Bizarro World Podcast,
with Nick and Gerardo
June 13, 2022
8:45 Gold Stock Update
17:20 US Government Backs Domestic Uranium
20:41 Matthew McConaughey on Gun Laws
32:15 Political Extremism & Violence
38:00 Lithium in Quebec (and the importance of jurisdiction)
Gerardo Del Real: Gold still holding, Bitcoin still holding. Lauren Boebert drove around the planet's 24,901 mile circumference. The dollar's holding. We've got some big news in the uranium space. We're going to talk about Matthew McConaughey's speech, a Uvalde Resident. We're going to talk about Cuba versus Saudi Arabia. And we're going to talk Mr. Joe Biden in a presidency that increasingly looks like it's going in the wrong direction, folks. I am Gerardo Del Real along with Mr. Nick Hodge. This is episode 173 of our weekly therapy session, otherwise known as Bizarro World. How are you, Mr. Hodge?
Nick Hodge: I'm doing great, Gerardo. I forgot to turn on my light, so I hope I'm not too dark in this. Let me just reach down for a second and do it.
Gerardo Del Real: You exude a calm, vibrant light and aura, Nick. You don't even need the light.
Nick Hodge: Well, when you're filming, you have to be nice and bright.
Gerardo Del Real: I love the Film The Police shirt. I have a hoodie of my own, Chilled Local. I encourage everybody to go to chilledlocal.com.
Nick Hodge: Awesome.
Gerardo Del Real: This was actually a gift from a subscriber who has recently done well with a couple of picks and was generous enough to reach out and tell me that he has this website and he has this merch company and he just wanted to send over a sweater. As you know Nick, that always feels good, because we definitely don't get them all right. When you get them right, it's nice when they count for people. You never really know what people are doing and what they're not doing. Yeah, it's been nice to get a couple of nice notes here recently and hopefully, we can keep that going.
Nick Hodge: Well done to you and congratulations to the subscriber. That's a pretty cool shirt.
Gerardo Del Real: It's a pretty cool shirt. What do we got to talk about Nick? What's going on in the broader industries? Everything you said was going to go on more downside risk. Volatility, still elevated. Mortgage rate elevated. Mortgage applications, 22-year low.
Nick Hodge: Bond yields getting away from me though, which hasn't been too right. US 10-year over 3%. But still feeling good about my allocations and the calls I've made. Yeah, there's plenty to talk about. You let me know where you want to start.
Gerardo Del Real: Let's start with none of what I just said. Let's start with PDAC. I'm convinced I'm never going to make it to Canada. I have been extremely excited to get to PDAC. I haven't been there before. You and I have tried this for years and whether it's COVID restrictions, other restrictions, schedule conflicts, it just hasn't happened. A week and a half ago, I finally bought my ticket and I booked my hotel and the hotel, everything was sold out. I mentioned that last week, but I was able to find a hotel that just put me near where PDAC was going to be and perfectly fine with Ubering and/or walking. I was excited for all of that. Now, I got the heads up from a CEO earlier today who happens to live in Toronto.
He said, "You might want to research and reconsider coming out here if you're only coming out here for a couple of days, because you're going to probably spend one of those days in an airport." I said, "What do you mean? Just because it's busy?" He goes, "No, no, no. It's more than that. It's an absolute shit show." Of course, I'm Googling and there was a former NHL hockey player who was just saying Pearson airport is the worst place on earth right now. Obviously, a first-world take. It's not the worst place on earth, but I understood the frustration that he was trying to convey. There's lines that are lasting three, four, five hours at customs. A third of the flights are being canceled. I say all that to say that damn it, I'm having to cancel my PDAC trip because I don't have the luxury of being able to spend half a day or a full day at the airport.
It was already a rushed trip. It was one full day on the 13th, most of the 14th and try to get back to that night, type of trip and with the potential for delays and/or a positive COVID test because the US is requiring a positive COVID test if I fly back or a negative COVID test. If I have a positive COVID test, they want me to stay in Canada for 14 days. My wife and I's 20th anniversary is on the 15th. That's not going to fly. I'm a little bummed out that I'm going to miss it, but Toronto, come on. You got to get it together, baby. What are we doing here? I'm dying to see you, girl.
Nick Hodge: What are they doing? Is it all COVID related?
Gerardo Del Real: They have the perfect storm of everything, right? They have labor shortages or they're short-staffed. The people they've hired are all brand new so the screeners don't know how to do it efficiently. The restrictions coming back into the US that Mr. Biden hasn't lifted, another failed policy. I think that's such a simple fix, right? Most of the developed world-
Nick Hodge: When I came back in from Vancouver the other week, it was $130 bucks to go in the basement of the hotel and get the swab up my nose so I could have a negative test. Yeah.
Gerardo Del Real: Right. We're talking science and we're not requiring that if we drive back, because that was going to be my backup plan is if I got stuck, I was going to take a bus to Buffalo, but if we're not requiring it by sea and we're not requiring it by land, then what the fuck are we doing, Joe? Can we, at least, get some consistency? This goes back to our conversations that we had during COVID. I'm fine playing by the rules as long as everyone's playing by the rules and the rules make some sense. They don't even have to be completely logical. Just show me that you're putting an effort into having a practical policy. This is again, just another failed thoughtless policy. It makes zero sense. It's costing a very friendly partner to us, Canada and us, the United States, it's costing us dollars and productivity because I would love to go to Toronto and buy drinks and buy coffees and stay at the hotel and contribute to that local economy.
I would love to be able to get back here and do the same and share my stories. Unfortunately, because of how difficult the travel situation is being compounded by dumb policy on our side and in ineffective stewardship when it comes to the airport and the staff and the flights. I don't have the flexibility to take that risk so I'm having to cancel. The thing that got me the most was, the two things, was if I ended up testing positive for COVID, I'm staying for 14 days. The other part being a third of the flights out of Pearson are being canceled. Pearson is saying, it won't have this resolved until at least the end of the month.
Nick Hodge: With the strong dollar, every four drinks you buy, the fifth one is free with a 25% currency fluctuation.
Gerardo Del Real: Just trying to put it into the test. I try to spend some of my Patriot dollars. That's what I'm calling it. I'm calling it “Patriot Bucks” and “Nevada Sunrise Gold Dollars.” That's going to be my motto for the rest of the year. I have an in-house bet with myself and Twitter about who goes first? Patriots Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)(OTC: PMETF) to five bucks for Nevada Sunrise Gold (TSX-V: NEV)(OTC: NVSGF) to 50 cents. We've seen Nevada Sunrise Gold jump this week. It's at 33 cents as of Thursday, June the ninth. Patriot has pulled back at little. It's at the C$3.50 range. Let's see what the newsflow brings and let's see which one gets to where it's going. I put this up on Twitter a month ago. I think when Patriot was two bucks and no Nevada Sunrise Gold was 12 cents.
The usual people are like, “You're dumb. You're pumping and promoting a stock.” I'm sure that's what people thought. No, I just own boatloads of both. I actually am rooting for both of them and think they're onto something pretty significant. Now I think the market's starting to wake up to it and you already know my private predictions for Patriot share price in the next 12 months, which I won't make public yet because subscribers haven't heard it. I don't think that's fair. I'm enthused, I'm excited and I'm happy for Warren Stanyer at Nevada Sunrise gold, because I think he's onto something that I think could be pretty significant out there.
Nick Hodge: Singing a jingle, I'm sure he is.
Gold Stock Update
Gerardo Del Real: I like it. I like it. I said all that to say, that's what I wanted to start with. The chaos at PDAC. It's not really PDAC. It's really just Toronto and Pearson airport. Sorry that I'll miss it guys and gals. Was looking forward to catching up. Let's see if we can get the next one right. Let's talk gold. Let's get into that basket of stability. Right, Nick?
Nick Hodge: It's holding up really well. A tiny bit of softness week as the dollar strengthened, just a tiny bit. And as rates went back over 3%, the 10-year at least, but it's still wedging nicely. If you look at the chart, it's wedging itself up to that breakout level around $1,880. If it can hold, call it where it is now, basically, ~$1840ish with a tilde, then it's in really good shape. I know people are worried. I had an ask me anything with Brien Lundin this week, and people are worried about out of control interest rates and why isn't gold performing? They don't want to hear the relative argument. Everything else is down 20 or 25% and gold is still hanging in there. That's not good enough for them. But it is good enough really in the macro grand scheme of things to have gold holding up with the dollar and rates as strong as they have been.
Not much else to say there. I got bids in to buy GLD. I got bids in to buy Franco-Nevada (NYSE: FNV). I got some bids in to buy a bit more Revival Gold (TSX-V: RVG)(OTC: RVLGF) if there's a little bit of more softness, right? By the time this is out, we'll have gotten the May inflation number, which comes out on Friday, June 10th. Interested to see how markets react to that. I know you had inflation on the list. I probably jumped around to a couple of topics here, but they all sort of interrelate. Inflation is still going to be high. I'm not sure if it's cooling.
The point is that it's not going up as fast as it was. It's going to be an 8%-ish number, I'm sure and that's high inflation. That's still 40-year high inflation, but that's not going up like it was before 6&, 7%, 8% — a percent at a time. It's marginally going up now. Nonetheless, that, now I'm really jumping all over the place, still really affects the consumer and with energy prices as high as they are, and you're pretty much staring at a recession at this point. Post recession is when gold really shines and post Fed rate hikes as we saw in the 2015 cycle. I'm pretty excited about gold. I've got a real short list of things I want to concentrate on, and I think you get a good second half 2022 early 2023, for sure.
Gerardo Del Real: I think we have new all time eyes on the way. I couldn't agree with you more. I'm excited about gold holding this $1850 ish level in the face of a 10-year that's at 3.07 and a dollar that's still firmly above that 102 line with oil prices at $122 a barrel. If you would've told me that the 10-year was running to 307, 308, that the dollar was going to be closer to 103 than 95, and that oil is going to be $122 and that gold was going to hold up the way it has, I would've told you no gold is likely dropping to $1400. That hasn't been the case and that tells me, it's a lot more resilient than people give it credit for. Though I suspect that the next run higher is going to have a lot of people with FOMO, right? The fear of missing out. Then I think it's going to get really, really fun, which is also what I think about the uranium space. We had some pretty big news this week. I know that you wanted to comment there Nick, before-
Nick Hodge: I was just going to say the crypto soldiers who might be on the way.
Gerardo Del Real: Look, you had that great conversation with Brien Lundon, right? I watched the first half of it and subsequently caught the rest of it. I know that you were getting a lot of questions about your thoughts on gold and you're pretty clear about the direction that you think it's going to take. I love the comment that comes from a presentation you made at the New Orleans Investment Conference. I thought it was well said, well described. I think it's very apt for what we're going to see here. Long-winded way as always of saying you probably should start nibbling on some of those better gold names. The Revival Golds. Magna Gold had itself a tough quarter. It seems like the geologic model didn't hold up the way it was supposed to for a quarter. I understand and think that's been remedied. I know that the all sustaining cost on the production profile ballooned up because of that. I hope, because I'm still extremely supportive of the company, that it's a one-quarter problem. At these levels, Magna is extremely appealing. Then if you want a lottery ticket, I still think Ixtaca is one of the best undeveloped assets out there, right? The Ixtaca project in Mexico, owned by Almaden Minerals (NYSE: AMM). As everyone knows, that's gotten hit because of the simple fact that the permitting delays that the New York funded NGOs that are rallying communities near the project to stir up stuff. They're trying to rewrite the Mexican Constitution's mining laws, which again, isn't going to happen. I think we get news this year. But do we get news in Q4? Do we get news next week? Nobody really knows with Almaden. Then with Almaden the risk is time. I still believe that's a project that gets permitted and it's a lottery ticket at this point, right?
Nick Hodge: That's right. Yeah. No, it's risky. You don't know which way the court decision is going to go. It's still in limbo. I'll tell you one that I've been queuing up on my screen more and more and just trying to decide when to pull the trigger. One people might want to look at is Anacortes, right? Ticker XYZ. That market cap is below $40 million and they're drilling right now. We'll have assays out this summer and that's one of the highest grade oxide resources on the planet. They had some pretty splashy drill results the last time that it was drilled. They're just going to put out similar results. You might want to check that out to get ahead of it. That's a cheap stock at a $38, $39 million Canadian market cap. Especially because they raised money over two bucks at the private level and so there's not a lot of sellers. There's not a lot of cheap paper there.
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. Look, let's be clear. One of the early holes of that program is going to test whole RTC255 and I'm reading it to hear from the release. You mentioned splashy results. Let me put some context to that. It was 173 meters of 3.12 grams per tonne gold. I don't think it's a one-off. I know that the CEO believes, in conversations we've had, that they could have five and maybe 10 million ounces of high grade oxide gold on that property. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what those first few holes return.
Nick Hodge: The market's rewarding high grade intercepts. I was reading about Lion One this week. I don't know if you've seen that drill result. You might want to cue that up while you're in the screen there.
Gerardo Del Real: Lion One. I missed that one. Let's see. Yes. Holy smoke. 76 meters of 20.86 grams per tonne. I missed that one. That's very good and a chart to match, right? I love it. It went from C$1.00 to C$1.70 really quick. You're 100% right. The market is rewarding good drill results. For people listening that are frustrated with the market and the portfolio for some of you, because you're mostly in gold stocks and you didn't buy lithium stocks and you didn't buy really good battery metal stocks and you didn't buy copper stocks because you just believe gold is the only way to go, this is the time where you should rejoice.
If you have some capital, you should be adding to the Anacorteses of the world. You should be adding to the Revival Golds. We should be adding to the Magna Golds of the world because we're not buying those stocks and we didn't buy those stocks in the first place to sell during what's pretty much a bear market right now in the gold space because there's few bids. We bought those for new all time highs and when the speculative capital gets back in, that's when you should be upset if that's still the market when you're trying to sell. I don't think anybody's trying to sell other than for tax loss reasons right now. You shouldn't be anyhow. You should be adding.
Nick Hodge: I'm going to start writing these names down on the back of a pizza box during these talks. I might get more views.
Gerardo Del Real: You've got to do your hair different Nick. Now, I see you've got to cut in an attempt to just jazz it up a little bit. You've got a cool shirt. I don't know. I need to throw a bro or two out there.
Nick Hodge: Got to be a little more hip.
US Government Backs Domestic Uranium
Gerardo Del Real: Little bit, a little bit. We're getting old, man. We're getting old. It just is what it is. We're old souls. We've got to talk uranium. We've got some big news in the uranium space. The department of energy is asking Congress for $3.5 billion, that's US, to buy domestically sourced, low enriched uranium. Look, the bottom line is the feed from that's going to come from a few places. It's going to be the US. It's going to come from Canada. Aand it's going to come from our friends in Australia if the goal is to keep Russian uranium and all these other countries that we have some issues with right now, if we're going to keep away from those sources and it was worded very specifically. Again, the uranium space being a tiny space, there's only two handfuls of quality companies between the producers and the explorers that are really worth owning.
That space is tiny. For that amount of capital to come to the space. I'm excited to see the results here between now and year end, because I actually think that unlike most of the issues in our country, everything from immigration to gun control, to giving everybody the same rights, not investigating transgender kids and their families for crimes when they're just trying to be, unlike all of those things that we don't do well in this country, the one thing that we do well is print money. I do think they print the money and I do think there's bipartisan support for this. I think that bodes well for a lot of the companies in our portfolio, Nick.
Nick Hodge: We've been saying that it was a classic pullback in a uranium bull market. There were still some things that had to unfold and this is just the next shoe to drop. We've had the administration mentioning critical metals recently, battery metals, and the need to secure those supply chains. Everyone was wondering when uranium was going to come. Well, it just came. You're right. There's not a lot of names to look at there. We've got a couple of quality ones in the portfolio already, and you should go poking around. I was looking at Denison earlier this week and all of a sudden, new UECs got a higher market cap than Dennison. Dennison's got a mill that some 10% of the world's uranium passes through that mill and there's names out there that are values. But what really caught my eye was the wording.
You mentioned the wording from the administration. Of course, it's always an official who doesn't want to be named, but they were saying that the funding is urgent. It was “urgently needed,” was the one phrase. Then the other one was, if we have interruption in the supply of uranium, that it could cause interruptions or disruptions in commercial nuclear reactors. Well, if you're translating that into common parlance, that means the lights go out which is what Rick Rule has always said. The price goes up or the lights go out. And securing the uranium supply so we don't have operational disruptions at nuclear plants is exactly what that was saying. Just not as cleverly.
Gerardo Del Real: Agreed, agreed. Meanwhile, again, I'm going to poke at Pelosi in the Dems on this one because lately, a lot of their stuff hasn't made a lot of sense and-
Nick Hodge: Her husband got arrested too, right?
Gerardo Del Real: DUI, correct.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. Anyway, you didn’t see that splashed all over the headlines.
Gerardo Del Real: I wonder if he was in the cell, trading stocks and calling his broker and stuff.
Nick Hodge: Excuse me, I've got to do some hedging trades.
Matthew McConaughey on Gun Laws
Gerardo Del Real: Meanwhile, the White House wants to tax oil and gas windfall profits. I don't know whatever happened to believing in the business cycle, but they're making everything up at this point. The politicians on all sides are just making it all up folks. I've referenced a few of the Democrats' blunders, but let's talk about the other side too. We just had a vote on gun control that passed the House and it's going to the Senate. Everybody knows it's got no chance in passing because we have so many Republicans that are hellbent on licking the lobbyists' behinds because they grease their campaign contributions, according to how high they jump and how much they lick.
Matthew McConaughey, who's a Uvalde resident, he was born there, gave a beautiful speech about being a gun owner, about not wanting government to take his guns, but about how there's so many more things that responsible gun owners want to do so that idiots like the idiot that decapitated all these beautiful babies in Uvalde, don't have access to AR15s and thousands of rounds of bullets within the same time frame,where he's upset and wanting to go on a murderous rampage. Now, if we had a red flag law where a family member or a friend could have called in and said, "Hey, he's making threats. Here's the source. Make sure that he's on a list where he can't buy a gun from a gun show or a pawn shop or any other legal means." Would that have prevented everything? I don't know, but it would've made it a little bit more difficult if he wasn't allowed to purchase thousands of rounds of ammunition.I don't know that he doesn't find ammunition elsewhere, but I know it would've made it a tad bit more difficult. Maybe he calms down on day two or day three? Maybe somebody gets the kid some help. Maybe somebody arrests them? A lot of maybes, but we'll never know because we don't have common sense gun laws here in this country.
I want to read a little bit about what Matthew McConaughey said. He said, "We hear from so many people, families of the deceased. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, Texas Rangers, hunters, border patrol, and responsible gun owners who won't give up their second amendment rights of their arms, and you know what they all said? We want secure and safe schools and we want gun laws that won't make it so easy for these bad guys to get these damn guns. We need responsible gun ownership. We need background checks. We need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR15 rifle to 21. Responsible gun owners are fed up with the second amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals. These regulations are not a step back. They are a step forward for a civil society and for the second amendment."
This Newsmax reporter asshole, James Rosen, stands up and says, "Were you grandstanding just now, sir?" I'm sitting here and I'm thinking of the context. Matthew McConaughey is a Uvalde resident with deep ties to the entire state of Texas. One of the best representatives that we have here in Austin, Texas of what Austin culture is all about. It's about inclusivity and embracing everyone and being able to dialogue and disagree in a civil way, and this reporter has the goal, after Matthew McConaughey explains that a lot of the kids were so mutilated because of the size of the AR15 rounds, that the only way you could describe and identify these kids was by the clothing or jewelry they were wearing.
Nick Hodge: DNA tests.
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah and DNA tests. The first thing that Newsmax asshole James Rosen decides to ask is, “were you just grandstanding right now, sir?” That's the state of the country for everybody that's listening out there. Matthew McConaughey had a great comment. He said, "We're a lot less divided than they want you to believe," and I really do believe that, but my God, the loud minority that is stupid as all fuck on all sorts of issues is getting louder it seems like. It's getting louder. I'm all for free speech, man, but I'm also for words to have accountability.Have some accountability for your words and words have consequences and yeah, Mr. Rosen probably would've got slapped. Probably should have got slapped.
Nick Hodge: I don't have a lot to add there. We've talked a lot about this, but it's not a gun grab and I'm talking as a gun owner as well, and an AR15 owner. They're not coming for the guns. This is America. There's over 400 million firearms in this country. They're not going to take them away because of the second amendment right, because they exist — from my cold dead hands is a real thing. They're not going to come and take your guns, but they can be smarter about how they issue them and the waiting periods and things like that. I take issue with some of the stuff as well. If you want to move it to 21, that's fine with me.
Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely.
Nick Hodge: Let’s not send babies to die on foreign soil at 18. If we're going to change the AR15 age to 21, let's do that for the military too. Then you've got people like Justin Amash, who I think pretty highly of. He's not in Congress anymore, but he was tweeting about how absolute the second amendment is. He's not one of these NRA guys, or wasn't one of these NRA guys. Has taken net $0 from them. In fact, the NRA was spending money to get him out of office while he was in office, and he's tweeting his support for the second amendment. They're not oxymoronic. You can be a supporter of responsible gun ownership and wanted to be responsible. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. That's what I was saying in the wake of the tragedy. The doctor was testifying as well about the decapitation. Just absolutely horrible but what I was saying is that more people are more mature now, including myself and others. I think Matthew McConaughey is an example. I was telling you that after Sandy Hook, I wasn't having the same feelings that I was having after Uvalde. I think people are sensing the need for change now, and that it can be done in a way that lets people still exercise their second amendment rights while keeping them out of the hands of people with prior records, people with mental health issues and people who aren't mature enough to handle those weapons responsibly.
Gerardo Del Real: Well said. Well said. I don't think that laws that encourage and incentivize keeping your guns safe, keeping your guns locked up, I don't think that's unreasonable. There's just so many common sense solutions not to prevent everything. We're not going to prevent everything, but man, if you stop one of these, is that not worth having to lock up your gun? Is that not worth having to wait seven days?
Nick Hodge: Another one I read is about how police are selling their weapons, which I wasn't really tuned into. We spent all this money since the Patriot Act, since 9/11, arming these police to the teeth with all sorts of toys and weapons of war, really, and they're selling them so they can get new ones. These weapons that the police have been selling are ending up now being used in crimes around the country. That's a fact. Just look that up. That's an easy thing to put and end to. Why are we flooding the streets with police weapons? It doesn't make any sense.
Gerardo Del Real: Why are we flooding Mexico with military weapons? We could scale this out. Again, they're just making everything up. I hate to jump from one thing to the other, but I had put on our topics list that we make up 10 minutes before we actually get on here to just have our weekly therapy session, a conversation. I had put on the list Cuba and Saudi Arabia. My brother works for the Washington Post. He made the news this week. It was pretty funny. You can Google him. He also won a pretty prestigious award so congratulations to him. He's a beautiful writer, but he made the news for some frivolous stuff this week. But he's a journalist for the Washington Post. It's no secret that Saudi Arabia basically green lit the murder of a Washington Post journalist in the Saudi embassy.
Nick Hodge: Green lit? The king had his fingers delivered to him.
Gerardo Del Real: Literally, literally. When I look at that and I see Joe Biden's announcement that he wants to have a, I forget the exact wording, but he wants a more constructive relationship with Saudi Arabia and that he is going to visit while they continue to punish the hell out of Cuba, a country that's more ally than foe. A country that hasn't really done anything to us since the late '50s, early '60s when they buddied up with Russia. The same Russia that we won't really do much against, other than send weapons to the Ukraine while that war continues. Hypocrisy on all sides. It angers me, Nick, to see the Biden administration in the US take such a tough stance on a small island and nation like Cuba, who has one of the most educated populaces in the entire Western world, but yet lives in poverty because of the sanctions imposed against them by the US.
Meanwhile, we're willing to go and have conversations and dialogue and have a civil sit-down with Saudi Arabia who sent the bulk of the hijackers to 9/11 because that's where they came from and is mutilating Washington Post journalists in the fucking embassy. The hypocrisy is insane and it angers me so much because they don't even try to hide it anymore but yet, we want to argue about dumb shit. We can't pass universal background checks. A check to see if you are fit and legally eligible to own a gun. We can't decide on that as a country, but yeah, we're cool going and sitting down with Saudi Arabia. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way. I'm just trying to highlight the hypocrisy with how we treat Cuba versus how we treat a country like Saudi Arabia, because we need the oil while simultaneously, we want to tax windfall profits on oil companies that are finally making money. Also, we don't want to grant the leases to do more exploratory drilling it. It's a bizarro world, Nick.
Nick Hodge: They've figured out how to keep us tribal, right? They know the hot button issues to press on and not press up against. The Biden administration could do stuff against what's going on in Texas with the child abuse reporting laws and things like that. There's relatively inaction. I think they like the infighting there and they like pointing at the boogeyman on the other side and using that as a distraction against the larger means.
Political Extremism & Violence
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, yeah. A lot to chew on there. A lot of takes and a lot of opinions, but man, I saw a good article. There's a group that I follow on Twitter, the Young Turks. They tend to lean left, but they also tend to lean very libertarian. They're really good about calling out both sides, both major parties. They tend to be more independent thinking. They lean left socially on a lot of things. I lean left socially on a lot of things and fiscally, I lean conservatively conservative the old-fashioned way, not the new fashioned way where they all just print money and hug and drink scotches in back room. But they were highlighting the internal civil war between Democrats and we highlighted this a year ago.
How we thought it was coming. How I saw the breaks and the fissures and you saw it as well. That Fourth Turning really starting to materialize with the AOCs not feeling like they're beholden to the Nancy Pelosis or not feeling like they're going to have to play by the same rules that Schumer wants them to play by and basically saying, we're going to rewrite this whole thing because you are not doing it right. Do I agree with everything AOC or anyone on the right or anyone on the left says? Absolutely not but I do love to see the infighting. I do love to see that because these old ass politicians, they've got to go. Not because they're old, because their ideas are old, because they're dated, because they're making careers out of pimping everybody by keeping everybody busy with frivolous things while babies are getting decapitated and people sit in back rooms and ask how much of a check do you need to make sure that universal background checks don't happen?
Rewrite the whole thing. The Fourth Turning is going to, I think, accelerate here in the coming months and years. We talk about it being a hot summer. I think it's going to be a hot year. We have Roe versus Wade decisions coming any day now, from what I hear. If you know anything historically in America about women's reproductive rights and the restrictions imposed by the government and how some of the fringe groups on the left tend to react to that and how some of the fringe groups on the right tend to react to it being a hot button issue. It's violent. It's violent on both sides with that loud minority. Just get ready folks, because I think between gun control and Roe versus Wade and all the stuff that's come and I think it's going to be a doozy of a summer and I encourage everyone to be careful.
Nick Hodge: That's a perfect warning by the way. You know that it's Pride Month. I live here next to north Idaho and over in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, they're having dueling events or gatherings this weekend. There's a pride gathering and then there's a gathering of some, I don't know, I forget the name. Pro America, pro gun rally type thing. The police put out a warning saying essentially what you just said. It's going to be a hot summer. Everybody keep their heads out there. It being north Idaho, the first line of the warning was we support the second amendment right. These people are going to be out here carrying weapons while you're having your Pride parade. They're putting out public warnings about that stuff and I think that's what you're saying now.
Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. Meanwhile, here in Texas, our fucking genius politicians have us on grid watch because it's going to be hot this fucking week. I was surprised. Texas is hot in June, dumb motherfuckers, and so the grid might fail again. Who knows? We'll see but we have time to go and legislate whether you can take your kid to a drag queen show. They want to make that illegal.
Nick Hodge: Well, here's the perfect way that they obfuscate and they keep you guys infighting. I saw Ted Cruz was tweeting this week about how it was the green new deal that is causing the grid problems in Texas. First of all, I was thinking to myself what green new deal? That hasn't gone through yet. There's not been laws passed about the energy mix and what sources can be used. You still use plenty of natural gas and coal in Texas. First of all, that didn't make any sense and second of all, Texas operates its own grid. It's the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, right? Not of the green new deal. I put that out on Twitter the other day and it's so nonsensical. That didn't even make sense. Yet, that's a US Senator tweeting that because he knows that it's going to rile up the lowest members of our tribe. That's unfortunate that they do that and that people can't see through it.
Gerardo Del Real: Unfortunate indeed. We've said it a lot of times. Let's find better ways to disagree. Let's disagree passionately. Let's disagree factually. Let's disagree civilly and let's agree that we can disagree. I got friends who I disagree with 70 to 80% of their views, how they express them, their timing on them, their thoughts and opinions. We'll sit there, have debates and at the end of every night, “Love you guys, have a good night. I still think you're a fucking idiot, but I love you.”
I don't got to shoot him. I don't got to hit him every time. I don't got to beat him up. I don't need to go in front of his house and protest. We just agree to disagree for the reasons that we agree to disagree about. I'm sure he feels the same way. He's probably like fucking little ass Gerardo, has a big mouth and has an opinion on everything, and he thinks he's got these facts to back up his opinion. He runs around here just, hunky dory happy most of the time but yet, he bitches about all these things. I'm sure he thinks that and that's super cool. Still love you. Still love you.
I still think you're a kind upstanding cool human being. I think you've got great ethics and we still hang out every week. Why can't we do more of that? Right? Why can't we do more of that? I don't know. We can go talk to Saudi Arabia though. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Watch how the game is being played. We're sitting down with Saudi Arabia who had a Washington Post journalist with dual citizenship, he was an American too, murdered in the embassy by the king.
Lithium in Quebec (and the importance of jurisdiction)
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. Yeah. Anyhow, back to the market. Quebec is getting really interesting. Rio Tinto just announced a strategic partnership with Nano One to collaborate on battery metals. It's a small one. It's only $10 million. But Rio Tinto has deep pockets and I don't think that Rio Tinto is making one move without having four moves planned. I would look for that part of Canada, which by the way, has received government support to develop everything from battery metals plans, to giga factories, to a critical metal supply chain. I look for that part of Canada to really emerge as a leading critical metals hub in North America. I am talking my own book because you all know where Patriot Battery Metals is. Patriot Battery Metals is right in that region but Patriot Battery Metals and my bias aside, because I owned quite a bit of that, I would really look for a lot of the players there. Critical Elements Lithium has the Rose project there.
There's a couple of other deposits nearby where if I'm looking forward two years, three years, four years, if I'm a Rio Tinto and I really want to make inroads in the critical metal space, I start scooping up these companies and consolidating the entire region because you can have decades, you can have generations of production and exploration in that part of the world. That might be something for people if it's not on your radar and you're looking for a safe jurisdiction just for companies that are exploring and developing battery metals, it doesn't get much better than that.
Nick Hodge: I was just going to say, so Rio Tinto's been trying to make inroads into the battery metals. They had that Jadar lithium project in Serbia that the people put to a halt or at least a slow-down, and so that didn't pan out for them.
Gerardo Del Real: Multi-billion dollar project, by the way. That's a setback.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. A big one, and so they've got to be looking for other projects. They've got one in California where they've also got a refining plant, producing battery grade lithium, not just the brine. They just learned a lesson in jurisdictions. You mentioned Quebec and going back years ago now, Quebec had this thing called The Plan Nord, is a plan for them to become a natural resource hub because of all the things that they're endowed with there. Multiple minerals, including some that are strategic for these battery and green initiatives that we're trying to affect globally. Yeah, you mentioned Critical Elements. I'm a shareholder of that. I actually recommended that just today to readers of Family Office Advantage and Patriot Battery Metals is there. Jurisdiction matters.
That's why, when we make recommendations and we look at projects, we like to choose ones that are not in Serbia and in places that are ranked high in the Fraser Institute study of safe jurisdictions. I think you're spot on with that. It also ties into the theme of re-domestication or re-onshoring some of this stuff. Not having to rely on foreign jurisdictions for North American supply of critical elements. A lot of things are lining up there, I think.
Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. Want to go back to gold, and an opportunity that we haven't talked about in quite a bit, but Perpetual Resources formerly Midas Gold has been bleeding shares. What's that?
Nick Hodge: They’re chirping. They're saying “our permits are coming.”
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. Yeah, and they've been bleeding shares. We found out that Barrick had been shopping in a pretty big position. It looks like that position has been unloaded. They have a new supportive shareholder that took a block of that from what I understand, and it looks like that was the cause along with the apathy in gold sector for the past, damn near 12 months because the gold price hasn't broken out and everybody's waiting for that. Perpetua's looking pretty healthy at these levels. I still own it in the portfolio. Gold Fields went shopping. It just dropped about $7 billion in an all-share deal to buy a company and proceeded to go down 20% the very next day for its trouble. That's attractive as well. Again, if you're going to be a contrarian, folks, the Patriots of the world and the Critical Elements of the world, I still think those companies can trade many multiples of today's prices.
The time to be a contrarian with those was early on where we knew they were onto something significant. We knew it was going to grow. None of us still know how big those deposits can get and how profitable they can be. In the case of Critical Elements, we have more economic parameters. In the case of Patriot, they could be onto the biggest lithium deposit in the entire world. There's a very real potential for that, but we don't know yet. All we know is they likely have at least 100 million tonnes and that's still pretty darn big. When it comes to some of these gold names, the time to be buying those names is now and it has been for the past several months. I don't know that we find the Almadens or the Perpetuas or the Revival Golds of the world at these prices for another six months.
This may be the last opportunity to top that portion of your portfolio off. Talking lithium, Nick, you and I wrote a check for Nevada Sunrise Gold at three cents. We saw it go to 30 cents. Then we saw it come back to four, five, six cents. Every time it goes down, I just buy more and write another check in the financing and collect the warrant and just sit on it. Now here we are breaking out back to 33 cents on a lithium discovery. Can that go to a dollar? Yes, but everybody's looking now. Everybody's looking, so it may be quicker from 30 cents to a dollar than it was from three cents to 33 cents, but man, it feels good to have three-cent shares.
Nick Hodge: And five-cent warrants.
Gerardo Del Real: And five cent warrants. Absolutely. Trying to give some contrarian guidance for those of you that may be newer to the space, that are frustrated by the action in the gold names. If you have capital to allocate, you should be rejoicing about the price action right now. If you're the CEO of a gold company, you're listening to this and saying buzz off Gerardo, we don't want to hear it. We want a higher share price. The higher share prices are coming for the quality companies like the Revival Golds. I absolutely believe that. If you're out there speculating in this space, the gold hasn't gone anywhere for Perpetua. The gold hasn't gone anywhere for a stock guy and Almaden. That's a permit situation. Perpetua, they have a permit situation. We're going to see if they're able to work through that but if they do, you're going to be paying 10 times what you're able to pay for right now.
Nick Hodge: They seem to be pretty confident as the decision approaches. We'll see if it gets delayed. It's been delayed multiple times, but they're awarding some of the cleanup contracts this week, which to me, is a hint-hint to the market.
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. What are you going to do if you're a part of the green movement and they're cleaning up and remediating a site that has been trashed for the last 70, 80 years?
Nick Hodge: A superfund site, basically.
Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. What are you going to do? You're going to tell them no, pull the contract? We don't want you to clean it. How are you going to respond to your board and the people that follow you and that believe that you're environmentally friendly? No, I think it has a lot going for it. Opportunities. Again, it's a free podcast but man, there's a lot to chew on and a lot of names there. Anything else you want to add this week, Nick?
Nick Hodge: Gosh, I'd have to flip over to the list or you were doing pretty good going down it there. I think we covered a lot of stuff.
Gerardo Del Real: Lauren Boebert's in trouble. I mentioned her up top. She drove further than the planet's 24,901 mile circumference. Did you see that one?
Nick Hodge: No, but she was the same one that was saying we didn't ground planes after 9/11 and that's just a total misnomer because we did pass significant legislation that altered the freedoms of Americans and attempted to reduce those events happening again. That's pretty analogous to the gun control debate.
Gerardo Del Real: A lot of dumb things come out of her mouth, but now she's being charged with fraud. She cashed two checks. Yeah. She cashed two checks from her campaign, totaling $22,259 for a mileage reimbursement but the figure worked out to 38,712 miles, which again, is much further than the planet's 20-
Nick Hodge: That’s bigger than the beltway.
Gerardo Del Real: Now she's going to have to explain what she's doing with all this gas.
Nick Hodge: That's what we mean about them making a career out of it. That's not the way it's supposed to be. These folks are going into Congress to generate income and to make a career for themselves and to pad their pockets, and that's not what public service is all about. If you can't see through that thinnest of veils, man, I don't have much time for you.
Gerardo Del Real: Me either. Me either. Nick, anything to add?
Nick Hodge: No, I'll put up a link to where you can get this shirt and your shirt. Not that we're hawking goods and we don't get any kickbacks or anything like that, but we just think it's cool apparel. This one is from a gentleman in Missouri who is hand printing each one of these. When he gets an order. You've got to direct message him on Twitter to get one. Pretty cool.
Gerardo Del Real: I love it. I encourage everybody and we have on this show to have a good attorney on speed dial. I have my former federal prosecutor attorney who's still federally licensed as a criminal defense attorney. I have his number here and I have for the last 20 years. Believe you me, the retainer stays there. I can call him anytime at the night.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. My college roommate is an attorney. Yeah.
Gerardo Del Real: There you go. Everybody in America that wants to film the police, it's your absolute right to be able to do so. It's also probably prudent to have an attorney's number that you trust and whose number you can memorize on speed dial. Again, I think it's going to be a hot summer. I think there's going to have to be a lot of caution taken and I hope I am wrong. I hope I'm so wrong. I hope it's the most calm, peaceful summer that America has seen in some time that isn't COVID inspired, but I suspect that's not going to be the case. I hope everybody has a phenomenal week.
News that I'm watching for. I'm watching to see all of the PDAC news that unfortunately, I won't be there in person for, but I'm sure there's going to be lots to chew on as companies like to put on their best pair of shoes during PDAC, so should be an interesting week for news flow and a busy week here at Bizarro World, at Resource Stock Digest and at Digest Publishing. I am Gerardo Del Real. It's been great as always hanging out with my therapy session buddy, Mr. Nick Hodge. This was episode 173 of Bizarro World. Say something nice to the people, Nick.
Nick Hodge: I'm supposed to say comment with any questions you have and click the like and subscribe button. I’m glad I was able to work that in. See you guys.
Gerardo Del Real: Is it down there or is it up there?
This transcript is unedited. Please excuse grammatical errors and run-on sentences.