Journal of the Plague Year - part 1: Chinese ex-girlfriend oracle says "Situation cloudy"

Here I am, watching myself for Covid-19 symptoms, having braved the crowds of PDAC earlier in the month. I only went on the Sunday, but there were plenty of opportunities for mingling with crowds, particularly during the reception at the Peruvian exhibit, the Argentinian exhibit, the Chilean exhibit, and the Brasilien exhibit (not to mention repeatedly visiting their coffee machine, which was on the fritz). The crowds at those events were quite close.

News of course came a few days later that someone who had been at the convention later showed symptoms--and a Kinross exec claims to have gotten the virus there. Seeing as there were over 20,000 people there, I'm sure that won't be the end of it.

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Roadblock in one of Jiaozuo's many villages

I contacted a couple of ex-gfs in China to ask about the progress of covid-19. It isn't easy to get accurate information otherwise, as I never know whether or not to believe news about China that is reported here, but I also don't completely believe Xinhua news or equivalents. Somewhere in there, there may be some truth.

And last night, a third ex-gf contacted me to ask how the virus was proceeding in Canada. She even asked if I had masks! I told her no, we don't believe in those here.

Anyway: Ex#1 is originally from the Wuhan area, and is currently working in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. She had been in her village last month, but it never seemed to be completely isolated from the rest of Hubei province. She tells me she is back at work in Zhengzhou now, and when I asked about activity in businesses around her, she told me that as far as she can tell, businesses and institutions are nearly back to normal.

 

There she is - at left, on her bicycle in Wuhan about three years ago - at right, how the government sees her.

All the stories floating around over here, about hundreds of thousands of people left to die in Wuhan apartments; massive numbers of corpses burned in crematoria around the country; even the story about the disease either originating in a Chinese bioweapon lab or an American lab and inflicted on the Chinese--should all be rejected as fake. In her case, if there were huge numbers of deaths in Wuhan, she would probably know it through relatives and relatives of friends. As for the combustion signals, remember that the Chinese have had to destroy nearly a hundred million pigs due to pig ebola

The other two exes are having different experiences. They are both from a city near Zhengzhou called Jiaozuo--but are both from different villages. Both of them are still trapped in their respective villages. One of them is from the village with all the roadblocks that I posted on twitter last month. She manages a restaurant in Zhengzhou, where I imagine business isn't too good. She did remind me that I should drop in at the restaurant upon my return to Zhengzhou. Then she immediately posted our conversation on social media and boasted about her English. The second one tells me she doesn't know what is happening. There is a rumour that there are still two people in her village with the virus, and the whole place is locked down. She doesn't know when she will return to Zhengzhou.

So, depending on where you are in China, things are close to normal, or not.

PS - I just checked, and the top picture I posted on Feb. 5. So poor Pan Pan has been trapped in her village for six weeks! I would add that her village is not the most interesting village in China

The last PDAC thing

. . . is this tag I got at the Chilean booth. I don't know if it is supposed to do anything.

Everyone in the wine line where these were handed out was stumped by them. It looks like it is a catalogue, but there is nowhere to read anything. It looks like one of those keytags you hang by a lanyard around your neck. The whole card is quite substantial and could be carrying data in some format, I suppose.

PS. I'm back in god-damned China.

PDAC, part 2

A bit of a trying day today. It seems I am being invited on to somebody's Board of Directors, but until a formal offer is made there seems to be little point in going on about it. I was asked to identify a couple of projects or small companies for purchase by private money. I have a line on some money for a project.

Then I spent a lot of time hanging around the Chilean booth, waiting for wine and empenadas.

 Instead of going to the usual drunken company parties, I went to a reception organized by the government of India.

Unfortunately, there were too many dull talks and it took too long to get to the part with the drinks and the food, so we went to the Argentinian reception instead . . .

. . . which was a lot more lively. But after a few drinks, I suddenly found all the dancing couples depressing--probably because I met my wife at PDAC years ago. As I recall, there was a lot of dancing back then, too.

PS

No complaints about the swag this year.

PDAC 2015 part 1

The investors exchange was pretty dead in the morning.

No worries about broken toes here! But things picked up somewhat in the afternoon.

There is a lot more space than usual in the investors exchange, due to all the missing booths. There are a few more breaks in the rows to allow traffic as well as a little snack bar, which I never recall seeing before. There were a lot of booths which would normally have been in the trade show section, which is full to overflowing.

There was even a large contingent of trade show booths in the north building (where it used to be years ago), as well as the usual large area on the 800 level. And as I mentioned above, it almost took over a complete row of the investors' exchange. I haven't quite wrapped my head around what this means. I remember working an investors exchange booth back in 2002 and 2003 when the conference was so full that not only were there many additional conference rooms filled with mining company booths, but quite a few of us were put in the trade show, which really cut down on the number of questions I had to answer that year.

So raising money for mining projects is still pretty hard, why are there so many more service companies than usual? Is it a sign of desperation? Or is it a sign that there is a lot of innovation in the sector (because I am seeing a lot of new processing/interpretation services being offered)?

Once again there seems to be a lot of interest in uranium (at least in the company presentations).

Standing room only in the afternoon uranium sessions. I mean I went in there to take a nap, and not only couldn't get a seat but it was so stuffy I was ready to completely pass out by the end of the Denison presentation. I managed to make it to the precious metals room, where Silver Standard was presenting. The room was mostly empty.

Wandering the Investors Exchange did give me a line on some work and a potential financing for an African project (from different booths).

The PDAC experience, part three

My son was playing around with the various pens I brought back from various companies. I use PDAC to stock up.

Clearly I need to start doing more due diligence.

My son got all of the pens to work except one: Detour Gold. So, naturally we took it apart to have a look.

Nice looking pen!

So far, so good.

Aha! No pen tip, no ink reservoir--just an empty shell.

You may insert your own punch line here.

I currently have no position in Detour, although I admit I did very well on it in the past.

PDAC, part deux

Now that the beer fog has cleared somewhat, here are some other observations.

Compared to previous years, the place was dead. Sure, there were people shuffling around. But I had broken a toe on Saturday in an unrelated event, and was a little nervous about getting it stepped on in the crowds (which would have been a given in any of the last three years). But I had no problems on Tuesday--in fact I hardly needed to exercise any vigilance at all, because the aisles seemed quite a bit wider than usual (fewer booths by far), and there were several booths missing at the ends of the crossways, so they were wider too. And there just weren't that many people there.

In other good news, somebody out of the blue asked me to do some work for them. I hadn't planned to look for any work, figuring it was probably pointless, at least among the companies that did show up.

There was a rumour that about 100 companies that had registered to have booths at the investor's exchange didn't bother coming.

These points seem to suggest we are close to a bottom in psychology--and the few financings that have occurred, and someone asking me if I could do some work for them, both point to an improving market. Unfortunately, my gut tells me that not enough bad companies died during the downturn.

One last point of interest--I was talking to a mining securities lawyer acquaintance of mine in one of the hospitality suites and I got to discussing one of my favourite topics--the manner in which NI 43-101 regulations skew the market in favour of larger interests, particularly institutional investors (to the detriment of the retail investor). It didn't surprise me that he agreed with me. It was the way he agreed with me. "Well, duh!". He did suggest that if the retail investor wants to front-run the market like a bank, then let him hire his own team of geos.

My day at PDAC

Truth to tell, the only incident I remember was being accosted by some kid in front of the Barkerville booth. He shoved a pamphlet at me, boasting that "the company had just started operating its mill yesterday." Furthermore they were going to produce some amount of gold which I've had too much beer to remember, and am too lazy in any case to look up or even direct you to the website.

So I asked him, "What do I get to do to you if the company doesn't deliver?" He looked slightly alarmed and confused. He asked what I meant. "Well, suppose I buy shares in this company on your recommendation, but the company fails to deliver on these promises, and I lose money. What do I get to do to you?" He took a couple of steps back, and started looking wildly around, possibly for Security. "Are you implying that all I can do is sell my shares?" He was like a drowning man thrown a lifeline. "Yes! You can sell your shares!"

"That won't be cathartic enough," I told him.

Over lunch I thought about what sorts of remedies there should be for disgruntled shareholders. It's unlikely they'd ever be allowed to physically injure anybody, but one idea that occurred to me was that for each board lot should entitle you to one sledge-hammer blow on the CEO's car. Now, it's true that after 50 or so such blows, the car would be a write-off, and the next 14,950 or so shareholder hammer-blows would technically be wasted, but may be cathartic. So that will be my next recommendation to the compliance officer at the OSC.

Video for upcoming PDAC

PDAC has a new video for the upcoming meeting.

I particularly like the tour of all the empty booths.


PDAC 2014 Convention Video – A Guided Tour from The PDAC on Vimeo.