Brien Lundin, publisher of Gold Newsletter, sat down with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable to discuss precious metals and their relationship with recent Fed actions and the dollar.
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http://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2018/10/22/brien-lundin-the-fed-the-dollar-and-precious-metals.html
Maurice Jackson: Joining us for a conversation is Brien Lundin, the president of Jefferson Financial, helping to protect your world.
Please tell us about Jefferson Financial and what type of services you provide.
Brien Lundin: We are essentially a provider of investment information. We publish Gold Newsletter, which is the oldest precious metals advisory in the world, having been started by Jim Blanchard in 1971 as a way for him to advocate for the return of gold ownership, legalized gold ownership to American citizens. And I also produce the New Orleans Investment Conference, an annual event that Jim Blanchard also started in 1974 after he was successful in helping to get gold legalized. He had an investment conference to teach American investors how to buy gold, how to invest in the gold markets, and silver, and it’s been going on ever since. We have the oldest, and I believe the most respected investment event out there.
Maurice Jackson: We brought you on today to get your insights on a number of topics, and I would like to begin our discussion with the Federal Reserve and its commitment to increase interest rates and reduce its debt obligations on its balance sheet. I have to begin by asking you, is that even possible for the Fed to unwind its balance sheet?
Brien Lundin: Well, it can unwind its balance sheet, I think the key question is at what pace it can simply let the obligations run off as they mature, which would take quite literally decades for that to happen. But the key is, can the Fed do it without unforeseen, or dangerous consequences to the U.S. economy and stock market. And frankly I don’t think it can, as it increase its balance sheet as it was the buyer of last resort to keep interest rates low. And as the Fed had, as you know, an unprecedented program called Quantitative Easing, which was just money printing, all of this to support the market. We saw the effects in not retail price inflation as many of us feared, but in financial assets inflation, which to be fair, was their goal all along.
On the way up, as the balance sheet was rising and as quantitative easing was hitting its stride, the correlation between the Fed’s balance sheet and the S&P 500 was around 97%, so the Fed inflated the stock market, bull market. It was directly behind it.
And the question now is, if they had that much of a correlation on the way up, well, now that they’re on the way down, are we going to have a similar correlation? And I think the events of the week when the DOW lost over 1,400 points over a couple of days is powerful evidence that the Fed won’t be able to get away with it without some dire consequences in the equity markets.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of those dire consequences, from a macro perspective, what type of impact are the Fed’s decisions having on global markets? And should we be concerned about contagion and capital flight from peripheral markets?
Brien Lundin: Well, it’s actually attracting some money to the U.S. because you have, on a relative basis, higher rates in U.S. treasuries than you have in similar instruments in Europe and elsewhere. So it is attracting money and helping to support the dollar, but I don’t think it’s making the dollar strong. If anything, it’s preventing the dollar’s decline because the Fed wants rates to rise now, it really can’t do it much longer for a number of reasons.
First , the Fed is going to crater the economy if it gets rates to high. Second, we can’t, because of the large debt loads we have right now; the U.S. simply cannot bear the burden of higher interest rates while we have this kind of a debt burden. If interest rates got to historic levels, and by historic levels, I’m talking of 10, 15 years ago where the interest rate burden on the Federal debt was on the order of 5–6%. If we got to those levels again, then the interest burden on the federal debt would be on the order of $1.2 trillion. And that’s far greater than the whole deficit is right now.
So, I just don’t think that’s politically possible. So if we’re looking at interest rates of 5–6% on the Federal debt, we’re talking about a Fed funds rate that probably around 3%. I think that’s the upper limit.
Maurice Jackson: You referenced the U.S. currency’s decline. You know the U.S. for all intents and purposes is in a trade war. And President Trump recently shared he’s not in favor of the Fed’s recent rate hikes. Is the Fed jeopardizing his position in discussions with his adversaries in the trade war?
Brien Lundin: I don’t think his trade war really affects that so much. I think one of the reasons why Trump is out there bemoaning and belittling the Fed so vociferously is because he’s looking for an excuse in case the economy starts downward. Or in case there’s a serious stock market decline. He wants to be able to blame it on someone except himself, and the Fed will be the obvious target. So he’s kind of setting the table for that, I believe. Plus he’s obviously in favor, and his administration is in favor, of low interest rates and debt. I think that’s what we’re going to keep getting.
Maurice Jackson: Now when do you foresee the Fed’s rate hikes ending? And what may be the effects upon the conclusion, long term?
Brien Lundin: Well, if the upper limit is around 3%, that means we have about three more quarter-point rate hikes ahead of us. If the Fed does one in December, which everybody expects, then that means it will only need a couple more to get to 3%, and that could happen in the first half of next year.
I don’t think that’s a widely understood or appreciated fact right now. I think there’s some spark money that’s been seeing that for some time, in realizing that the Fed is in the back half of its rate hike campaign, while other currencies, other central banks, like the ECB and the Bank of England, have yet to begin their rate tightening. But they are on schedule to do so very soon. So I think there’s already been a shift in large money allocations from the dollar into the euro and the pound. And I think we’re going to continue seeing that, and I think that’s the reason why the dollar has not been able to, say, break out of the 95 range on the dollar index and why I believe the dollar will be headed lower over the next six months or so.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of smart money, we like to remind our audience that we refer to money as physical gold and physical silver. Talk to us about the recent price movement in gold.
Brien Lundin: What’s really been interesting about gold is that it has risen on a number of occasions recently when the stock market was crashing and yet the dollar was strong. Now typically that would argue that the buying is safe haven related. And, Maurice, I never like that as a driver for gold. I’m never in favor of that as a reason for gold to go up for any sustained period because these, the safe-haven type buying, these geopolitical political issues, these little flash crises, they come and go, and they don’t provide a sustained driver for gold. What really drives gold over the longer term are concerns over monetary issues, concerns over debt and currency depreciation and the like, and inflation.
So when you see the dollar going up along with gold, that’s a sign that the buying is safe haven related and probably not lasting. However, at the same time, and even on those days when the stock market was crashing, the gold stocks were rising. They were very strong and that argues for a more of a long-term approach to the gold buying. That’s an indication that people are buying gold because they see longer-term monetary based factors at play. So it’s a little bit of both right now, and I find it very interesting. It’s going to shake out one way or the other, but what’s encouraging is that we’re seeing indications of both types of demand for gold. But both are contributing to higher gold prices. And in fact, if we can get enough of a gain in gold to spark a short covering rally, by all the short speculators out there, then I’ll take that. That’s fine with me. That could be enough to really start a longer-term rally in metals.
Maurice Jackson: I have to ask this as well. What prudent action should someone take, based on today’s discussion regarding physical precious metals?
Brien Lundin: Well, they need to own physical precious metals. That’s what I tell everyone; if you’re a newbie to the sector, make sure you have your physical precious metals component, the foundation of your precious metals allocation. Make sure you have that in place, make sure you have it accessible. Don’t put it in bank safe deposit boxes. Make sure you have access to it. I’m a big fan of small denomination silver coins that are junk, you know, old junk silver. As an important component of what somebody should own, but they need to get the physical component in place. That’s the first thing, and even some experienced gold and silver bugs to the sector, they like to play around in the mining stocks, but a lot of them don’t have that physical component in place.
And you really need to, that’s your insurance, it’s something everyone needs. And has to have an insurance against not the unforeseen, but against the inevitable.
Maurice Jackson: You said a lot of information there. I’d like to just recover there for a second. Number one you referenced not to have it in a safe deposit box. Could you please expand on that for a little bit?
Brien Lundin: One of the things you’re insuring yourself against or hedging against by owning physical metals is a bank holiday. So if they lock the banks, how are you going to get to your precious metals? Now that limits your storage options, but there are still a number of options out there, including some in a personal safe, some in other security centers. And then if you’re going to have a fairly large allocation of physical, you can have some in storage facilities both domestic and international.
I tell people that I have very good friends in the precious metal storage business. Yet, I still recommend that if you’re going to have a substantial physical bullion investment, to spread your storage around, because you just never know. You never know what’s going to happen in each specific company or facility. And that’s a risk that you can easily diversify and really should.
Maurice Jackson: You know another fact that a lot of people aren’t aware of, is the safe deposit boxes at your banks, are they FDIC insured?
Brien Lundin: No, they’re not a deposit. So they’re not insured.
Maurice Jackson: That is very important for for our audience to understand.
Brien Lundin: And they’re not insured. The authorities have access to those with a subpoena. Interestingly, one of the things we discovered here in New Orleans during Katrina is that you should also not have a safe deposit box on the first floor of a bank. Because there are a number of safe deposit boxes in the New Orleans area that were under 12 feet of water for a weeks at a time after the hurricane. And they are not waterproof by the way, so a lot of these things you need to consider when looking to store precious metals and valuable documents.
Maurice Jackson: Another point you made was regarding mining stocks. I think a lot of individuals who are investors, particularly in the secondary market, are not aware that they can own physical metals, so they’re under the impression that they own mining company that owns gold and that is incorrect. You are only basically a company that is mining, but they don’t provide you the physical metal. When you purchase the stock, you’re going to get back cash, you’re not getting back the metal. Very important for us to understand here. If I may ask you this sir, we all have our favorites, of the big five, which are gold, silver, platinum, palladim, and rhodium, which ones have your attention and why?
Brien Lundin: Gold and silver primarily; the other three have large industrial components to them. So there are other factors, and they make good investments and good speculations in certain times, but gold and silver are the pure monetary metals. A lot of people talk about the industrial component to silver, but quite frankly, if silver was only valued on its industrial value, it would be $5 an ounce or less right now. So the rest of that margin or premium in its price is really monetary value. If you like gold, you have to love silver because silver is going to follow gold, but it’s going to move more than gold in the same direction. So it offers kind of an innate leverage to the gold price. If gold’s rising in terms of the fiat currency, silver’s going to also rise but to a greater degree.
Now there’s the downside of that as well; it’s going to go more quickly to the down side in a down market. But it is something that I tell people they really need a hold, a blend of the two. But for your hedging against financial catastrophe or a steady devaluation of the dollar, you really need to own gold and silver primarily.
Maurice Jackson: May I ask you this as well? The gold-silver ratio, how does that factor in your decision on purchasing?
Brien Lundin: Well, I think it determines the health of a market more so than timing, perhaps a little bit about value, or the relative value of the metals. But when the gold-silver ratio is falling, that means that silver is outperforming gold to the upside. And that is the hallmark of a good, strong, consistent, sustainable bull market in gold. And when the opposite is in effect, then it’s not positive, it doesn’t reflect on strength in the metals in general. I don’t don’t recommend that people trade the gold-silver ratio, because if you say sell gold and buy silver because the ratio is falling, then you’re mitigating your potential gains because they’re both going to rise, or they’re going to head in the same direction.
So if they’re both rising and you’re selling gold, you’re cutting a good portion of your potential gains out of the equation. So I don’t like trading your ratio, I like to look at it as a signal of the relative strength of the trend in one direction or the other.
Maurice Jackson: Interesting perspective, and thank you for sharing that. Switching gears, the New Orleans Investment Conference will be conducted November 1-4 in beautiful downtown New Orleans. Mr. Lundin, tell us about the world’s greatest investment event? Who are some of the featured speakers and discussion topics?
Brien Lundin: Well, I touched on it a bit earlier. The conference has been around since 1974 when Jim Blanchard started it, and Jim was a fairly flamboyant kind of a guy. He really went over the top with inviting big name speakers to the conference, so we’ve inherited that legacy and try to burnish as best we can. And so we get speakers here that you won’t see elsewhere, in general the line-up of speakers that we bring to our attendees is higher quality I believe than you’ll find anywhere else.
This year we have Robert Kiyosaki, we have political commentators Mark Steyn and Jonah Goldberg. We have James Grant who is one of the most eloquent advocates for gold in particular, most eloquent commentators on the financial markets out there. We have Doug Casey, of course, who’s always a big fan favorite. We have Peter Schiff, we have Dennis Gartman, Rick Rule. We have Guy Adami from CNBC who’s a really interesting guy. We have Ben Hunt who writes a blog, and doesn’t speak very often at conferences, but he has a blog that’s widely read by some really smart people in the markets.
And then we’ve got dozens upon dozens of other speakers, experts in just about every sector, but with a particular emphasis on metals and mining stocks.
Maurice Jackson: What type of attendees usually attend the New Orleans Investment Conference?
Brien Lundin: Well, they are smart, number one, because you have to be smart to pick this event to come to it, because it caters to really smart investors. It also caters to self-directed investors; these are people who are independent thinkers, maverick thinkers, they’re information hungry. They may have a large portion of their portfolio with money managers, but a large portion of their portfolio is directed by them, and according to the views that they have.
And the conclusions that they have after a lot of investigation of the markets and trends and listening to a lot of people. So it’s a smart group. It’s a successful group. One of the things I tell our attendees every year is that, yeah, we have great people, top of the line experts on the stage, but look around you. There are literally hundreds of very successful investors around you at this event. And I’ve never seen one of them who wasn’t willing to share his ideas and strategies, you know? And best thoughts on the markets and where they’re heading. So there’s a lot of fantastic market intelligence just within the crowd at our event.
Maurice Jackson: There’s a number of intellectual capital there at the conference. And speaking of the attendees, this will be my third year in attendance, and I have to admit I’m looking forward to meeting the attendees equally as I am to the guest speakers. The networking opportunities with some of the best minds all in one place is priceless. If you do not have your tickets, we welcome you to visit our website, provenandprobable.com and on the right hand column of the website you will see an image for the New Orleans Investment Conference. Click on the image, and you will be taken directly to the registration page.
Before we close, tell us about the gold newsletter and how we can retrieve your information on a regular basis.
Brien Lundin: Well, Gold Newsletter, as I mentioned, before is the oldest and I would say one of the most respected and successful newsletters or advisories on precious metals and mining stocks out there. Jim Blanchard started it in 1971, literally the day that Nixon closed the gold window. And it’s an important history in the hard money movement in advocating for the very legalization of gold in America. So we have a long, illustrious history. We’re trying to build on that every day, and we cover not only the economy, geopolitics and the kinds of things that affect all of the asset classes, but we do specifically focus on precious metals and what’s driving them and we cover a number of mining stocks. Typically junior mining stocks that have the potential to rise when precious metals prices rise or on discovery of new deposits. So that’s kind of our casino as, or where we have a number of high potential, higher risk for sure, but much higher potential investment opportunities.
Maurice Jackson: You know, Mr. Lundin, for someone that wants to get more information regarding Jefferson Financial, please share the contact details.
Brien Lundin: Well, for Gold Newsletter you can go to GoldNewsletter.com very simply, and for the New Orleans Investment Conference, NewOrleansConference.com, although I believe you’ll have some links as well, Maurice, that will get people some special opportunities to the conference.
Maurice Jackson: I certainly will sir. And as a reminder for our audience, we are licensed brokers to buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium, off shore storage accounts, and precious metals IRAs. To have conversation, please email Maurice@MilesFranklin.com, or call 919-274-5680.
And last but not least, please visit our website ProvenandProbable.com, where we interview the most respected names in the natural resource space. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
Brien Lundin of Jefferson Financial, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Brien Lundin: Great to be with you.
With a career spanning four decades in the investment markets, Brien Lundin serves as president and CEO of Jefferson Financial, a highly regarded publisher of market analyses and producer of investment-oriented events. Under the Jefferson Financial umbrella, Lundin publishes and edits Gold Newsletter, a cornerstone of precious metals advisories since 1971. He also hosts the New Orleans Investment Conference.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.

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James Pettit, CEO of Aben Resources, in conversation with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable, discusses his company’s summer exploration in the Golden Triangle and how the company plans to keep the momentum going throughout the year.

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http://www.streetwisereports.com/article/2018/10/19/canadian-explorer-reveals-year-round-plan-to-maintain-momentum.html

Canadian Explorer Reveals Year-Round Plan to Maintain Momentum 
Contributed Opinion

Source: Streetwise Reports  (10/19/18)

James Pettit, CEO of Aben Resources, in conversation with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable, discusses his company’s summer exploration in the Golden Triangle and how the company plans to keep the momentum going throughout the year.

Maurice Jackson: Joining us today is James Pettit, the president, CEO and director of Aben Resources Ltd. (ABN:TSX.V; ABNAF:OTCQB).
In our last interview, we discussed the next unanswered question for Aben Resources and that would be drill results. This week Aben Resources issued a press release conveying some intriguing results. Before we begin, for someone new to the story, who is Aben Resources and share with us the names and location of your three projects beginning with your flagship.

James Pettit: Aben Resources is a gold exploration company based out of Vancouver listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. Our flagship property is the Forrest Kerr property. It’s in the Golden Triangle, which is a region of northwestern British Columbia, which has got a tremendous history for high-grade discoveries, the likes of the Snip mine and the Eskay Creek mine discovered 30 some odd years ago. Eskay at the time was one of the highest grade mines in the world. Since then, there’s been a lot of discovery that’s happened over the years in terms of more gold, silver and copper. These are still in the development stage.

Many of them are waiting for possible higher prices for the commodity, but they’re probably the largest untapped development projects in the world, especially the copper projects. Now specifically with us, with the Forrest Kerr Project, we acquired that ground three years ago, and started assembling it. I put three claim groups together. We chose those because they’re on a major structural feature, which we look at as one of the controlling structural features in that whole Golden Triangle area. It’s called the Kerr Fault and it’s a big, big fault that you can see from space.

That is an area you want to be near for discovery potential and then there’s other geologic features that you want to be coincidental to that, and we’re right in between them. We’re in a good area. We’re getting a lot of attention. The market’s certainly paying attention to everything that goes on up there. The most recent new production up there is Pretium Resources’ Brucejack Mine, which is a very high-grade gold mine. That really brought about $2 billion in value to its investors. There’s lots of potential there. We’re excited about it.
That’s why we’ve been so concentrated on it. This year we’ve drilled now I think just short of 40 holes. We’ve got 24 to be released still. That’s going to take us through the rest of the year almost. We have another project that’ll get us through the winter because the weather in the Golden Triangle is pretty severe. It’s coastal mountain range right beside the panhandle of Alaska and gets a tremendous amount of rain or snow. It becomes almost impossible to work up there for the winter, unless you’ve got just a huge amount of money and resources to do it. That whole area will be going quiet soon.
We have another project called the Chico Project, which is in Saskatchewan, just south of what used to be called the Claude Resources gold mine. It’s been bought by Silver Standard for $337 million. Silver Standard is now called SSR. It acquired the ground between the Chico property and its property, which it bought from Claude Resources. Basically we think we’ve got an extension of what SSR is looking for because SSR’s interest now is to expand the known resource. To keep that mine alive for the next 20 years, it needs to find more of a resource.

SSR has got a good resource to start with that itbought, but I think it has probably got five to seven years left. SSR wants to take this further. It’s drilling on the ground between them and us now. It has acquired all the ground. It’s giving us a good model to work with. We’ll go in there in the winter. It’s the best time to drill in Saskatchewan because it’s flat, it’s frozen. The lakes are frozen, so we can access an egress very easily. Essentially, we just put up the camp, bring in the rig, and move the rig with a helicopter if need be, or we skid it. We’ll be going in there in February. That’ll keep momentum going for the company.
Then we’ve also got a project up at the Yukon called the Justin, which is tied right on to Golden Predator’s ground, what it calls 3 Aces. We’re right on strike to the 3 Aces structure. We’ve done a little bit of work there this year in terms of trenching with the mechanical backhoe. We’ve got that up to the site by helicopter, and we’re waiting on assays. We’ve spent 10 days doing this. We think we’re sitting right on top of something very similar to 3 Aces, which is a very high-grade epithermal or hydrothermal quartz vein system. It’s very rich.

We’ll know when we get the assays. If they come back the way I think, we’ll be setting up a program for next year. That’s a good project to have in the shoulders between the Forrest Kerr or before the Chico mine’s down in the winter. We can’t really get into the Forrest Kerr until June-July, so we can get up into this region in the interim and keep moving them forward. We’ve got three really good projects to work on, but our flagship is definitely Forrest Kerr because the audience is there. It’s an area play. We all love area plays. That’s where we stand right now.
Maurice Jackson: Well, speaking of the Forrest Kerr, let’s focus our discussion today on the Forrest Kerr. We have some exciting news; what can you share with us?
James Pettit: We have a new zone. We’ve been working and concentrating on the North Boundary Zone, but this season we drilled three holes to the south of the North Boundary Zone. It was a kilometer and a half south. We put in these three holes because we’re trying to buy time, so we could get more assays back because our concentration is the North Boundary Zone and we needed guidance from some of the assays. We did do that, but we decided to drill where we did because there is a geochem anomaly and target that we wanted to test and it was coincidental with an old geophysical survey that showed something promising.

Geophysical anomalies are interesting, but certainly not like a geochem where you actually get the gold in the sample and that’s why you’re there. You have a good geophysical and geochem target to work with, and it turned out that we did the right thing. We’ve hit something there. It’s not as high-grade as the North Boundary appears to be, but it’s broad and it’s mineralized. I’ll use the best of the three holes, hole 21. You’ve got almost 380 meters in that hole is well mineralized, primarily gold, from trace level of 0.1 all the way up to 5 grams every interval.


The way we set it up, it’s almost like a graph. You very rarely see that much continuous mineralization like that. Well, it’s a lot of important information about the tenure of mineralization in that region. That’s definitely has our attention. We need to drill more holes there. We’ll get to it next year. The season’s definitely winding down up there right now, but it’s going to give us a lot of info.
Plus, we have now flown the entire valley using an EM geophysical survey, which encompasses both boundary zones to the north and south. We’re actually just waiting for the results and the interpretation of the survey. We’ll take that information at increased amount of geochem sampling that we’ve done, as well as all the assay results that we’ll have for the season. We’ll use that and compile some significant information for next year and work up our next series of targets.
Maurice Jackson: This is quite intriguing, exciting, any adjective you like to associate with it. Congratulations, sir. Now prior to this week’s press release, Aben Resources was able to successfully complete a financing and secured a major shareholder. Share the details with us, sir.
James Pettit: The first hole we put out this year was spectacular. It had an interval of 10 meters of roughly 38 grams. I mean that’s spectacular in itself, but within that was six meters of 62 grams gold. That’s like two ounces. Spectacular results. That got the market’s attention. The stock really moved up. The interest for financing was immediately apparent. We did announce a $4.2 million financing and half of it was taken by a fellow named Eric Sprott, who is a bit of a gold legend.
He started Sprott Securities, which now has a big presence in Toronto and also a big presence in Carlsbad, California. He is the consummate and ultimate gold bug. He loves gold and is not afraid to take a big stand in an early-stage deal like this. This is the exploration phase. This is potentially where you can absolutely make the most. You’re in at a price that seems very cheap and the market cap is low and you have this discovery. From that point on, you want to keep it growing and the market reacts correspondingly. He’s well aware of that. He’s not afraid to take a shot. He does it with a number of companies.
But when he gives his blessing to it, it’s pretty substantial. Then we also raised another million dollars after that largely because his name was now attached to the original financing, so we raised another just short of a million dollars flow through. The company now has just over $7 million. We’ve basically got next year’s program paid for.
Maurice Jackson: That leads to my next question, what is the burn rate and does Aben Resources plan to return to the market in the foreseeable future for another financing?
James Pettit: Well, the second question’s answer is no, we won’t. We don’t need to. Our burn rate varies from where we are in the area if we’ve got things on the go, the drill program, etc., our burn rate, and I’m just talking about basically our G&A and marketing burn rate, that can grow to $200,000 a month. Then the field work is always budgeted. This year we had budgeted about $1.5 million and we increased it by about $1 million. This year all in all we spent about $2 to 2.2 to 3 million. I haven’t got the finals number in. That’s all in for that project. We doubled the size of the drilling program.
We’re getting really close to shutting down, but I don’t see it going over that. For the G&A side, the operations of the office in Vancouver in marketing because we do. It’s important to spend money on marketing. We travel a lot marketing this project. That runs about $200,000 and varies up to $250,000 a month. Then when we aren’t working, everything obviously slows down, but then we are still marketing because we want people to know what we achieved. We always have goals. We want the market to understand we’re achieving the goals. I think that’s quite important.
Maurice Jackson: Indeed it is. Switching gears onto management. Aben’s management team has a proven pedigree of geological and business acumen. I want to focus on potential amalgamations in the sector should this occur. Share some of the past successes of management rewarding their shareholders on previous arbitrage successes.

James Pettit: Sure. Well, our chairman Ron Netolitzky, he’s like a serial M&A guy. The market really watches what he does. In the past, for example, he was in on the discovery of Snip and Eskay Creek up in this area. He’s got a very, very big following of people all over the world who have followed him through his career and starting there. He’s also very successful in Saskatchewan as well, specifically in M&A, Eskay and Snip. Snip was sold to Cominco way back and then Eskay ended up in Barrick’s hands.
Since then, there’s Copper Canyon, which he and Tim Termuende, who’s also on the board, sold that to Novagold and that became part of the Galore Creek Project, which is now in the hands of Teck and Newmont. My background, even though I’m not a geologist, is I started a company called Bayfield Ventures and eventually sold it in 2014 to New Gold as part of its Rainy River Project. The three of us have a pretty good background of what’s required. We’re always in contact. We maintain contact with majors all the time. I think given what’s happening in the Golden Triangle, majors are coming back. They’re starting to look again.
Last year Goldcorp did a deal with Colorado Resources just on a financing basis, $7 million. That was a surprise move, but it shows the interest I think. Osisko’s looking around there. Kinross is looking in the area. Barrick has showed its interest again. I think they actually have a buy back into the Snip deal because Skeena has got their hands on it and they’ve been working on it and trying to resurrect another zone in the Snip Mine. That’s our background. I think it stands out to be honest with you with the amount of M&A that’s been done between the three of us.
Maurice Jackson: Talk to us about the share price. The market is rewarding value speculators.
James Pettit: Absolutely. This is the level to enter in this market. Speculators want to be involved with a company that’s active, has good projects, good people, etc. Then take a position and wait for them to do what they say they’re going to do. In our case, last year was the discovery of the North Boundary Zone. This year was the reaffirmation of it with a tremendous hole that you could really say is the discovery hole. We need to make it bigger now. That’s our job. That’s where you get this big appreciation in stock price based on speculation.
Then going forward as you put out more and more results, the market will go up and down and follow the results. I’m seeing that this year as opposed to last year, which was as soon as you finished drilling or came out with results and you got too late into September going into October, that market’s sold off. It just sold off because tax loss season is coming and they just wanted to be out of whatever they were doing. Because once you’re finished, it’s a long cold winter to get through and you’re sitting on a stock. Like last year, we went back down to $0.10.
That’s not going to happen this year because I’ve got two other projects that are good and we’ve got a really good shareholder base now. We have so much liquidity this season. We ran from roughly $0.10, maybe $0.12 up to $0.50. Now it’s settled back in the low to mid $0.20s now. It’s trading good volume. I think probably since July or beginning of August we’ve traded 150 million shares. That’s fantastic.
Maurice Jackson: That’s quite impressive actually. Yes.
James Pettit: It’s really very impressive. We put out a bunch of holes before this most recent one around that discovery zone. They were less impressive. They were really good. They’re all very well mineralized. They just weren’t 30 some odd grams. Those that wanted that to be repeated sold out and that just meant there’s a whole lot of people who came into the market that they sold out, other people bought it. We’ve got a really good floor here, the $0.20 to $0.25 range. I think basically it’s a buy all day long. We still got 24 holes to put out.
Maurice Jackson: Yeah. We’re one of those other buyers. Speaking of the stock price, if I may just interject here, Warren Buffett and Rick Rule, they’re noted for sharing how the market rewards speculators that are prepared. In particular, and I’m going to paraphrase them, that you should not purchase a stock if you weren’t willing to see the price reduce 30% or more and be willing to purchase more. Now we’re on record, we purchased Aben Resources at $0.42 and we’re active buyers at current prices and we’re confident that the value proposition in our opinion continues to increase.
Mr. Pettit, before we close, multilayered question here, what is the next unanswered question for Aben Resources, when should we expect results, and what determines success?
James Pettit: The next unanswered question really would be how big is this and how robust is this boundary zone, including north and south. So far we’ve tapped into two zones. The very first priority target we had was the North Boundary Zone. Well, it generally was the boundary zone and we started in the north end and boom, hit it right away. When we prioritized the target zone, this overall property, the Forrest Kerr, we did it based on a compilation study of all the historic data. We came up with about 12 areas we want to go test. We’re still on the first one. Two years later we’re still in the first one. This boundary zone is four kilometers long and two kilometers wide.
It’s all based on geochem. There’s a big geochemical survey that’s been done there. We’ve added to it now and now we’ve completed the airborne. We could be there for a while. I think we’re just touching on it now. We’ve hit a few sweet spots. One’s confirmed as a sweet spot, the South Boundary Zone. I think by next year when we do some more holes we’re going to be surprised, but I think there’s going to be a lot more sweet spots there. We’re going to focus and vector in on where did this mineralization come from. That’s really what our job is. Figure it all out, get the structure identified and where it came from.
We know there’s at least three mineralizing events in the area, and we know there’s at least four ages of rock. That tells us there’s been four major events that have happened. With three of them, in came the fluids that brought the gold. Let’s find some of those feeders.
Maurice Jackson: Well, Mr. Pettit, we’ve covered the good. What keeps you up at night that we don’t know about?
James Pettit: Keeps me up at night? Well, being a good sleeper, not much keeps me up at night. Being in this business so long, I’m used to it. There’s always risks. What would scare me is we hit nothing for the rest of the holes. That would be a concern. I don’t foresee that. As long as everything stays on course, we’re good. I don’t really have a concern that would keep me awake at night.
Maurice Jackson: The last question I have for you, sir, is what did I forget to ask?
James Pettit: Most people ask me where do I think we’re going to go with what’s remaining this season? Obviously, I don’t have results. I don’t know, but I think we’re going to be pleasantly surprised. I think things are looking good. I think we’re in the right area for sure. Absolutely the right area. This is a very robust mineralizing system that we’re looking at. We’re right between the two big structural systems that we want to be in. I think for a discovery profile, we’ve got a really good one.
Maurice Jackson: Mr. Pettit, for someone listening that wants to get more information on Aben Resources, what is the website address, sir?
James Pettit: The website address is www.abenresources.com.
Maurice Jackson: As a reminder, Aben Resources trades on the TSXV symbol ABN, and on the OTCQB symbol ABNAF. For direct inquiries, please contact Don Myers at 604-639-3851. That number again is 604-639-3851. He may also be reached at info@abenresources.com.
As a reminder, Aben Resources is a sponsor of Proven and Probable and that we are proud shareholders of Aben Resources for the virtues conveyed in today’s message.
Last but not least, please visit our website www.provenandprobable.com where we interview the most respected names in the natural resource space. You may reach us at contact@provenandprobable.com.
James Pettit of Aben Resources, thank you for joining us today on Proven and Probable.
Maurice Jackson is the founder of Proven and Probable, a site that aims to enrich its subscribers through education in precious metals and junior mining companies that will enrich the world.
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