Overlooked Investing Rules for Bull Markets by Ian Cassel

Summary

• Investment Strategy: Ian Cassel emphasizes the importance of maintaining a disciplined approach in bull markets by anchoring expectations to reality and avoiding crowd behavior, particularly in the metals and mining sectors.
• Market Dynamics: Cassel discusses the psychological challenges of investing during bull markets, such as the tendency to lower standards and diversify too much, and stresses the importance of maintaining high-quality investments.
• Insider Buying: He highlights the significance of insider buying as a strong indicator of management's conviction in their company, suggesting it as a preferable alternative to excessive spending on investor relations.
• Portfolio Management: Cassel advises on the importance of having a flexible yet disciplined approach to portfolio management, advocating for a balance between holding winners and being prepared to sell when necessary.
• Resource Sector Insights: He notes the current favorable conditions for resource companies, with producers benefiting from lower input costs relative to commodity prices, and the potential for increased M&A activity due to underinvestment in exploration by larger companies.
• Use of Technology: Cassel mentions utilizing AI tools for research and screening, but emphasizes the irreplaceable value of direct interactions and site visits with management teams for gaining deeper insights.
• Market Sentiment: He observes a shift from the historically negative sentiment in the resource sector to a more positive outlook, driven by the potential for growth and profitability without relying on economic downturns.
• Conference and Networking: Cassel discusses the importance of investor conferences for networking and idea generation, highlighting his involvement in organizing events that focus on quality interactions between investors and companies.

Transcript

Today on Resource Talks, Ian Castle is going to tell me when to buy, what to hold, and when to sell during what seems to be uh finally a bull market in uh metals and mining. And and hopefully after that, Ian will also get to talk about how you tell the good from the bad operators in an upward market, insider buying, marketing, and a bunch of other things in between. But uh just briefly for people watching or listening, if you want a summary of this conversation and all the other interviews that we do on resource talks, go to resourcealks.com. There's a free newsletter. It goes out once a week with a bullet point summary of all the conversations from the week before. No longer of an intro needed here. Ian's been on the channel multiple times before, so shut up already. And Ian, thank you so much for being here today. >> Hey, thanks for having me on. I really enjoy doing this with you. You're you're one of my favorite interviewers, so it's an honor. >> Well, thank you so much for saying that. I uh I'm going to listen to all the other interviews to see if you tell that to all the people you speak to before I feel special. But uh I really appreciate it and and you know our last conversation was very it was eye opening for me and it generated some very good feedback and uh as well as some disagreements and I think this one will generate more of all the above because again metals and and mining are in a bull market and I don't really know how to deal with it and uh I feel like I'm using these conversations as a bit of a a therapy session too. So that's cool. Uh it's also fitting in one of your recent articles uh you simply titled it FOMO so fear of missing out where a quote at the beginning kind of hit home for me and uh where you say and I quote uh we watch stocks we don't own outperform what we do own and it makes us do stupid things end quote I don't really need help with the latter I do stupid things in bare markets too to be fair but then somewhat later down in the article you you continuing on with um with another quote and uh you say you wonder if you should loosen your standard to let the next one into your portfolio," unquote. And that's really what I'm having a hard time with. So, a very broad question here at the beginning, but how do you deal with all that? How do you how do you deal with bull markets in the first place? >> Well, I think I think it's the same as bull markets are the same as bare markets with that where you just need to make sure that, you know, you're disconnecting yourself from crowd behavior. And the first part of that is doing your own independent work into whatever you're investing in. And you know, if you can do that, you can kind of disconnect from that crowd behavior. Um, I think in bull markets, even when you're in companies that are doing well, it's important to not let other bullish people make you more bullish, you know, and, you know, to really kind of keep your expectations grounded in reality. You know, I think in resources in particular, it's easy to get caught up in um you know, if it's a gold stock or something like that, it's easy to always say, you know, well, you know, if gold goes to 3500, which is close to or 4,000 or 5,000 or 10,000, company will be earning X, Y, and Z, you know, and it's always cheap because you're always pushing that underlying price up, you know, and I think that's where resource investors can get in trouble. you know, using gold as an example, you know, and I have some exposure to gold uh in my portfolio. You know, I don't think about $4,000 gold or $5,000 gold. I think about $2,700 gold, you know, because, you know, I think it would be very healthy if gold pulled back. I mean, it's gone, you know, from what 2500 to 3,400 in 18 months. I think it'd be very healthy for it to pull back to 2700, you know, and so that's kind of a reality and a benchmark or or base price that I use to underwrite any new investment thesis in gold in particular or anything I own currently is always at a lower price. Can I still double my money in 3 years or, you know, a 25% kagger, you know, is what I'm thinking about. And so I think always anchoring yourself to reality and not buying into the crowd's behavior and um human nature to always want to underline a higher commodity price. I think that's important as as a resource investor. And it's I mean listen resource investing is a it's a polarizing space. I mean, when you think about it, and rightly so, any cyclical industry, you know, where you have to wait 10 to 15 years sometimes to be right, you know, you're trying to be right three years out of 15, you know, catching those big hard moves, you know, it just introduces kind of loud polarizing advocates, you know, when you have to wait 10 years to be right. Um and so I it just underlines again it's important to just live in reality, control yourself, control your emotions and um you know that's try and always have your expectations below the current commodity price level not above. It really is tough when you start looking at what other people are doing though because and there's I don't know if you've seen this experiment, but there's like a Dutch scientist that that researches monkeys and then he gives um so the monkeys have like a little stone in their cage and then he puts his hand out, the monkey puts in a stone and in return they get, you know, some food back. So they're paying for the food essentially with these stones and the monkey on in the left cage gets a cucumber and it eats it kind of happily. But then the second it sees that the the monkey next to it gets a grape for the same stone, it starts kind of freaking out. And then the researcher tries to give it, you know, cucumber again, but then the monkey, you know, takes it uh takes it, throws it away and kind of tries to break out of the cage to get its stone back, to get its payment back. And that's really what more or less seems to be. It's not sounds funny, right? Because it, you know, in the first place it was happy with what it had received for its payment. And then the moment it saw that someone else is getting something better and tastier like the grape, it started getting pissed off. And I feel like what I'm saying here is basically that I'm a monkey because that's kind of how I feel uh most of the time really. Uh is that something you go through as well still or have you worked through that already? >> You know, I'm getting better at it, you know, and some of that is kind of just crowd behavior. I kind of, you know, the thing with bull markets is you tend to get le you tend to get more diversified in bull markets as well. And that's because, you know, the the feedback loops are quicker. You're making money faster. Everybody else is making money faster. Everybody has more cash in their pockets. And things actually react to news for once, you know, and so, you know, this just that kind of the money turnurning machine is working. And so, you know, you're always looking at new ideas cuz you always have cash in your pockets, which means it's very easy to lower your standards, go down quality, you know, in these types of environments, uh, instead of keeping your quality level as high and being disciplined. And, um, I try to to watch that even with myself. I I do also tend to get more diversified in bull markets because you know you just have higher turnover because things are working, things are getting more expensive, uh maybe too expensive. Uh but always trying to keep the quality level high because it's always easy to go down quality, buy cheap things and replace the A team with B and C team. >> Yeah. you know, but if what I found is, you know, if you're doing this for the long term, you keep replacing A players with B and C players, you're going to win less over the long term. So, it's it's it's really a balancing act. That's a tweet right there. If you keep replacing the teams uh that and and we'll definitely get to that point. Do you have an like an anti- FOMO checklist or something that prevents you from chasing stocks though, like quantitatively or or qualitatively? So, >> not I mean, no, I don't really have a checklist. I just tend to look at things through a lens of the price today versus where I think not what other people think the business will be in 3 years, you know, just because just because the stock's up 200% in a year doesn't mean it's not a buy, you know. So, and you makes it just because something goes down 50% doesn't mean it's a sell, you know. It's like you just have to always, you know, see what reality is. make do your own due diligence, what is the intrinsic value and make your choice. And so that that's really the only thing I try to do on a consistent basis is not be influenced by anybody else, do my own work, form my own assumptions, and not let the stock price like pull me in. You know, I think the other thing where stock prices pull me in, at least historically too, is actually in things I already own is, you know, actually adding and averaging up too aggressively because we tend to as investors correlate a rising stock price with management execution. >> Yeah. >> And a a stock price that goes down with a management team that's not executing. when those are two independent things, you know, just because a stock price goes up doesn't mean management's executing, you know, it's just it's easy to think that, you know, and so in the past, I've probably added sometimes too frequently to my current positions, you know, just because, you know, I'm using the rising stock price as an excuse that this management team is executing and I should be averaging into things that are executing. Um, and so it's another area where just to always be anchored to reality, not letting the stock price influence you, but it's hard. No, I don't have a checklist. >> I think that's definitely true in in resource, especially pre-revenue resource companies because a lot of people uh they love managements who make the money naturally and so if they if the stock price is going up uh you love the management team irrespective of whatever their comp may be or whatever history or whatever they've done on the execution level. But so you don't have any hard and fast rules where you would like sell half on a double essentially paying, you know, playing with the house's money or you don't have any of those rules. >> Well, it's it's less hard and fast rules. I think I think it is partly formulaic, you know, and I think I've mentioned this a couple times already, but like the first part that's formulaic is like where do you know where is it today? How much do I think they can earn or produce or what it's worth in 3 years? you know what's the IR between here and there you know and if in bull markets obviously you're you're basically pulling forward those expectations you know and so you know if you if you have next year's returns or 3 years worth of returns or four years worth of returns based on where you believe the company will be at you're getting those returns today then it obviously makes sense to take some off or sell the position out completely depending on you know where your expectations are and where reality is. I think the other part is somewhat emotional and psychological. You know, when it comes to position sizing, you know, when a position is running hard, the larger the position becomes, the more it tugs on your emotions. And sometimes you just need to sell a little bit, you know, to to sleep at night, you know, as we've heard that analogy before. But you know, I tend to actually reframe it as when a large position becomes even larger because it's gone up. Um, how much pain am I willing to endure? >> You know, and for me, and this is going to be a different for everybody, but it might be overly simplistic for a lot of folks, but you know, the right position size for me when a stock is really working and running hard is okay, can I sustain a 40% draw down in this stock and it doesn't bother me? And I keep recalibrating to that. I mean, it just this just happened just this year where it was actually a resource stock. It ran hard, you know, and and went up two or 200% or so. And um you know, I believe in the company. I believe in the exposure it provides my portfolio, but you know, I wasn't okay if this thing pulled back 40%. And that was, you know, a greater than 0% chance. Let's put it that way, you know. And so kind of that's how I think about it, too, is like how much pain am I willing to endure on any pullback? because anything that goes up fast usually has very sharp volatility that's coming eventually you know you just don't know when um I think it's also you know when it comes to selling it's a function of opportunity cost you know what am I what am I going to replace it with y >> as well you know and so you know for me I'm not 100% invested in resources you know I would say I'm probably 20% invested in resources and that's primarily in three stocks And I like having that exposure. It has a certain purpose and role in the portfolio, whether that's offensive and defensive. And I'm picky about where I get that exposure. You know, I'm not looking for general exposure where I'm going to own gold bullion or own the major producers. You know, I'm trying to find unique exposure generally under 100 million market cap. you know, of businesses that I believe are being led by unique individuals that are doing it differently than a vast majority of those types of companies. And so when I sell something, the problem I faced is, yeah, it's great that I sold this, but what am I replacing it with? >> You know, and >> if there's nothing out there to replace it with, but I generally want this exposure, I generally will sell less. And so that can influence my strategy, you know, when it comes to selling as well. Um, and if you do replace it with something, getting back to our previous conversation about A and B players, like what are you replacing it with? Are you are you replacing it with something of lesser quality um just because it's cheap or are you keeping your quality benchmark as high as that original investment where you've made all this money because it probably is an A player? >> Mhm. That's exactly where I wanted to uh take this because what essentially once you do end up selling something, what do you replace that? What do you rotate that capital in? Because specifically in bull markets, I have a hard time finding cheap stuff. like everything looks expensive besides besides what's actually trading at a low market cap I suppose and uh you know you look at something it's trading at at a 10 million market cap while a lot of the peers might be trading in at 30 or 40 or 50 but if it's trading at a low market cap during a bull market that's probably a good enough signal to stay away from it in the first place so is it you know it could be cheap for a reason basically so yeah how do how do you buy stuff in a bull market that's good value but not a value trap >> well I mean I think um you're as experienced as anybody. I mean, I think you just need to constantly keep your qual constantly be looking for ideas, you know, have a a net that's out there because there's always there's always something that probably fits what you want to buy. And I don't, you know, I hate when I hear investors be like, "Well, there's nothing out there. Everything's expensive." Blah blah blah blah. No, it usually just means you're not looking hard enough, you know, or you're not looking under the surface of the financials enough. Um, there's usually something and I'm not going to reach and buy things that are mediocre, but I do I would say one of my strengths or skills as a stock picker is having a very broad net to where you know it's like a spider building a web and you know yours too Antonio where you have a great network of investors and a platform here. Yeah. you know, you you have that spray that builds its net and you can feel when something hits it and there's a tremor, you know, and people know what you're looking for and what you like, you know, and so the ideas are just as much other people showing you things as you going out and finding them, >> you know, and I think that's ultimately where successful stock pickers find themselves is a lot of the ideas come to them. they don't necessarily have to go find them anymore because people see value in Antonio owning these companies or Ian owning these companies. And that's kind of the cool part about stock picking as you kind of mature and and get better at is people want you involved. >> Well, I hope I eventually get at that point. Uh I don't think I'm there now, but it's at the same time um when I find something that does and I do I do talk to a lot of companies. I go to a lot of these conferences, meet a lot of people, but when I find something that that hits my my net and and it seems like I'm going to like it. If I look at the stock price, it goes back to what you were just saying and it's up 150%. I'm like, "Oh, I missed it." Like, it happened this year multiple times where someone's like, "Oh, look into this." I start looking into it. And by the time I'm done with kind of following along or researching it, uh maybe they've had a news release and the stock has gone up and I'm like, "Oh, I missed it. It went from 20 cents to 30 cents. 50%, you know, I missed it and then it ends up going to a dollar. And I'm like, like it was obvious. I should have bought it. You know, hindsight's 2020. So, I don't that that's also part of of what I don't really know how to deal with. Like, how do how do I find >> It's funny it's funny you mentioned that because I think the longer you do this, the quicker you can get. And I found that too with myself. like a it's it's always cerebral to say that, you know, I do exhaustive due diligence and I spend, you know, 4,000 hours doing this and doing a site visit and doing that and this. But the the real answer is like the the more you invest, the more you find out what you're looking for, the quicker you can make decisions. And it's more about, okay, these are like the five core things that I look for. and you can kind of check through them sometimes within minutes, you know, and you're like, "This is interesting enough to add a 1% exposure into the portfolio with this." And I'll dive in later, you know, not later, but, you know, over time. Um, and that's what I've found, you know, with my own investing is like, I can pull the trigger really quick because I know what I'm looking for. >> And I think the longer you invest, the more you know what you're looking for. Um, and you're still I mean I own um I think it's a company I mentioned on your podcast before like Idaho Strategic. I've been in that thing for 12 years, you know, and I'm still learning about it, you know, and I I still probably spend an hour or two or two per week, you know, learning about kind of their properties, uh whether it's critical minerals, whatever it is, like I'm still 12 years later, you know, going under the weeds and learning about the thing that I've owned now for 12 years. So, it doesn't ever stop, you know, but I think that initial kind of spidey sense, you know, it triggers and it goes off. Um, I've been I've been quick to add things quicker than I probably 5 or 10 years ago cuz I feel like I'm getting better at those broad strokes and it's usually what's important, you know, and and also I don't let the fact that it's up 50% in the last month or 100% stop me. It's all about where do I think it's going to be in 3 years, not where it's going to be next quarter. Um, and it's, as you know, we talked about before in previous podcasts, you know, I'm generally, especially in the commodities space, I'm I'm looking for unique management teams that have revenue and earnings that I don't think will dilute me, you know, over over a longer period of time. And that in itself is a very rare thing. And obviously trying to find that in sub 100 million market cap, you know, so small producers, you know, that, you know, hopefully didn't do any bad toxic deck debt or streaming contracts to or offtake agreements, you know, that are run by people that own 10% plus of the businesses, you know, that hate delution. >> That's actually maybe a bit off topic here, but it sounds to me like so so speed matters to you as well. I suppose speed does matter in in bull markets specifically. Would you and it's only half off topic I guess and we'll get back to topic but would you use AI in a person like I don't know Chad GBT whatever to run something quickly because I feel like that's coming up but the quality of the takes that I see online that I you know you can quickly recognize when it's Chad GBT or not they're kind of they've gone down in quality. A number of them has gone up like in in in quantity but in quality they've gone down. So is that something you use personally? I use AI for some of the deep research. I find Gemini and the deep research there to be really good. It gets me up to speed fairly quickly. Gets you like 60% of the way, you know, when you're looking at something new. Um, I also have started using it as a screen. And there's some different technologies that you can use that are out there specifically for stock selection, you know, where, you know, they allow you to do some generative AI search across all transcripts under a certain market cap and sector, you know, and you know, what what is what inflected on profitability or a management team that mentioned um transition or you can pull out keywords where it just kind of you can pull out things that are in transition or transformation, you know, just simply by doing kind of an AI generative search across transcripts and press releases and things like that. So, I think there's certain tools and some of that is AI driven, some of it is just better screening tools that is making it easier to to find some of these. So, the answer is yes. >> Yeah. Uh it it sounds to me though that it's sort of like they you know what they say is kind of like human AI human whereas like for a lot of the stuff that I see online it's like human AI decision where it's like they you know they ask a question AI says something they make a decision based off of that whereas like with you it sounds like you're using it as a tool in the meantime but like the the beginning and the ending of it all of the decision process is still up to you. That's >> it is and it's like and I do believe that because of the the influx of AI tools and everything I think people will that will be commoditized to a certain extent and I do think the real value will become as it always has been but I think it might even multiply in importance is the one-on-one interaction site visits going to meet management teams things of that nature I think will become an even more important differentiator, you know, because something that the AI or tools can't even pick up on. Um, so I think it's important to, at least for my strategy too, to continue to do that. Um, because that's really where you get the differential insights at that point when everybody can screen anything for whatever they want. Um, you know, anybody can go into these tools now and be like, you know, what what CEO under 50 million mark cap resources even mentions no dilution in their earnings call, you know, that's probably, you know, it's just like little triggers like that. You can find that everybody can do that now, you know. So you but not everybody's willing to get on a plane and go across the the globe like you did to the Yukon or wherever you're going and actually meet with management teams, you know, where they'll probably tell you and you'll learn learn a lot more about their business and their strategy. >> Yeah. A year ago, I would have probably disagreed um that site visits are are that much of a game changer, but they completely are. just even spending a couple of hours with the CEO just driving up to site is is already worth the whole was for me worth the whole trip. So that's a great point. Um I think >> and it's that time you know it's that time. It's just like any in any interview too it's the key is like spending two plus hours you know cuz you can put on a sales face for an hour. >> Yeah. you know, but after two hours like you get to see who they really are, you know, to some extent. You know, they they've kind of went went through all of their their usual sales spiel by then and uh you you get down to who they really are. So, I think, you know, if you can spend two plus hours in person with a management team, um you're going to learn something. >> Yeah, that's that's actually an underrated point right there. I decline interviews with people who are like, I can give you 15 to 20 minutes, even 30 minutes. Like for me it's at least an hour even on update interviews for that specific reason. A lot of them are just trained salespeople and when you go to a conference the meeting is a half an hour. The presentation is 15 minutes. That's what they're trained to have kind of all their blockades in. And uh they're trained on no push back. So yeah, that's also that's that's actually a very underrated point kind of listening to people for longer than than 30 minutes uh or or even longer than an hour. What do you what do you do though if if you end up buying something that is um underperforming or something that looks cheap? How long do you give it after that? Um how long do you typically give it to stop underperforming essentially before moving on? Uh but again also making sure that you're not selling too early. Well, again, it gets back to I think having a view on where that business will be in a year or two. And some of that will be based on what management says. And I tend to have a short leash with management teams that don't do what they say, you know, with a little bit of wiggle room in there because the world doesn't always go the way we want it most of the time. Um, you know, but I I I tend to to really have a 1 to threeyear view on expectations on what that business will do and give them a little wiggle room to be an error and a lot of room to exceed my expectations. And um I think a lot of the problems we face too is we get into things and all of a sudden our portfolio is a whole bunch of I call them wait another quarter stocks you know where they're you're always just wait another quarter wait another quarter. You thought the catalyst or event or inflection or acceleration was happening like well let's wait another quarter and allen it's two years later you know and nothing's happened. Um it's probably a good definition of most micro caps right there. So it's it's important it's important to be in the ones that are executing. The ones that are executing are are sort of obvious and it's not just the stock price going up and to the right. I mean they just put up results and they make it look easy, you know. The ones that don't execute always make it look hard, you know, and they always have excuses, you know. So if you can just be in the ones that actually put up the numbers that make it look easy, um that's what I try to do. And it's I wish I had 20 of them in the portfolio today, but you know, the game plan is to get as many of those in the portfolio and as many of the ones making excuses out. >> That's something I think I've read you say recently as well is that the good teams generate excuses and and good teams bad teams generate excuses and good teams generate results or something along those lines. It's actually something I want to talk about later on. >> Do do you think that applies to pre-revenue? I know that's not something you do a lot of, but like exploration, mineral exploration, because I feel like if you have a thesis for a mineral deposit, the company drills it, it's not there nine out of 10, probably nine and a half out of 10, they're going to tell you, "Oh, we missed this time, but we have this geological data, so next time we're going to hit it." And and you know, they kind of keep you stren, you know, waiting for that next time and next time and next time, next time. and and rightfully so, like a lot of the the big deposits were discovered after 100 200 drill holes or whatever it might be. So, so but does does that really work for, you know, small retail investors or just retail investors in general? Does that work in mineral exploration as well? >> I think it can. I mean, I think it's the same somewhat similar. you know, I'm invested in one I would call it almost a pure exploration company and uh they did a a financing round and the largest holder, the founder of it, you know, did 20% of it. >> Um he's again, it kind of gets back to the people. What attracts me to anything, regardless of whether it's resources or non-resources, is the people involved. Do they have past success? And I love to see success not only in that industry, but other industries. Um And that usually means they have a personal net worth. They can backs stop any type of financing moving forward. It's probably going to be unfavorable terms because they don't want to dilute themselves into oblivion with a really bad deal. Um, so that's usually what makes my spidey sense go off about any company, not just resources, is you have these people that have a history of success for somewhat some reason being involved with this small obscure, you know, company. Um, and that's what attracted me to this specific company, which I won't mention. Um, it'll probably go to zero if I mention it, so I'm not going to. U, but but they they outlined a very detailed plan for the next 12 months on permitting, on pea, and all these things. And for me it's just like okay, you know, obviously things can shift and happen, but you know, are you going to hit it on the timelines that you said because you raise a certain amount of money to get a certain amount of things done which hopefully will unlock value and the stock goes higher. You know, the usual exploration game. Um, and they have I mean they've just everything they've done probably within a week or two of when they originally put it in that investor presentation. Um, and it just gives you more confidence that the next time they want to raise money and outline what it's going to be used for and how it's going to unlock value, you believe them more, you know, because they've done it before and they do what they say and they say what they do. Um, and obviously that's not a very detailed answer to your question. But I think I do think that there are some of these principles that could be applied to to pre-revenue companies. This is actually, believe it or not, it's an unpopular opinion in a lot of the chat boards online because essentially what you're saying here is winners win and and you know, put your money with winners across different industries and and uh funnily enough, that's almost an unpopular opinion in a lot of these chat boards, but again, uh how many stocks do you typically own during a bull versus a bare market? Does that does that differ? >> Um I do tend to get and it's hard to get away. I do I do tend to get a little bit more concentrated during bare markets >> uh and then a little bit more diversified in bull markets. And for me, I mean, I manage a fund now. We have about 35 million under management, you know, and so that would be different with this type of asset base versus if it was, you know, just me personally, you know, I also have a higher concentration level, you know, risk tolerance, I should say it that way, or volatility tolerance than, you know, investing for others. But in our fund, it's still concentrated. We're in about 15 companies. >> So, so it's it's still relatively concentrated. Um, a bulk of I would say the top five make up 60% 6-0, you know, so it's very topheavy. And what I like about that is, you know, most of those top five are companies that have gone up a lot. they've earned the right to that position size. They aren't ones where I constantly am buying more and increasing my at cost capital into those positions trying to prove to the market that I'm right. um you know and so that that's where I've evolved I think over the last 10 years too is I've always been con I have no problems holding 20% positions you know but I would be more willing to make a 20% bet on something instead of making a 3 to 5% at cost position letting it run to 20% you know that is a much better way to concentrate because they've already proven themselves the positions they've earned that right to a higher position size and because you bought it correctly with a smaller at cost position, you're able to live through that volatility better, you know, because you're already sitting on a nice gain, you know, it just allows allows you to hold, I believe, that concentrated bet much easier when you sized it appropriately in the beginning. Do you have limits though? Something like no more than 20% saying one specific name during a bull market? You know, if it runs from, you know, you take a 10% position, but then it does really well, goes to a 20% overall position, then you're like, okay, got to start trimming sort of uh who said, yeah, you know, trimming your flowers essentially and and uh and not whacking the weeds or is that not something you do? >> Usually the Spidey sense for me like I is usually around that 25% kind of mark what I found. Um, but even then I'm always, okay, where's this business at today and where's it going to be in 3 years, you know? And if this management team is executing, one of those rare groups of management teams that do what they say, say what they do, they exceed expectations, you also don't want to sell quickly, you know, you want to sell slowly. Um, and I think that's one of the things I've learned too over the last decade or two is when it comes to selling winners, don't sell out of all of them. You know, don't sell out of your entire position. Um, you know, it's okay. I think when I was younger, it was like, no, this is either, you know, 20% position or nothing. You know, it's like there's no no half convictions or, you know, I'm not, you know, I can't sell this down to a 8%. You know, what's the point of that? you know, and that's where I've evolved, too, is like, no, it's okay to trim something from 20 down to 10. Um, and just letting it run back up to 20 again. You know, that's how the grades do it. So, uh, so that's that's where I've gotten better better with it is just let making sure I don't sell out completely of the ones that are winning just because they tend to keep winning and then you look back and you're like, well, I was an idiot for selling out of. Well, you didn't have to sell out of all of it, you know, even if it was a little bit expensive, you know, just hold on to some of it. >> Yeah. If if you hold on to some of it, too, it kind of gives you the mental freedom to buy more of it later, too, cuz you never did sell out of all of it. So, it's kind of like a brain trick a little bit, too. >> Well, I feel seen specifically with that part where it's like kind of all or nothing. Tell me more about that. Uh, how did you when when did it kind of when did it when did the light switch flip for you? When did you figure out like, okay, that's not how I should be doing it? >> Um, I mean, it was just after seeing more and more examples of things that I completely sold up, sold out of because they went up really far and too high, I thought, and then watching them continued to go up, you know, and yes, they had volatility. Maybe they pulled back the 40% kind of that threshold we talked about before. Uh, but then they kept running. The management teams kept executing, you know, they backfilled, the management team backfilled into the valuation that I thought was too expensive, quicker than I thought and then it just kept on going up. >> U and so it just was kind of common sense not to sell out of management teams that have a history of executing. >> Yeah. >> Completely. >> Yeah. Do do you keep larger cash positions than normally during bull markets? you tend to have because of the higher turnover, you tend to get access to cash quicker, you know, so you might not be sitting on a cash position, but you might always be selling something and always be buying something. Um, so you can kind of get to cash a little bit easier. And the nice thing about bull markets, too, is most of these stocks are more liquid now than in bare markets, that's for sure. Yeah. >> Um, but when it comes to cash position, I usually always don't hold too much cash. I just tend to be pretty close to fully invested, give or take, maybe 4% cash position, something like that. I usually like to have I usually like to have enough cash where I can buy almost a full position in something new and then if I really want to buy more of it or I if I have two new ideas, it forces me to sell my least convicted idea. And so I'm always trying to average get getting the batting average up on the portfolio. You know, I'm not going to add a 280 hitter to a group of 300 hitters to use a baseball analogy. It lowers the average. I wouldn't do that. You just always try to So, I'm always trying to think and view what is my least convicted position and that's usually where the capital's going to come from to buy something new that I think has a higher IR than that one. >> So, you don't necessarily Okay, that makes sense because I thought actually that during bull markets, uh, well, I thought more or less the same. So during bull markets, you keep less cash because cash is more easily available. Uh and there's also fewer opportunities uh by definition, I suppose, in bull markets. Uh and then during bare markets, you might keep a little bit more. That's kind of how I I I've been thinking about it. I'm actually not even that far up the learning curve where I can have even have a cash strategy in the f like most of the times it's not I don't have a cash strategy. I have a more of a portfolio strategy and my cash is as a result of the portfolio strategy if that makes sense. >> No, I I think that's how I view it too. I think that's a good way to put it. Okay. >> You know, it's like the I let the portfolio determine my cash position. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What's a what percentage of the fund that you said? So, you managed 35 million now. What percentage of that is in resources now? >> Probably about 20 20%. >> Is that going to go up or down thematically? I mean, is this what again what seems to be a bull market is that develops either goes up or down from here? Is that is that going to change? It has it has gone up because the underlying companies that make that exposure have gone up. >> But also, you know, as you can tell, like it's not just a bull market in commodities. It feels like it's a bull market almost in everything. Uh lately, um you know, everybody, every government across the world is trying to have a race to zero with fiat. So, it's just propelling, you know, every price higher. Um that's what we're seeing. So, I've had other things in the portfolio work, too. But, you know, the the exposure I have to resources has done fairly well, you know, and I'm interested I I find myself the older I get to be a slightly more contrarian looking at these sectors too that are out of favor, you know, just like gold stocks were and obviously arguably they still are, but how it was two three years ago like well now like the most hated sector in the world is oil and gas. you know, it's like the most underexposed area to institutions, you know, and so I find myself kind of looking at these unloved areas or sectors similar to how I looked at gold in particular going back 10 years and trying to find the great operators running companies within that hated sector and making potentially a couple small bets on them now and following them, knowing that at some point, you know, that sector is probably going to get more in favor, maybe not loved, but less hated, >> you know, at some point in time. I think it it's that's psychologically that's probably very hard because kind of as a as a natural resource investor like you mentioned at the beginning sometimes you're waiting 10 years for something you know a market as a whole to work out and then once it starts working out and your gold and silver stocks are going up it's really hard to be like okay you know this nice fuzzy warm feeling that it is I'm just going to you know put an axe to it completely and I'm going to go in something that's really hated and wait over there >> I think that's really tough >> well And I think the answer is the same answer we just talked about with individual stocks. You're you're not just because I'm looking at another sector doesn't mean I'm selling out of gold or resources. But the other resource portfolio just means I'm you're dipping your toe in the water with a singledigit maybe small singledigit percentage of the portfolio in a new area. You know, you might keep the resource portion exactly the same. um you're just kind of looking at the fun part is in every hated industry you you can find two or three small companies that are bucking the trend of that contraction in that industry that for some reason they're making money you know even at a low commodities price or whatever it is you know and um that's what makes it fun and usually at that point you know you're getting them at singledigit PE multiples you know because nobody cares um and yet you position size it's so small because you just don't know how long you're going to have to wait, you know, but you kind of get to know it. Get to know the management teams, you know, whether it's over one year or 5 years. Um, so it doesn't really matter. >> Yeah, I think it's and I'm I keep on saying I think because that's not really how I have approached everything so far this time around. meaning this is more of a a top down conversation where you're paying attention to what metal is going up for example or what part of the commodity segment is going up and then you you switch your portfolio to reflect that. What I do is kind of start at the asset level so start bottom up >> and I pay less attention uh unless everything is going up kind of like what's going on right now. I pay less attention to to the underlying metals like because I want to have the essentially I want to do this full-time and I want to have the ability to make money in bare markets as well and and the only way you do that is is is bottom up, right? Um in bare markets at least. >> Um you write though in in another one of your articles um you write I think it was the one prior to the one that we just discussed you you say that the most important question is how long will it last? So let me ask you that question. How long will this bull market in in everything but also in mining? How long is that going to last and when is going to be the right time to um again maybe start you know trimming some of those positions? Well, and some of this was mainly that that topic was probably mainly geared to non-resource, but I guess it could be relevant to resources as well, is you know, a lot of these smaller companies, you know, they have a season of winning, you know, they get and these are small businesses, so they get a large contract or they get a large order or whatever the case may be and all of a sudden they show 30 or 50% growth out of nowhere. They go from breaking even or slightly unprofitable to making money. And you know, it kind of transcends their business up into the right. At the same time, it happens so quickly. They're not backfilling with processes and talent to support this growth. So, they're over earning. I mean, they're showing a bigger bottom line than if they're making by the long-term um hiring and you know, the new ERP systems they need to put put in place. So, you have like two or three quarters where revenues going up to the right, they're over earning, they're making a lot of money, the stocks rip because investors that are looking at it, they annualize whatever the ne the last quarter was and say, you know, this is going to go up in this trajectory to infinity. >> Yeah. Um, and really it was just a three or four quarter spurt, you know, and so you have I would say 70% of micro capab wins are that, you know, where you have this spurt of winning due to a large order or large event, one-time event that's not sustainable and the stock goes up 100 to 300%. and then they eventually stub their toe or they put up a bad earnings report. Not necessarily bad, but they finally make the investments they should have made two quarters prior. The bottom one actually goes down even though the revenue is still accelerating. It scares out investors because the income came came down and the stock, you know, drops 50%. And then some of them, you know, backfill and are able to grow their way out and they reach new 52- week highs eventually, but most of them don't. you know, they just don't have the the talent or product line to take it to another level or even keep it at that level where they just had it for three or four quarters. And so, it's important for I think all micro cap investors to live in that reality that most small businesses and again kind of this is more of a non-resource conversation. A lot of these small micro caps that are nonresource that are growing profitable, you know, they can have that acceleration for a short period of time. They have a shorter shelf life than what you usually think when you're looking at it. And to to to always have a finger on the trigger finger. And again, it gets back to always knowing what you own, knowing the management teams, knowing the business. And a big part of that is yes, being able to hold when you have a multibagger. You can't have a multibagger unless you hold one. But also understanding that you want to keep that gain, too. And you know, the the reason you stay on top of your investments is so that you can sell before others sell >> when you see the sign of the investment thesis cracking or see the world changing. Um, so that's a rambling answer, but that was basic the basis of that article and several articles I've written on shelf life, uh, on conviction investing. And a lot of that's just to counterbalance a lot of the narrative we see recently over the last few years just on coffee can investing, buy and hold forever, you know, that type of mindset, you know, insert philosophical quote or stoicism. um to kind of counterbalance that a little bit is to make sure that's you can do that but it's really hard to do that in micro caps because these are small emerging fragile businesses that are filled with concentration risk key man risk at the top customer concentration in the middle um there's just a lot of risk there and so just live in reality just like the how we started this conversation not what you want the world to be >> well to that point specifically the key man risk at the top. I think that ties nicely into one of your very recent uh tweets that says, quote, "The best investor relations is insider buying." End quote. There's a whole tweet. That's kind of like a a mic drop moment. Like that's a that's a tweet. I I like that a lot because I think one of the main issues with um it's probably a big thing in in across the micro cap space, but it's definitely apparent in re in the resource space is that insiders act too much like their employee temporary employees really not enough as owners and and so I always ask questions around that in my interviews with CEOs and I always ask like well if if you think your company's undervalued right now relative to peers and it's a bull market and everything why aren't you buying? And it it often times comes down to to two things, two excuses really. Uh they're either blacked out because of news flow. They got assets results coming in or whatever it might be. Or it comes down to sort of their personal situation and risk profile not allowing for additional exposure to what is a it's a high-risk high volatility sector. And uh on the topic of bull markets, the latter one becomes even more so a challenge as their positions have already grown as a percentage of their net worth due to the bull market. And they probably actually want less exposure of their kind of overall life to the resource space instead of buying more. But, and I'm sorry for yapping on so long, but I'm I'm about to shut up. But that actually leads me to an earlier tweet of yours that um you had just before that, and it said, quote, "Great companies will always make it look easy. Mediocre companies will always make excuses." So, what is what is let's call it conviction- sized insider buying in micro caps in your book? And again, specifically during bull markets, what is what? Yeah. What's that? What's that size? >> Um, we could talk about this for a long time. Um, I think the main genesis of why I tweeted that about in investor relations being the best insider buying is just like you, you talk to a lot of management teams and they're wondering if they should or what they should be doing for investor relations. And you know, some of them, as you know, are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on getting the word out in their stories, probably equivalent to what they're spending drilling holes in the ground. Um, and and I've countless times I've talked to some management teams and I just said, you know, if you just if you just bought $5,000 of stock a month, you know, as a CEO, that's probably the best investor relation spend you could do. Yeah. you know, and yeah, it's $5,000, but that it's not just seen that you buy. It also attracts the quality investor that you want to attract, you know, because, you know, real investors are drawn to that, you know, when they see skin in the game. And I don't know if there's necessarily a dollar value. I mean, obviously, we we all like to see um we all like to see more, you know, and and we all want our management teams to own 30% of the company, make nothing, and buy stock every day. You know, that's kind of like the uh the you know, that's what we would love to see. That's that's also not reality. But, you know, I tend to focus that tweet on on those that do overly spend on investor relations. And I just think it's unnecessary if they would just spend a little bit on, you know, putting their money where their mouth is and putting some skin in the game on a consistent basis. >> Yeah, it's essentially what what percentage of your skin is in the game that I find more. Uh especially with resources, there's always the cheap paper. Not always, but oftentimes there's a cheap paper that we deal with. An insider might own 30% but they might have raised, you know, 10 million bucks up until that point and he's only provided like 1% of the capital but he ends up owning 30% of the company. Is that really skin in the game? Is that 30% skin in the game? Not always. Sometimes it can be because that 1% of the company might be, you know, his entire net worth at that point uh because they're just, you know, just starting up a company, very entrepreneurial, whatever it might be. So it's it's all very subjective. Um >> it is. Yeah, >> it is. I mean, it's it's it's very subjective. There's no hard and fast rules to it, but you know, for the it's it's never u it's never a bad thing when you see management teams buy, you know, and it's not it's usually never a bad thing when you see them sell either. That's what I find the counter to that, you know, a lot of times. I mean, it's easy to forget that, you know, most micro cap management teams, most of them aren't rich either, you know. So, you know, when when and if they do sell, it's like, yeah, they they have kids in college, they have, you know, future lake houses they want to buy that they want to spend time with their grandkids at, and they need to get that money from somewhere, you know, and I tend I've evolved there, too, where not every time I see an insider sale, it's, oh, he has lost conviction in the company or he thinks it's overvalued, you know, you kind of put yourself in their shoes as well where, you know, you just have life expenses, too, you know, and and and that happens as well, you know. So, I've I've seen it cut both ways, but on the insider buying thing, I it it's mainly geared towards companies that overspend on investor relations when they could spend 10% of it and just buy their own stock and send a clearer message. >> Is open market buying better than participating in private placements though? And and would that be different during bull markets than it is in bare markets? I think it's about the same, you know, whatever whatever whenever they're putting real cash into something like you said, not given shares. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, and those are that's actually a good point because those are discretionary buys, right, that you're referring to. So, not accounting for like automatic insider plans and options, RSUs, and so on. So, so or do you count that as well? >> I mean, if if it's real money going in, I count it real cash, their cash. I think it it can be misleading as well in that it could also be orchestrated optics charades essentially before financing or before something else happens. Um, how do you how do you how do you tell that it's how do you tell real insider buying apart from insider buying that's only intended as as marketing? Because the way the way you put it in the tweet is not like you know instead of spending on marketing spend money on your own stock as marketing. It's more like show your conviction type of thing. So, so spend money or invest money in in showing your conviction, not so much as marketing. But sometimes, especially in the resource space, it is orchestrated marketing. So, how do you tell, you know, Rio insider conviction from charade based on the buying? >> I mean, that the type of buying that I like to see is smart buying too. Maybe not automatic buying. Usually, the type of buying I like to see not necessarily is on the way up. it's maybe putting the floor, you know, on something, you know, where the stock hasn't moved or maybe it's even gone down and they and it is a statement that they're making that they believe that this company is undervalued. Um, and yeah, you're always going to have these outlier events where, you know, yeah, the guy makes a million dollar a year and he buys $2,000 a month. Like, who cares, you know? You're always going to have these types of things. I think it's easy to to see that and weed that out, you know, but I also think it's not it's not too hard to see what genuine buying looks like. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, and sometimes it gets so very sad in the resource space that some of these buys are like just double the like 99 bucks or something like that. And then that's when you start thinking like, oh >> maybe they're cuz on the set eye filings it's just shows up as green green green green on top of you know on top of each other and kind of it's good for the optics but sometimes it's like you know it could be 300 bucks or something like that and >> Oh yeah. No, I've seen that before too. It makes me chuckle. You see like a $100 buy every month or something. >> Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and then you check, you know, the bonus for last year and the bonus was like, you know, 800,000, something like that. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. Well, to the point of what I just said, like is it better to to or asked is it better to put money in the open market or better to put money in financings? Financings or private placements and are different during bull markets as well because it's typically or well hopefully there's more demand. So, do you think it's absolutely necessary for insiders to also participate in the financings when they're done during bull markets? >> I think it's always good to see them participate a little. You know, we just did a finance um we led a a funding for a company, not a resource company recently, and I told the CEO the same thing. I was like, you at least do like five grand, you know? It's like you don't have to put a lot in, but I think it just I don't know. It just um sets the tone that at least management participated. Um it's just something that I I like to see and this person doesn't have a lot to put in anyway. You know, it doesn't have a high net worth. So, you know, I I I'm always a fan of the management team doing a little bit of every round. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I'm asking that again within the framework of excuses. >> I think it comes back to just leading by example. Like you just want to see that. >> That's fair. in in small or big ways. >> Yeah, it goes back to those excuses because sometimes I would hear, you know, oh, it's a bull market. We have so much demand for the financing that insiders don't want to necessar unnecessarily dilute shareholders by, you know, taking a chunk of the financing itself. And that's always kind of like a it's a unexlanation, but I'm most of the times I'm like, does that really make sense? Uh, and most of the times it doesn't, at least in my opinion. >> Correct. You're right. >> Yeah. Well, on on that topic of dilution, do you have lower tolerance for dilution and bad financings in bull markets and again looking maybe from you know for for tangible rules where you say for example the company shouldn't be issuing more than 10% of its market cap or they shouldn't be doing warrants if they're a good operator uh because again the bull market would have taken care of a lot of that upside so you don't have to you know issue a larger percentage of your market cap than you normally would or yeah or something along those lines. I mean, I'm always cognizant of dilution. I mean, it might not be a good question to ask me because I don't invest in too many just pure pre-revenue kind of resource companies. I mean for me the dilution is always uh an irr like what are we getting for this delilution and we're getting more earnings per share you know for this than the than the dilution is you know it's like is it going to be a creative or not you know and I and I would hope that all the management teams that I'm invested in think of every equity raise if they do one through that lens of is this accretive after the raise on a per share basis are we going to be making more money per share than before this. >> Yeah, >> maybe not immediately, but you know, in a couple years, whether it's for an acquisition or whatever the case may be, why they're raising the money. >> Well, for that, yes. Uh I I think I typically like working with ratios for exploration companies like the I do whenever I'm interviewing company, I kick it off with two ratios. One of it is the exploration to administration ratio I call it. So I look at how much money is going into the ground versus how much money goes into running the head office. Uh and then I also do a ratio of drilling to marketing and essentially I want to see that you know substantially more money is going toward drilling and assaying as it is going toward marketing and I obviously have my preferences but I wonder if those numbers should be different during bull markets like what's could could marketing be more creative than drilling during bull markets actually unfortunately some of the times it can't. So, I mean, do you prefer your holdings to to increase marketing spend during bull markets or where do you see the most accreative spend being? Essentially, >> I see the most accreative spend is when they have I wouldn't say an overpriced equity, but they have a fair valuation on their equity and they can buy cheap assets, you know, ones that they can add value to. That's that's how I would view it. And probably also on the the resources side as well. >> Yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's that's a good point. Um about because marketing is not with marketing, you're not buying an asset unless you think you could, you know, raise a stock price and then issue new shares. But what you're doing at that point is pissing off all the new shareholders. And that like the whole idea of, oh, we're going to raise our stock price, then we're going to raise it and we're going to buy an asset and we're going to kind of do, you know, well, five steps forward, one step back, and then five steps forward. That rarely works out. like it sounds like it should work in theory, but it most of the times like five steps forward and then you know 50% down which is uh you know it kind of >> it's hard with pre-revenue too. It's like I'm talking mainly about production assets or you know things like that that you actually have a quantifiable you know cash flow component to it at some point in the near term. Um it's obviously difficult to it's more difficult to assess dilution on pre- revenue or just pure exploration companies because you also it's not only like the capital you're raising it's like you know that stock's going to be freed up in four months or 6 months. You have to eat through that paper at some point to get somewhere. You better have enough positive momentum with the business and not just promotion on the stock to eat through that so you can get actually get to a new high. >> That exactly that's very well said. That's definitely applicable to resources in my opinion and pre-revenue as well. I I know you almost have to go though uh here Ian and so switching gears a little bit and that last question that I want to ask you is maybe a podcast in and of itself but kind of leading into the point of marketing I suppose is I always say in my disclaimers that everything you see online from you know an issuer themselves or an issuing issuer Jason figure like a Twitter account that is either close to the issuer or paid by the issuer in some shape or form. All of that, everything that these uh especially the pre-revenue ones, everything that these companies do is intended as marketing. They're out there like the presentation, the website, the news release, the Twitter account, everything is kind of, you know, it's not kind of, it is marketing. And so, come bull markets, what I really don't like about bull markets is that everyone's a genius again, right? So, even the guys online who who are in the business of selling opinions and and tend they tend to underperform massively over long periods of time because they they don't have their own opinions. They just like whoever pays them to like them. They also make money even though in in bull markets, right? Even though the making money part is is mostly uncorrelated with their opinions, if that makes sense because again their opinions are marketing and essentially therefore should be treated as noise and it's the amount of noise specifically in bull markets that makes it hard for me to know what to read and what to skip and who to pay attention to. How do you deal with that? What's your information diet, if you will, regarding, you know, public opinions and uh noise during bull markets? I tend to filter most things out, you know, and you're right. I mean, in bull markets, it's just the constant rise of inexperienced people educating other inexperienced people, you know, and in bare markets, the losses do the educating, you know, and I just think over time, just like I'm sure you are too, you you you start you start to just form a close network of people that you view as signal, not noise. And it just takes time to figure out who those people are in your life or your area of investing, >> you know, and then then you're just getting really good at just screening out everybody else that's just, you know, making noise. Um, but you're right. You're seeing I mean, you see it not only in resources, but but everywhere right now. Um, it's it's a little bit too easy to make money right now, which is a little bit scary because you can kind of sense it, you know. Uh but you know, as it relates to resources, I mean, the the federal government, at least our federal government here at the US, is making it hard for gold to even have a pullback. So, uh they're making their intentions known. So, it's a it's an interesting time to say the least. I mean, I think the interesting thing about kind of resources, too, compared to 20 years ago when I first kind of started dabbling in it, is I think the advocates in resources back then were mainly just doom and gloomers. Yeah. >> And there was this just kind of negativity about the space and and yeah, to your point like they didn't really make money on any of their beliefs of anything going low to high. I mean, they made money on speeches and newsletters, you know, and I think where it's changed that I' I've enjoyed to see this change is, you know, there tends to be more of positivity around it, you know, which I think is important. It's always bugged me back then and you're starting to see it now. It's like, yeah, we don't need the world to end to make money in resources. It's like the world can get >> better and we actually make money. You know, you kind of need that for copper or whatever type of thing you're trying to play, right? So, it's I'm glad to see kind of an increase of positivity kind of enter the the resources space. And I think now is an interesting time too in resources because unlike in 2007 or 8 when you're dealing with $120 oil and input costs were going up just as much as the the commodity or price that you were investing in, you know, now like these producers are, you know, emerging producers are just making a lot of money because those input costs are still low at $60 oil, >> you know, and so you're having this interesting time period where companies are making a boatload of money right now. You know, gold producers are doing fairly well uh because the input costs aren't rising as quickly as they were in other bull cycles. And you're starting to obviously see a lot of significant cash generated. And your previous guest mentioned, you know, how most of those large producers globally, you know, are putting eight times as much money into buybacks and dividends as they are in exploration. >> Yeah. you know, and so a lot of these large companies just aren't exploring that much. And guess what? That means they're going to have to partner or acquire, you know, in the junior space, you know, which is making exciting for juniors, you know, and we haven't seen that influx quite yet, and there's going to be a lag there, but uh I think it's an interesting time right now in resources where, you know, the producers are making a lot of money. it still takes 5 years to put anything into production. So you probably have another two or three years where you know it shouldn't be too bad. Um and so it's an interesting time to be out there and be a stock picker whether it's in resources or non-resources. >> Yeah, that's uh Neil Adset that you that I believe you're talking about that uh in that interview that was actually a very good interview uh well he delivered a very good interview I think in my opinion but the you make a very good point. actually been there uh done that where it's like uh it's actually the negativity that got me into the space I think in the first place. It part of it is media too. So it goes back to what's noise and what's not. Negativity gets a lot more attention than positivity. So you know oh the world's going to burn therefore gold's going to go to 10,000. I've spoken to all these people and like at a certain point starts click clicking like it's I think it's OBS. Um, I think by far and the most um money has the most money has been made in in resources from the world getting better and not worse, you know, uh, industrial revolutions and and and the China cycle and whatnot. Um, so and and not, you know, things crashing and burning and it being the end of the economy as we know it and stuff like that because it's always the end of the economy as we know it. The economy is always changing. It's a long topic. Again, I said we could probably make a whole podcast on that as well. It's that noise is increasing though and and I think it's a it's a good point to um yeah understand that the vast majority of people don't actually make their money in in in the market and so to deal with and figure out what's noise and what's not noise. Ask yourself where does this person make their money and and what's the history of them actually making their money. Is it in the market? Is it by selling services? There's nothing wrong with selling services inherently, but if they're claiming that they make their money in the market, but they make money from selling services, that's kind of a problem. Yeah, that's kind of my summary on that on that one there. Um, I'll I'll let you go. I know you have your own life. Um, apparently outside of picking uh micro caps, what else do you have coming up? You've got an event coming up in October in Toronto. Uh, what else do you have going on? >> That's the next thing. Yeah, we have an event in Toronto. I think it's October 21st to the 23rd. Uh it's a I'm not going to call it a non-resource conference. I think we'll have around 70 companies. I think we have five or six resource companies. We might have a few more uh by the time the event comes around. But we have this is our inaugural event in Toronto. Um it'll be a two and a half day event. First day is speakers. Second day will be company presentations all day. Third day are one-on ones all day. Um so that's kind of the the genesis of it. We have over 300 investors signed up already. uh which is pretty incredible. And yeah, if you're into micro cap investing, like meeting emerging companies, you know, come out and say hi. That's where I'll be. >> Who do I um who do I have to beg to get in? >> Um you can go to Planet Microap. If you just search Planet Microcap Toronto in Google, you know, you'll find the link and URL to it. or if you go to microercapclub.com and click um events on the on the header, it'll take you right to the registration page. >> You guys just had one in well, not just, but this year you had one in Las Vegas if I'm not mistaken. >> Yeah, we had one in Las Vegas in uh April. That was incredible. I kind of viewed that as kind of the main event. Um we had I think 600 investors there >> about 1,200 attendees and and where it's a little bit different too is like we we there's no charge to to come as an investor. Uh but we do we do have somewhat of a screening process to where you know we don't want hooligans showing up either. So we we just want genuine investors that are there you know for genuine purpose of investing. >> So how do you make money on this? It's so it's it's it's issuer supported uh or how does that work? Yeah, it's issuer supporter supported, sponsor supported. Um, and it works out well for our community, a micro cap club partnering with Planet Micro Cap just because it provides a venue for our community to attend in person. And so we we carve out a few different events inside that event just for Micro Cap Club community. And um so it's been good to work with them cuz they they're happy to carve that out cuz most events and same with resources too. Most events in micro cap or resources, yeah, there's a thousand people there, but there's like 30 real investors there. Everybody's there just trying to sell you something, >> you know? And so at our events, it's we focus on the investor. So, like I said, when we have a thousand people at our event and 600 of them are actually investors and we're filling up one-on-one schedules with good companies, you know, that's the key and that's that's the flywheel of any great conference is keep the quality level high of the companies that attracts quality investors and that gets them coming back next year. And so, keep the quality level high across the board. >> Well, I see it on here. Uh it's October 2123 and it is Yeah, you can go to you can just that's what I googled Planet Micro Cap Toronto. It's the first thing that popped up. So uh >> Yep. >> Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for doing this, Ian. Let's uh last time we spoke was like over a year ago, maybe a year and a half. Let's maybe not have it be 18 months by the next time we talk. But I really do appreciate your time. >> No, thanks for having me on.