payout at Christmas. And if it works out well, I'm probably gonna roll in another couple hundred grand for next year because I've been telling to all my friends about this. And I'm like, man, imagine if I put 300 grand in this one ETF and it pays me 90 grand a year. I mean, that's more than what the average person makes. Now there's no guarantee they're gonna pay out 30% a year. They might go down at some point. But the reason why I really liked it, I did a lot of research because you don't just put six figures into something unless you really believe in it. But like you said, the number one investor in the ETF is BlackRock. So I thought BlackRock is the largest institution in the world, 10 trillion in assets. If they're gonna put a huge stake into this, chances are it's not gonna go bankrupt like that oil ETF I bought. So I was like, you know what, let's give it a shot. So I've been in it, like I said, for seven months at Christmas, I think at December 16th is the payout. So I'll get a chance to see what it's like. And if it works out the way I think it will, it could be a phenomenal dividend paying ETF. It's an iShares product. And like I said, it's number one holder is BlackRock. So definitely take a look at COMT. It's one that I really believe in and I really, really like. And like I said, it's got the highest payout of any dividend stock I've ever seen. I've never seen anything payout even close to 30%. Have you seen anything payout that much? No, there's gotta be something that's driving that and I'd have to take a closer look because they may have to respect this ability to buy partnerships or something where you would get that kind of a yield because the average large cap oil and gas stock is probably three to 5%, right? Like it's not gonna be fully. So there's something there. It blew my mind and I was like, how can they afford to pay a 30% dividend? And I thought about it, I was like, maybe they just made so much money last year with the price of oil exploding that they have all this extra cash and they're just trying to get as much investor money as possible. Honestly, I don't know. But I thought that maybe it would go down, it actually went up. It was at 30, now they're paying a 32%. I was like blowing my mind. I'm like, where are they getting the ability to pay out such high returns? So I'd love to get your input if you get a chance to take a look at it. That was pretty good. Sorry, go ahead, sir. What easy way to do that? Let's say they have 50 holdings and if you've got some spare time in your hands, go through some of the major holdings and just look up the yields. And if it doesn't really add up, meaning like it's like 2, 3, 4, 5% yields, which it probably is for most of the holdings, then you have to figure out like are they leveraging, using leverage in the portfolio, which is probably legal, but only to a certain percentage and how exactly are they attaining that? It could be a special dividend. You know, there's something, I'll just have to take a look and get back to you on the next interview. Yeah, definitely take a look, COMT. Yeah. Now, leave me in my next question. So in your opinion, what is the hottest commodity investors should be paying attention to right now? Yeah. I mean, gold is leading the entire mining complex, right? I don't care what anyone says. Everyone looks at gold first and everything else second in mining for better or for worse, right? And I've talked to many nickel CEOs, they say the same thing. Like it doesn't matter what nickel is doing as much as it matters what gold is doing. That said, you know, we own zero physical gold at the moment because of the price. If it were back at $16,000, $17,000, we'd be owners. But as value managers, we see, you know, gold is like, you know, hey, we wanna see it break 2100 an ounce with some authority. And then, you know, that would be interesting. But here at 1954, I'd much rather own silver in the 24s, right? Versus gold, you know, between 1950 and 2000. And that's what we do. So we own a top three position in silver and that's both physical and through the ETFs. And I think that's the most exciting commodity, you know, when you look at the next 12 to 24 months because it's just been an awful ride for investors for a couple of years now. But you have to look at what could drive things differently, right? I get this question all the time, like what would be your opinion of silver? Is it a precious metal or an industrial metal? And I'd say it trades differently in different scenarios, right? In the scenario we just saw July 12th with CPI, you know, dropping, gold and silver pre-market got an immediate bounce. So that's your answer right there. It's still trades like a precious, which is great news because that's exactly how you wanna see it trade, right? You wanna see it trade like a safe haven asset, not something that's gonna be a bullish asset when the economy takes off necessarily in our opinion. So I think silver could go past 25 here pretty easily. It tested it on July 14th. And then once you get through 25, you're looking at 2650 to 27, and that's a nice little move there, another 68% move. But what does that do for silver equities? There's usually double the triple leverage for a silver equity that isn't hedging, right? And that's why we're buying silver stocks more than just buying any type of commodity right now. We think there's a lot of upside in the equities, whether it's gold, equities, silver, equities, et cetera. I like that. I'm a big fan of gold and a big fan of silver and precious metals and commodities, oil and gas. Obviously I've made that oil and gas ETF investment. I like that strategy. I think that's very sound because I do feel like silver has lagged. So there's definitely an opportunity there. Now, going into my next question, what are the top three things you look for when you're deciding to invest into a mining company? First thing is obviously management. I know Rick Rule says the same thing and a lot of smart people say that and it is true. I mean, you really have to get to know who's working at the company, know what their goals are for the company. You know, are they 30 years in the business or are they 10 years in the business? That matters, right? If you've seen multiple cycles like 0809 and 00003, you can navigate, you can manage your cash position better because right now, I've been encouraging people since last January, hey, this is gonna be a tough ride and you think Mr. CEO, you wanna probably cash up as much as you possibly can if you're gonna have aggressive drill campaigns because money is gonna become harder and harder to come by, not because of a credit crunch, but because of a lack of interest in our space maybe, right? And that's where we've been up until July 12th and arguably March 8th when the financial crisis started in my opinion. This has been a really interesting year because we've had two landmark events like that with the financials really turning over in March and now CPI coming in closer to the Fed's target until July 12th. The next thing for me would be, we can talk about this later, but it's August 22nd through 24th with the BRICS meeting and I think that could be another catalyst for our sector but getting back to your question, management number one. Number two is really discerning, is this management team and team of geologists, are they trying to build this mine for real or are they trying to prove it out with a bunch of drill holes so that it gets all into someone? That's something that you kind of have to figure out for yourself as well because let's say it's the former where they're trying to build it, right? A lot of things can go wrong when you take it from today, 10 years later. You can't, no one has a crystal ball. If you did that five years ago as an explorer, you never thought COVID was gonna disrupt your plan, right? But it did and so then what do you do? Like, I mean, you have to pivot and you have to be creative and it's a long ride for investors, for the people that want to take it all the way from really small explore code to production. And in many cases, it's way more than 10 years but I'm just saying, I prefer companies that are going to drill, build the resource out. Like if you're a gold company, we wanna see two million ounces or more. Silver companies, do you like to see over 100 million ounces a lot of times? Because we wanna see that huge land package or resource because majors and mid-years look for that, right? The whole idea is to attract someone to your project and these companies are smart rich. They're not gonna, a new month in an agony killer, not gonna spend that money for you. As a junior explorer code, you're gonna have to spend the money and prove it out and then they're gonna get interested, right? So, you know, it's, you have to look at both scenarios and say, am I patient enough to see this project through or am I in this for, you know, one to two years where basically this company is trying to drill, drill, drill and get some really good results, get a JV partner interested at 9.9 or 19.9 or just get completely bought out. And the third thing I would say is jurisdiction. You know, jurisdiction is super important. People think the US is, you know, a great jurisdiction. Well, yeah, it is, but look at California versus, you know, Arizona. Totally different, they're bordering states. Arizona is way easier to mine in than California is, right? So, you know, there's been a number of disappointing places globally, I would say the most recent one that's kind of big is Mexico, where if you're, if you've got your permits and you're producing, you're pretty good. But if you're an explorer code right now in Mexico with no permits, I mean, it's gonna be a much longer road with this current, you know, regime. So it's that kind of stuff where as an investor or a portfolio manager, you have to decide has my thesis changed on this, right? And that's what I think a lot of investors don't do. They do this, you know? Oh, well, you know, this is gonna work out because X, Y, Z. No, that's not a plan. Like the plan changes constantly, like literally all the time. So, you know, we're not set in and forgetting kind of investors rich. We don't really believe in buying hold in this sector. I'll tell you why. If you look at GDX, you know, right now trading, let's say between 3150 and 32, well, it closed June 30th of 2020. I just think we remember this right around 3250 a share. So that means that let's just call your flat, right? Your flat for three years holding this same ETF, that's not an investment strategy, you know? Like holding something for three years, you should make a return. Absolutely, right? I mean, like interest rates are up significantly during this same three-year time period where you can have a risk free rate of 5% of the bank right now if you're smart, right? So like, why be loyal to an ETF if it's not gonna perform? You know, you have to be able to sell. And so we do a really good job of holding core holdings, but we're gonna trade on the periphery where we're just cold as ice about the names. We don't care. We did this this week with a silver name, right? Two weeks ago, I bought it at 17 cents. We unloaded everything between 23 and a half at 24 this week. Is it the biggest gain ever? No, it's a single, it's not a home run. But we made this money in two weeks. I mean, it's like, it's a gift. Let's take the gift and rotate that money into some names we have higher conviction in. I think that that's a great strategy. Now, actually you touched on BlackRock and I just wanna go back and ask a question because there's a question from the community here about Bitcoin. Well, what's your opinion on Bitcoin as a commodity? The SEC just came out and said that Ripple is not a security and BlackRock is filing for a Bitcoin spot ETF. So I know you're a commodity expert. Do you believe in Bitcoin? Is Bitcoin something that you're interested in at all? Is it something that you stay away from? What's your feeling about Bitcoin as a commodity? Man, I'm probably gonna get shelled on this one. I think, you know, from working in large institutions like Merrill and JP my whole career, you're taught to like really focus on things that are kind of down the center. And in that case, Bitcoin is not the most attractive investment because it's an unregulated business, right? And I'm not just talking about Bitcoin. I'm talking about Ethereum and all the other cryptos, right? They're unregulated. I actually pointed out to this broad team in 2017, I believe it was, and I always get trolled for this. You can go back and Google search it though. It's on the web, I believe it's still there. It was an article talking about Ethereum going from 300 and change to a dollar in a single day. Do you remember that? I don't know. I do. Okay, so I'm glad someone has my back on this, but the story was a trader that basically put limit buys out there at 175, 50 and 25 and thought he was cute and then got filled on everything, right? And then he's like, wait a minute, Mr. Ethereum, he's like knocking on the regulator's door. I wanna cancel those trades and they're like, you own that now, right? Like, so the next day it bounced into the 200s and you made a ton of money, but if whatever you did that on margin and it's stuck down at a buck or a 25 bucks or 50 bucks for a couple of days, you're out, like you're marching out. So it's like, it's a dangerous, margins dangerous, you need to know how to use it. I think there's a lot of people in spec kind of plays that are over their skis right now. And to that point, I think Bitcoin is the biggest and baddest, obviously, of the crypto market. It's something we're tracking, but I wanna see another shake out and I think we're gonna get it, you know? The fact that BlackRock is in this business now is absolutely a bullish thing for crypto because if anyone can get it pushed through, it's gonna be them, right? So like, I think, you know, it's a wait and see thing for us. It's not something I can put into a mining portfolio because that's sort of cheating either way. So, you know, I'm just, I'm observing, but with interest. I think BlackRock's record is 575 and one with products that they filed with the SEC. So there's a very good chance that this Bitcoin spot ETF will get approved just based on their history. And that will, like you said, it will essentially, if they do approve this, it will essentially revolutionize the way investors look at investing because someone like yourself that is really heavily into commodities has never really, I'm sure, looked at Bitcoin as a commodity, but it's now being looked at by many as a commodity. I mean, Larry Fink came out and said that Bitcoin is essentially digital gold. I mean, this is the guy when it comes to BlackRock. So that's a big statement. So I mean, I'm a big fan of all investments, but I also own Bitcoin and I'm a fan of the technology. I'm a fan of the ability to send money to people that are unbankable. I'm a fan of the ability to send money to someone instantly, almost with no cost and with no banking involved. I love decentralized business. So there's a lot of cool things that I like about it. Is it 100% it's risky? I mean, I've seen Bitcoin, since I've been investing in Bitcoin since 2017, I've seen it go from $1,000 to $20,000, back down to $3,000, back to $69,000, back down to $15,000. And today we said that around 30,000. So it has been a roller coaster to say the least, but as just a story. That's exactly a good point though. I mean, how many people, there's a saying out there rich, invest or return versus investment return. If you bought it at let's say 1,000 and you're at 30,000 now, that's a great return, right? Like I mean, it's an insane return. But what if you just got your entries wrong? You bought a lot, you didn't buy it at 69,000, but you bought it at 50. Now you're at 30, well you're down 40%, you know? It's like, now you're saying to yourself, do I hold this? Is it ever going back to 50? That's why we advocate whether it's Bitcoin, commodity stocks, anything, like fang stocks, you have to buy multiple times because buying once and just sitting back in your chair, that's not a strategy. So many people can get that wrong. I agree with you. I'm a big fan of lower cost averaging and it's almost impossible to buy something once and get it right every time. I don't think anyone can really do that, but your strategy of lowering your cost is similar to mine as an investor. I'm always trying to lower my cost. If I really have conviction in something and it goes down and buy more, and buy more, and buy more, and then when it has a pop, if I want to get out, I can get out. And that's a very good smart sound investing strategy as long as that asset doesn't go bankrupt. And that's happened to me, like when I talked about that ETF, that old ETF, which to this day still scars me because I was right on the trade because oil went from minus to 130 bucks. I just didn't have the foresight to see that the ETF was gonna go bankrupt. But I should have, knowing that the fact that oil was going to zero, I should have thought, well, maybe this ETF might go out of business. Didn't even crack my mind because as an investor, you're always thinking buy low sell high. You're not thinking of the worst case scenario. But as an investor, sometimes you should be thinking about the worst case scenario because it'll protect you from those types of scenarios. So great points there. And that leads me to my next question. Which large cap stocks have you been paying attention to in 2023? I'm a huge fan of large cap stocks. I invested in a lot of large cap stocks myself. Currently, I'd love to hear which large cap stocks you're looking at right now in 2023. Yeah, so I mean, to be honest, I mean, most of our stock is in the mid small and micro cap space, but what makes us different is that we're not just a micro cap and portfolio. We definitely invest in the larger stuff. We do that through what we call like a hub and spoke structure where the hub is going to be, GDX and things like that. And that would encompass some of the larger cap names you're talking to. And then we have spokes all over the place in terms of some Explorico, some royalties, some mid tiers, stuff that's on the periphery that we like. The larger stuff, I think Newmont's interesting with their dividend right now. They've got the Newcrest deal behind them. Stock traded really well this week. And it's still very, very, very low compared to its one or three year highs. Agnico Eagle, AEM really like them. They're a very conservative shop. And I think they're well positioned. In the silver space, Pan-American's been pretty interesting. If you look at the three major silver ETFs right now for equities, they are SIL, SLVP and SILJ. All three of them own over 10% in PAAS, which is Pan-American. One of them owns like 22%. So I think you're gonna get a nice pop in PAAS if you get flows into the silver equity space because naturally people are more apt to buy the ETFs than they are the stock, but you're gonna be, as those ETF managers, they're gonna have to buy more and more Pan-American just to keep up. I saw that happen with Newmont a couple of years ago where it was a large holding in GDX. It was over 10% of GDX at that time. Then X, the manager of GDX just had to keep buying more and more Newmont shares, right? So those are some names there. We think that maybe even Silver Corp in the silver space, we've owned that since 2016, SVM. They're very well diversified and I really like the story in general. I like management. I met with management in November of 2022 and felt much more confident in what I was doing. And that's another thing we can just throw in here Rich while we have that topic is, since 2008 I've been on the horn with people like the CEO of Silver Corp. I started with AG, CDE, HL, like all these silver type names. I would co-call those CEOs when I had no track record, I had hardly any money and I would just call them and ask them questions as a former analyst, right? And I wouldn't bother them. I wouldn't keep them on the phone for 10 minutes. But I would just say here, I have two or three questions and bang through it and come out of that call feeling more confident or less confident, right? Because as an investor, you have every right to call these companies and just try to get whatever you can. But if you don't have the time to do that, which is usually the case, I would strongly suggest working with someone like myself or a competitor that is doing that work. I talked to 13 CEOs this week. It's a lot of work to get 13 CEOs on the phone. It's probably 20 or 30 texts and calls and emails. And it's just like trying to connect and get that information out to my network, I think is extremely important. Now, also a lot of times people will try to give me more information than I want. And I always tell them, look, I want to be able to buy or stock. Please don't tell me anything that's non-public because I'd rather be a buyer right now. And so it's important also to kind of, just make sure that as an investor, you're not getting something that's non-public. So anyhow, I think it's right now, you don't need that kind of an edge. You just need to do research on what you want to buy like you pointed out large cap names or a certain type of name, explore codes around the other end of the spectrum. They've got years and years ahead of them. If you're a new monitor or an AgniCo, you're producing, right? You have to think completely differently about that investment. You're thinking about what's the price of diesel because diesel is a major input into their bottom line, right? Because they are producing and they're using that energy. What about like peniskito recently for Newmont, right? Like with the, what's happening there, that wasn't expected. I guarantee you in the first quarter of this year. So you have to understand what percentages of peniskito of Newmont's production is peniskito. If it's 3% or 4% or something, it's not that meaningful. It's not a big deal. You can still buy the stock, but if it's 20%, that's going to change your thesis, right? So like a lot of things that can go wrong in mining. I always try to ask questions about what can go wrong, where the what can go right because I want to know the whole story. Those are great points. And I don't know if you've noticed, we've done 300 CO interviews here. So I've talked to hundreds of COs and that's everything from large cap companies, NASDAQ companies, New York Stock Exchange companies, all the way down to small caps, OTCs, TSX, TSX Venture, CSE, small cap companies. So literally everything from small cap to mid cap to large cap and everything in between commodities companies, electric vehicle companies, tech companies, cannabis companies, oil and gas companies, you name it, we've done it. And everything you're saying is 100% true. And I remember when I first started doing this and talking to CEOs, I would listen to everything they said. And I'll be honest with you, a lot of times they led me down the wrong path because I didn't realize that they're trying to sell their business, right? So sometimes when you listen too much to them, it can actually be a hindrance because they're always going to sell their business. They're always going to say that their business is the best thing since sliced bread. They're always going to talk about all the reasons why you should buy their stock. They're always going to talk about all these great things that they're doing. And they rarely, especially when you cold call them are going to say anything negative. So as an investor, anyone that's watching this, I want to remind you guys that everything we talk about is strictly for information and education purposes. Just because the CEO says, we got the best companies since sliced bread does not mean the stock is going to go up 100%. I promise you that because I've heard it a thousand times. However, if you ask the right questions, like you said, you can get a feel for what's going on with the company. You can get a good vibe, but you still got to do the due diligence. You still got to read the press releases. You still got to read their financials. You got to understand their debt to equity ratios. You got to understand the assets on the balance sheet. You have to be able to understand, you got to be able to kind of do forward-looking when you're making an investment. You got to be able to kind of see, okay, where are they today and where are they going to be in the next quarter and the quarter after that and the quarter after that? As investors, that's what we do. We're looking at a company and we're trying to see where they're going to be in six to 12 months. And I'll give you a great example. Last year, when the market crashed, I heavily invested in Tesla, Apple, Google, Shopify. What else? On every one of them went up. And it wasn't like I'm the greatest trader of all time. I just looked at the chart and I said, wow, okay. Well, everything is down in 2022. What should I buy? Let's start with the biggest companies in the world. And I bought the Googles and I bought the Amazons and I bought the Teslas and I bought the Apples. Every single one of them is up this year. Now, the only mistake I made was I went on vacation to Europe and I was like, oh, well, I need some money to go on vacation. I sold them all. I made money on them, but had I held longer, had I held till now, for example, I would have made way more. Because I didn't anticipate that they would go up as much as they have this year. It's been unbelievable. So I agree with what you're saying. Invest in great companies, try to call the companies if you can, get to know the companies, get to know the CEOs. And if you see a great company and you see that it dips, that's the time to buy. And another company that I wanted to mention that you didn't mention was Barrett Gold. I bought Barrett Gold this year. Earlier in the year, I think it was at 15, maybe 16. And then it made a run up when Gold went to 2000 to about 2021, I sold. And now I saw Barrett is back to 17 and I'm like, maybe I should buy it again. I'm thinking about it, you know? Cause I see Gold hovering around that like 1960 mark. And I'm thinking, maybe we get another run back to 2000 and maybe Barrett makes another run to 20, 25 bucks. I don't know, what do you think about that? You think that Gold has more room to run because it feels like every time Gold gets to 2000 it sells off. What's your opinion on that? I'd like to know. Yeah, so it came within five bucks of the all-time high this year. And so, you know, clearly that 2050 plus kind of range is resistance. Yes. And you need to break through that with some authority. I personally feel that that is possible August 22nd through 24th. If the BRICS, you know, group basically announces an alternative currency to the US dollar. You already are looking at the US dollar in decline which is awesome for our space. The Fed is July 26th. We'll see how the dollar reacts to that. But the next major thing in the road is going to be BRICS August 22 through 24. And then interestingly, Jackson Hole, Wyoming's symposium right after that. So it could be a whipsaw, I don't know. I mean, because remember, the Fed's got their own thing going, right? They don't care, they're gonna, yes, they care about an alternative currency, but I know Powell from hearing him like every single time speak, I really do pay attention to his words. And he's a very pragmatic guy who's basically gonna say, well, yes, the BRICS did XYZ, but we're gonna do ABC. And we're not necessarily as focused on that as whatever. It's a major problem for the US dollar if Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa start to do their own thing, right? It's a problem. And I hear there's like 40 other countries that wanna partner with them too. So it's not just those five. It could be Mexico and a whole bunch of other countries that are talking about joining as well. And so the real question is, what is that backed with? Is it 2% gold, 3% gold, 5% gold? I don't know. We're gonna find out. Maybe it's nothing. But I seriously think there's a nice probability that there could be an announcement then. And I think the broad market is assigning a five to 10% probability of that at this moment right now. So as a value manager, you have to take calculated risks, right? And that is a calculated risk. I wanna buy juniors. I just said this on, you know, Charlie McLeod show, INN. I wanna buy juniors in July and August when everyone is asleep at the wheel and on vacation with their families. And then basically have August 22nd work on my favor. And then you've got the two biggest US mining conferences in September, right? They run from September 12th through the 20th. So you get a nice bump there going into October, November. I think this could be a great setup. And so that's why we're bullish right now, which if you watched our work on shows like yours in the past, we've been very guarded and heavy cash. You know, we're not over our skis at all. We're still probably 8% cash as we said here. But I could see us getting to frictional cash, you know, between now and August 22nd. If the Fed, you know, doesn't throw us any curveballs July 26th, which by the way, right now is showing a 92% probability of a rate hike. So once we get those kinds of things rich, like you saw in the last Fed meeting, it was a 91% probability I think of a pause, right? So it's like nice going into meetings like that. You don't have to worry about the two o'clock Eastern announcement, but you always have to worry about the 230 press conference because Powell is being watched extremely closely by the markets. Markets are near or at all-time highs, depending on what you're looking at. You know, if he throws a curveball in there, any of these meetings, the broad market could take up breather and that's what we're always watching for. So one of the things we advocate is, you know, setting these things on your calendar, you know, the Fed meetings aren't like every week, there's only a couple of them a year. So set that on your calendar, set CPI in your calendar every month, non-farm payrolls every month, GDP every month, you saw what happened when GDP read high recently. You know, the estimate was 1.3, we got a 2% read, that's a major, major disparity from what was expected. These are things that move markets and they move the mining sector too. Yeah, and we're down to 3%. So I mean, it was funny. A year ago, almost to the day, inflation was at 9%. We've got it down to 3%. So I mean, man, if they've done a good job getting it back under control, we've seen other countries like go bankrupt essentially because they couldn't get their inflation under control. Here in Canada and the United States, we've done a good job getting it under control, we're at 3%. So I do believe there's gonna be two more rate hikes that'll get us to that 2% number and then hopefully then we pause and then hopefully then we start reducing the rates. Now I think that would be a huge boom for the market. And then continue with some more questions. What is the most common problem you see with junior mining companies that lead them to not being successful? Well, you can't protect against lying. I've been lied to a number of times in my career and you just hope that you have a small enough position that it doesn't affect your net worth that much. I'm not gonna name names right now, but there's been a lot of stuff that's going on in the mining sector in the seven and a half years we've been running money and I can't believe some of the things I've seen. So I've said this probably three times already today, but for a fourth time, you have to do your research, you've got to be careful because, I mean, like any sector there's risk, okay? I mean, I remember technology in 2000. I own this company called Sienna. I don't know if you remember it, but it was a high flyer at the time, like top 20 tech name. And they came out pre-market and they said, we lost the customer today. And I think the customer was like an intel or something, right? And then the stock was down 25 or 30% that day. And I was like, what the heck happened? Well, I found out that that was 20% of their entire revenue stream. So you have to do that homework. I didn't do my homework. I was much younger than I didn't really do that same kind of homework that I do now. And that woke me up to like, wow, even like these high flying names can get taken down from time to time. And so yeah, the first thing is, is what is the character of that management individual that you're talking to? What is their track record? Is their track record good? If they had a series of successes in their career, to me it's not just being in a business 30 years rich. It's like, what have you done in those 30 years? You have a couple of buyouts in those times. Then that's great. And if you led people from, hey, I bought this for 30 million and dumped it on Kinross for 140 million, then that's awesome, right? Like I wanna know what your next project is because you just made me over 400% of my money. But if you've just been like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, like that to me is a challenge. And that comes to my second point, which is management that puts 100% of their private placements into the ground and doesn't do any marketing. If you've had that many CEO interviews, I bet you've run across people like this, right? They're like, hey, we're gonna just drill the heck out of this thing. And they have a crap website. They've got a crap, public relations kind of thing going on. They don't do any conferences. It's like, that's not a strategy either. You have to, then you have to really hit on those drill holes, right? That could happen, but it doesn't usually happen, right? So like that's, to me, it's a combination, finding that combination of marketing and good geologists that are in the field doing the work. And that can get you to a better place once the environment gets better as well, right? Like if you look at the summer of 2020, a lot of juniors got bids that shouldn't have got bids. It was just a rising tide lifting all ships. So that's kind of what I'm saying is like, you want a position with companies that are real juniors if you're into the junior space because once that tide rises again, and I think that's going to happen once gold can break through that 2050 mark into the 2100 plus range, that's your catalyst to be like, you know, this is go time or when silver breaks 30, either one of those are major, major hurdles for me. But you want to buy now, like why wait for the inevitable? That is going to happen, right? In the next one to two years, in my opinion. So why not now put those positions on, hold for a year and a day, get the long-term capital gain, you know? I mean, like, don't buy into the market when gold's at 2100, buy in right now. I agree 100%. But unfortunately, so many investors love to chase and I'm the complete opposite. When everybody's chasing, I love to be selling and when nobody's paying attention, that's what I'm buying. And that's what I was doing last year. I was buying all the best stocks in the world when everybody was bashing them. I really wish I bought Meta. I just couldn't wrap my head around them because they were getting into the Metaverse and they went from like 80 bucks and now they're like 300 plus. Crazy, just crazy how stocks have gone berserk this year. In the year where everyone is for a session. So it's just funny how the market works and that's why I really believe that time in the market is always more important than timing the market. It's something I'll always believe and that's why I invest and I'm always invested and I'm a diversified investor. And it leads me to a couple more questions before we say goodbye. Do you think Nickel will ever surpass Lithium? And we know the EV industry is huge right now and is only gonna get bigger. Do you think there's a chance that Nickel could become bigger than Lithium in the EV industry? It's possible. I mean, I think we don't make predictions more than like six months out because things change so quickly. I mean, we just don't do that. So I can't really answer it directly. I can just say that I own some Nickel companies and some Lithium companies. And the Nickel companies we own, some that come to mind like Stillwater Mining, Stillwater Critical Minerals is the exact name. We own Premium Nickel and we own Fathom Nickel. I mean, we own some names that have done extremely well or are enough trends. And in the Lithium space, we like large land packages. That's kind of what the game is right now to me in the Lithium Junior space is it's get a large land package and have it in close proximity to someone who's way bigger than you, right? One of our holdings, Champion Electric, did that. They pivoted last September and bought a huge land package in Canada very close to Patriot. If you know Patriot, PMET, it's one of the best mining stock charts in the last five years. So- Fire. Exactly. And I've been in full disclosure, I've owned zero Patriots. I completely missed that. I've had them on my show. I've had them on my show. Yeah, I'm not going to chase it because it's already like multiples ahead, right? But with that stock I'm mentioning, Champion Electric, that was the one I talked about earlier in your show. So we bought originally at 11 and a half. We then doubled our position at three last fall because there was a huge seller out there. I talked to Jonathan Buick, the CEO. He's like, yeah, it's this entity ABC and we've identified who it is but they're just selling for tax purposes. And it was like, this is an iceberg at 3 cents US. So we basically picked up another million shares there and now our average cost is seven and the stock's trading at 12, right? So like that's making money. And we think the stock has a lot more upside. It hit 16 this year. So, you know, another lithium junior that reminds me of that in a completely different jurisdiction is Spark Energy right now. They are much smaller but they're in Brazil and they have a major right near them as well. And, you know, that's the kind of stuff that we look for, right? You know, these companies are acquiring these huge land packages really close to some of these way bigger than them. Well, if Patriots having all this success, don't you think that they would be interested in champions land at some point? I mean, it's just basic thought. It's never a guarantee that there's no guarantees in this but it's a calculated risk, right? And so that, you know, to answer your question, you know, we're in both. We love Nickel and we like lithium. Great. I like them both too. I really like lithium. Like I just feel like with electric vehicles being mandated by countries all over the world to have like 50% electric vehicles. Some countries want 100% electric vehicles by 2030. I just can't see how lithium isn't in the forefront of everyone's mind as an investor. It just seems like such a great time to be investing in lithium. And I've got one more question for you. Let's get into other market conditions. Do you think we're heading into a market with more liquidity or do you still see the economy struggling going into 2024? When you say liquidity, do you mean like the mining space or the broad market or? I just mean in general. I mean, it's been a weird year. It's been a good year. Obviously the market's done really well. Do you feel like this liquidity is going to continue or do you feel like it's going to get bigger or do you think it's going to slow down at some point? Because I'm starting to wonder like when I talk to investors there's still a ton of investors on the sidelines. So I'm starting to wonder like, is this mostly institutional like this run this year? Is it a combination of institutions and retail? Because as much as I'm investing when I talk to a lot of my friends, they're not. You know, they're on the sidelines. They're not sure. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of retail that's still sitting on the sidelines with cash. Do you see that changing? Do you see like more money coming into the markets? Like what are you seeing? Like what do you feel like going into 2024? Are people going to be investing more or are they going to be investing less? I think a lot of people got scared. You know, like they were told, you know, we were all told that 2023 is going to be a recession. So I think a lot of people got into cash last year and have been sitting on the sidelines this year waiting for an entry and everything's been shooting up. So like what do you think? Do you think that this liquidity event will continue? Do you think it's going to get bigger? Do you think it's going to slow it down? What's your opinion on that? I think it's largely institutional driven this year and even parts of last year. And the reason I say that is because I look at the screen 10 to 12 hours a day and I can see when mutual funds or ETFs are buying something because I know what to look for on level two quotes. And I think you are seeing a melt up right now is the best way I could put it, right? I mean, now the CPI news Wednesday, that's real, right? Like you can get behind that as an investor, as a money manager, but why was it melting up that much before that, right? Like it's sort of like we're so deep into a bull run here. I'm in the camp that, you know, the low was March of 09. And so now you're in a 14 and a half-ish kind of bull run with major, with minor, you know, pullbacks in 2018, 2020, et cetera, right? 2011. So, you know, it's not like, I mean, if you look at a chart, it's like this, you know, a series of higher lows on the NASDAQ or something like that, right? So what would you rail that in our opinion is, is you want to keep an eye on stuff like non-farm payrolls, right? I mean, the ADP number recently came in on that Thursday. I think it was, yeah, the 6th of July, really hot, like more than double what it expected, but the next day, the non-farm payrolls number missed. And if you see a bunch of non-farm payroll numbers missing in the US, that's going to indicate to you that, you know, maybe they're GDP missing. Those two things would be interesting to see where the US economy could be starting to falter a little bit. Obviously, keeping an eye on earnings and all that, but I think, you know, look, we're only about 10% in the broad market right now. You know, we got out too early. We didn't see it melting up to this level, but I'm okay with missing that because my expertise is really in energy and mining. So when I look at those two sectors, there's so much opportunity right now that I'm really, really excited. I mean, I tell people this all the time, like there's been times in my career, like in 2016, I lost a lot of sleep. I don't lose any sleep right now. I know that this is going to work. It's just going to take more time than the average investor wants. Yeah, I kind of agree with you. I think it's been, it's definitely been a market meltup. Like you, I sold earlier thinking that things couldn't keep going higher and they just keep going higher, higher and higher. So now I feel like from the most part, like everyone's talking about the big seven, you know, there's seven stocks that are leading the charge, right? The Metas, the Googles, the Amazons, the Apples, the Teslas, those are part of it, right? These are the biggest, strongest tech companies in the world that have really been leading the charge. NVIDIAs, they've all done really, really well this year, but it's like, can you buy them now? I have no interest in it. I have no interest in buying Tesla 300 now and Meta over 300 and NVIDIA almost at $480. Like it makes no sense. Like NVIDIA was at a hundred bucks, like not a long ago and now it's almost at $500. Yeah, AI is hot and stuff, but to me this is, like you said, it's a market meltup and I think it would be a huge mistake to be buying these companies at these levels. I think for me now, I'm sitting on the sidelines with cash, waiting for another dip like last year and waiting for another opportunity to get into some of those positions. I'm not gonna be chasing stuff at 52 week highs, all-time highs. We're starting to see that all over the place again. It's almost like 2021 when we had this huge move up in the market and then last year was a huge pullback across the board, especially with small caps and cryptos, they all got annihilated and a lot of those small caps, the smaller cryptos are starting to wake up again, but the large caps have really performed well and as an investor, I think right now is really kind of, you gotta try lightly because Powell's coming up here pretty soon and he's most likely gonna have another rate hike. Like you said, there's the bricks news that's gonna come out and I think that's gonna have an effect on the economy. So there's a lot of stuff going on that is now telling me to sit back and wait for another drop. I just feel like everything is a little too high right now. The markets, the S&P 500 back to almost all-time highs, Dow Jones at around 52 week highs, NASDAQ's at 52 week highs. So at some point, don't you think? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's not a great entry point to your point to get into those seven stocks. They're very tech heavy. In fact, if you look at the SPY, which is one of the largest S&P ETFs, I mean, I did some analysis as of May 31st, 26.1% of the top 10 holdings of SPY are tech. So that's not the ETF. 26% of the top 10 are technology. So if you have this in your 401k at work, which like a lot of people do, right? You have an S&P like option that you probably have significant money in, whether you know it or not. This is something to be concerned with, right? Like, I mean, these names have had a great run. Why not take some of that money off the table, switch that into a money market accounts and just hang out for a little bit and observe? I mean, it's like you've already made money for years, but I think we're just in a really odd situation right now, Rich, where I think people are, they're really emboldened, I'd say. Like investors are very greedy and we're not. We're looking at this and we respect history and we look at stuff and we hear all the time, it's different this time, it's different this time. Well, maybe it's not. Maybe you have to be like a little more cautious and understand that this isn't just a straight line up. And the more we get this kind of euphoric buying, the greater the risk for the 20% correction, right? Because 20% corrections are like standard. If you look at 2018, go back and look at the S&P from September of 18 to December 24th of 2018. I have this memorized because like, it's just something I remember. It was down 19.9% in embalts. It was literally right at 20% in embalts. And so people that don't do technical analysis and kind of poo poo what we do, we use technicals first for that reason, it works. So you have to respect that. And when you're at all time highs, where's the resistance, right? Like, if you're short, you're in trouble on some of those tech names because they keep melting up. And even something like GE, if you look at that, it's like the chart looks beautiful. But at what point does the music stop and there's nowhere to sit? And so we don't chase stuff like that. We just don't, none of it. And look, we'll make money on other stuff, right? I just mentioned Champion Electric. We bought heavily three, we're 12 now. We've made hundreds of percent this year in seven months. So we're very happy with that stuff. And we'd rather buy something like that where we have a relationship with the company. We know everything about the company inside and out. And we can just feel more comfortable with our investment as opposed to just, you know, crossing our fingers and hoping. John, we've been live for an hour. This has been an amazing time. I've learned so much from you. I'm really, really impressed. I'm really excited about speaking with you again in the future and learning more about what you do. This is John Fennick consulting. John, anything else you wanna say before we say goodbye? Just, we'll have stuff in the show notes. I'm sure about how to contact me, but I'm very accessible. We try to help everyone that we can. So, you know, any of your listeners, we will try to give some type of discount to based on what they're trying to achieve, right? So like if someone comes to us with a hundred grand, it's different than someone coming to us with a couple of million bucks. I mean, you know, you have different investors out there with different experience levels and we try to be accommodative. So don't feel shy about, you know, hitting me up with an email or a tweet or whatever you'd like. So. Well, thank you for joining us today. And thank you guys for watching. This is your host with the most, your boy, Rich and Rich Stevie Live with the Bull and Bear Show episode number eight and our special guest, John Fennick consulting is his company. And if you guys would like to learn more about John or you like to invest with John, just message me. I'll put some information in the description of this video so you can get in direct contact with him as well. So, John, make sure you send me some of your contact details or maybe give that to Emon. I'll put it in the description of this video. So if anyone wants to get in contact with you, we'd like to invest with you. Feel free to do that as well. And other than that, wish everyone a great day. Hope you're having a great day. Hope you have a great weekend. And John, thank you for joining us today. Thanks, leverage. Always a pleasure. Have a great day, everybody. And remember, if you're not winning, probably not watching because we bring you the winners and we bring them to you first. We love bringing you CO interviews, breaking news, trending topics and we'd love to bring it to you first and we want to wish everyone a great weekend. And John, enjoy the rest of your weekend and we look forward to seeing you again. You too. Thank you. Have a nice day, John and have a great day, everybody. We'll see you soon.