Save Canadian Mining presents "Capital Markets Insights For The Pandemic" Part 3: Battery Metals

0:05 Good day, everyone. It's Terry Lynch here with Save Canadian Mining and welcome to the show. Today's show is on battery metals. We're going to talk to some of our Save Canadian Mining friends and supporters and learn a bit about the battery metal space and how the pandemic is affecting it and sort of market conditions and a number of other things. I wanna invite my great panel that we've assembled today. I'm never sure when I watched my first replay, it came across differently than when I described it, so I'm not exactly sure. So I'm gonna get, If you just give a wave when I call you out, then we'll know that that's right. So in my picture, Nick Hodges is above me. Nick is with Resort Stocks Digest, there he is.

0:54 He used to be at Outsiders Club. Nick's one of the premier newsletter writers in the business. And when he speaks, a lot of people listen and I'm certainly one of those listeners. So Nick, great to have you on. And Nick's been a very early investor and a guy in the battery metal space. I'm sure we'll get some great insights from Nick. On my top right is Michelle Fontaine. Michelle's with Windfall Geotech. Michelle, you got a wave now. Where's the wave, Michelle? There you go, there's Michelle. So Windfall is a very interesting company. So Windfall, basically, It is an AI company and it helps people find deposits, including companies like Canada Nickel, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, as we get into it, but one of the great base metal place in the country today.

1:43 And then finally, not to be left to the last, Eric, but Eric Soenscher. And Eric is probably the best known as one of the top analysts in mining for many, many years at Canaccord. And he's crossed the aisle. He's become an entrepreneur now, an investor, putting his hard-earned dollars at risk. And he's now chairman of a very bright battery play we call Critical Elements. And we're going to learn about that when we get to get into the show. But Jim, welcome and Thanks for coming on Safe Canadian Mining. Appreciate it. Thank you, Gary. So, I always like to open up the show with just a little bit about what is Safe Canadian Mining, why are we here, and basically, I get our hosts at 6 X to put up a chart, and Jane, I'll get you to put that chart up if you would.

2:36 It's basically a chart that shows, we did a study, we hired, we actually had Murrenbiel Research on last week, and Murrenbiel's one of the top, I would say, research houses certainly in the precious metal space, but they're a very competent research team. Anyway, we had this suspicion that since the tick test was taken out, and what is the tick test? The tick test was basically up until 2012,

3:03 in pretty much stock exchanges around the world, not just Canada, if you wanted to short a stock, you had to wait for the stock to go up. And so the tick test was that, did the tick go up or down? If it went up, you could short it. If it went down, you could not short it. So what happened is that was put in place, because stock markets were basically designed to allow people to access various forms of investment and allow companies to access capital. So capital formation was the key. Well, the tick test made sense in that scenario, but in around 2012, the, you know, financiers and exchanges around the world had a concept that algorithmic trading and liquidity were going to be super beneficial to the markets. And for that to happen, really, the tick test was an inadvertent casualty. It wasn't designed to take it out, but they couldn't figure out or didn't want to figure out the technology to sort of adequately sort of handle it. So as a result, the tick test was taken out. So we did a study from 2012 when the TIC test was taken out to just last February, March.

4:09 And basically, it was very interesting since historically, and the chart doesn't go too far back in the past because that's just the data that we could get from the TSXV. That's just where it stopped before it became the old Vancouver Exchange, the Montreal Exchange and the old Toronto TSE Junior Exchange. So so it just wasn't, you know, within our budget to try and make that math work. So this is what we could do. And what we found was that historically,

4:37 the mining index, the TSXV, TSX, metals and mining index, would typically have traded slightly at or above the commodity index, which sort of makes sense, you know, in a way from a graphical perspective. But you can see obviously, you know, now in the graph, there's like a 60, 65% difference. So, you know, the math of that to, you know, investors out there is that, you know, to get back to normal, mining stocks would almost have to triple across the board, which is a staggering sum when you think of it. But it shows you how, you know, even though, you know, mine markets are coming back, and we're overall bullish on that, that there's still a structural problem here. And this is what we're trying to fix. We're trying to sort of advocate for the government to make some changes in respect to that. So I wanted to, we can get rid of the slide now, Jane, and I'll go back up to the screen. And I want just to go around the horn and just talk to the guests and get their insight on if they've got any personal experience with this and just what their views are. So Eric, why don't we start with you? What are your thoughts on the predatory short selling?

5:47 Sure, Thanks, Terry. I've been wondering for a while what it is that's caused us to lose our mojo in Canada. And by that I mean the fact that it used to be 65, 70, 75% of the money raised globally for mining, for exploration and development came through the Toronto and Vancouver exchanges, came through Canada. And that's certainly greatly diminished. We've also lost a lot of our premier mining companies. And just this week, we've seen Umana go to the London Exchange, and Australia has been eating our lunch on the exploration and development side in particular. And I think we were unique. We were unique in the way that the retail investor was strong, sophisticated, very active in the space. And that created the capital, the venture capital needed for exploration and development in particular. And that's where the real discoveries come from in the first place. So I think that there's a bit of a waning of confidence that the retail investor has feeling the sense that the foxes are guarding the hen house.

6:50 We've been hearing a lot of moaning coming as well from the brokerage firms themselves with the increase in the number of non-brokered financings. And it'd have to be a little bit silly, a bit self-destructive as a company to signal the fact that you're going to be erased when some of these parties turn around and short the stock as you alluded to and then cover in the financing and that kind of behavior, whether it's brokerage firms or hedge funds or whoever, is a hell of a good reason for the companies to say, forget that, we're gonna do it non-brokered.

7:22 In addition, you've got institutions, some of the largest ones in the world saying, yeah, sure, we'll do a private placement. We're gonna give you the money directly. We're gonna cut out the middleman. We're gonna cut out the middleman of the street. In effect, what's been happening is through the lack of the uptick, is that the golden goose that's made Canada what it is, the venture capital from the retail investor. That golden goose is getting slaughtered and all just for short-term gains. And it's just, you know, it's such a poor perspective where we're losing that whole position in the financing on a global perspective, it's quite tragic. And that's something I definitely want to see reversed. We've got to get our mojo back. And a great start would be to see that that tick test reinstated, not to mention some of the other 46 policy recommendations that's been made by the task force in July. Yes, good point.

8:21 Michel, what are your thoughts? I think it's all about transparency right now. Everyone want to be, if you're talking about when you are president and CEO of a public company, you need to tell everything. You need to be very transparent with everything And all the insider, they know about the process to give all this information. But today it's tough to know exactly what's going on. And the truth telling is 1 problem. But I think they have more problems behind this problem.

9:10 I'm sure when you begin to talk about this idea with Eric Sprott, to save and to begin to discuss about this problem, it's a huge problem when you are a small cap company. Because if you, I saw the last video you have done with Sean Rosen and the president and CEO of 1st Majestic. We're not talking about junior company. If these guys decide they check some short selling, they begin, you just begin to talk, some friends, hey, we will squeeze these guys, and we will oblige them to cover the position.

10:01 I cannot do that. And they can, today with the algorithms,

10:06 I'm using algorithms and we began to talk about, okay, artificial intelligence in 2005. A lot of thing is, okay, you can, you can do with algorithm is more mostly positive, but this thing okay for trading You can trade You know 1000 faster than the trader. Okay, and when we know exactly the patterns Okay, these you can I have some of my guys here, they can do that? Because we worked in 2009 to create something on French exchange and I learned a little bit how this guy can build an algorithm and to do exactly what this guy is doing, the best trader, and they can check all the stock at the same time.

11:02 In 1 2nd, they can check everything and they can begin to trade. You cannot do that, you know, by yourself. We all know they are there to stay. But, okay, we need to be, I think, we need to be more transparent. What Eric mentioned before, it's tough. Every fund manager, we should know their long and their short positions. Yeah, fair enough. Nick, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think it's fair. As an American and as a newsletter writer that caters primarily to the retail crowd, I think the Vancouver Stock Exchange has put a bad taste in the mouth of retail investors for a long time, certainly, you know, prior to 2012, prior to the institution of, you know, 43 101 standards, etc.

11:57 And so I learned the hard way, you know, coming up as a young kid who didn't know nothing about the TSXV and four-month holds and was wondering why I was getting dumped on and my subscribers were getting dumped on 4 months after the company did a financing and had to figure that out for myself. And so there's plenty of risks inherent in junior mining and dealing in the TSXV without the predatory short selling that you're talking about. And I've seen it firsthand.

12:27 To echo what Michelle was saying, I mean, I'm involved in companies that I can see programmatic shorts on this week. I mean, I just look in the line by line trading and see 500 shares out, 500 shares out, 500 shares. I mean, you could see bleeding it out on a program like Michelle was saying all the way to things you can't figure out. And you have to wonder like, who is short offshore holding these shares and where did they cover? What numbered company has these shares and where are they coming from?

12:50 I mean, these are definitely some of the nefarious things that go on and that I've seen and had to deal with in my 12 year tenure of dealing with junior mining stocks. And then, you know, there's other small things like, I don't know if you guys have come across, but as an American, one thing I've had to deal with lately in private placements is the language in the legend removal form as far as have sold and will sell. And of course you're going to sell them. You bought the shares because you will sell them. But if the documents are written as have sold and you go to sell your shares, you yourself could be made to buy back in because you're technically shorting the stock in that scenario when you're selling, especially if someone that you sold to requires or requests physical delivery. And so there's all sort of pitfalls and potholes to watch out for on the TSXV. And if we could give the regulators some teeth and if we could do things like reinstating the tick tests, like save Canadian mining is after, I'm all for that and I'm all for transparency as well, Michelle, absolutely.

13:51 Yeah, those are all good points. I mean, when I was talking to the task force that's reviewing the Ontario Securities Act that has sort of prompted us to sort of push for it now in the last week or 10 days. And one of the other things they're focusing on, which I'm also quite keen to support is settlement. Because right now, when you trade a stock, you're supposed to T plus 2 and sell it in cash or deliver your securities in 2 days. The problem is there's this plus 10 and so they have this T plus 2 plus 10. So what happens is it's sort of like, I forgot, it's like the dog ate my homework. I forgot to bring my shares into the broker. You know, I'll get, you know, that was what that was supposed

14:35 to be for. But they trust me. They've driven a freight train through that, you know, and then people just use it as almost like a kiting mechanism. You think about how people used to type checks back in the day that, you know, bouncing banks around, you know, because they weren't clearing it quick enough. It happens in stocks. And so what's happened is we've got effectively counterfeit shares out there where there's like, you know, 20, 30 percent more shares really in legal circulation

15:02 than actually are issued note standing. And it sounds like insane, but if you actually look at it, it's the truth. It's crazy. You know, and so Europe, I think, is sort of gonna lead the pack, and they've come up with some new recommendations over there, I think they'll be put in place in September, I think. And it's gonna be T plus 2 plus 4, I think. And basically at the end of the fourth day, if you don't have the stock delivered to your broker, they're gonna buy you in unless you have a contracted borrow.

15:38 Honestly, the tick test obviously would be a great victory, but in many ways, if they actually enforce bloody good settlement, you'll get rid of a lot of these problems because they're just, they're naked shorting the stocks

15:54 and without really paying for it, they're just keepin' on papering it over. It seems like something out of a bad novel, but until you look at all the stocks and you talk, like I've talked to 30, 40 executives, and this is not one person's problem, it's like pretty much across the board, and I've talked to pretty much the top short litigators and people in the space and you know stumbled into this because I was pissed off myself and then I've gotten like I feel like I had the red pill the blue pill I'm not sure I took the right pill by getting involved in this but but I learned a lot more than I ever thought. And it's like, wow, it's pretty deep. So anyway, I think on the plus side, regulators are, by nature, they're not speedy creatures.

16:49 Probably that's a good thing. But I think, you know, there's enough, you know, the antics of, you know, purported antics of Anson and, you know, we're seeing some of these very high profile, obvious predatory short cases getting a bunch more exposure now. And I suspect that regulators, both OSC and IROC are now really recognizing there's a serious problem and they gotta do something. And I think that's a good thing because the governments are motivated to try and clean things up and to get, as you say, Michelle, more transparency and make it, oh, it's like Eric Sprott said, hey, you know how you get more investors back into your money? Let them make money.

17:37 Just treat them fairly. He says there's never been a better time to invest into your money in terms of- Well, kudos to you for making this statement. You know, it was funny, it was, I was at PDAC, I can't remember, it was 2 years ago, I think. And it was Sunday at PDAC, and you guys have all been there on Sunday at PDAC. And It was like dead. You could have shot a cannon through the aisles and not hit anybody. And I'm there and you're talking to your booth mates. Michelle actually is a booth mate. He's just down the road. And I'm saying like, Jesus, I know it's bad, but I had no idea

18:13 it was this bad. And then I think it was Michelle that told me, he said, well, you know, PDAC is charging 25 bucks to 30 bucks to get in. I said, you gotta be kidding me. It's like, we can't give mining stock away and we're now trying to charge these guys to get in. Like, I thought that's what we paid Booth Rail for. So I went off on PDAC at that point. But then I realized, you know, in many ways, you know, we're our own worst enemies, you know, we, you know, as junior mining companies,

18:40 I mean, we allow stuff to happen to us, you know, like we allowed, like this tech test to happen to us. Okay. And Because nobody got together and said, hey, that's some bullshit. It doesn't work for anybody. It's not, it only works for offshore hedge funds and the banks that they partner with that get a big cut of it. It doesn't work for individual investors. It doesn't work for companies. It doesn't work for communities. How can that be good politics? You know, forget it, it's bad business, we know, but it's also bad politics. So I thought, you know, because I was literally ready to leave mining at that point, because I, I just, you know, been along ugly road.

19:16 Most likely, but I, and I was just frustrated. I thought, you know, before I go, I should try and leave it better than I left it. I just thought like I could try and make this one change. We could maybe help the sector out. And I've always believed there would be eventually a mining comeback. And now we're here. I fully believe macro-wise, this is, you know, our setup is never going to get better than this. And we could make, you know, not only as individuals,

19:44 but our investors, people can make a lot of money and money and will make a lot of money and money over the next few years. This is going to be the place to be. But, you know, so, you know, I think if we can all sort of pull together and keep the government focused, make some changes, then, you know, it would really help our companies and help, help our sector. And that would be a good thing. So let's leave that for a sec. Let's, you know, one of the things I like to do in this is, you know, as an advocacy, this literally started in this little condo that I'm living in now, a downtown dweller, that moved from the suburbs, now that my kids are growing up.

20:21 One of the things we did was we were able to get a bunch of like-minded people to be helpful and to help out. This is just a pure grassroots organization. We put every penny back into the advocacy, to our government relations people, to our agencies that are doing their work and whatever. And it's through their efforts and help that we've been able to make it. So we like to, you know, give back to the community

20:48 and learn a bit more about them. So this is a part of the show where I sort of go back and I want to learn a bit more about critical elements. Eric, why don't you tell us about Critical and give us what's happening in Critical and why it's a wonderful start. Sure, will do. Well, our vision is to be a large supplier and a responsible supplier of lithium hydroxide to the EV and energy storage industries. I mean, I think we've all read about what Tesla's up to and behind that are Volkswagen and BMW and

21:32 Ford and GM and so on and so forth. And oddly enough, wonderfully so, is that we're seeing an actual increase of electric vehicle sales this year, relative to the last year, despite the fact that overall car sales are down due to the COVID crisis. Now, obviously coming from Canaccord Genuity before, I have a lot of respect for my former partners there, and I think that their work on supply and demand of lithium is better than the rest of the brokerage firms out there. And quoting their recent update just from a couple of weeks ago, they continue to see a 21% compound annual growth rate in demand for lithium going forward to 2025. And then ultimately we're seeing an increase, virtual tripling by 2025

22:22 of lithium carbonate equivalent in demand. Now on the supply side of that, they calculate that roughly 430,000 ton per annum capacity has been shut down or delayed

22:38 in terms of expansions due to a strike, if you will, in capital. And So that's a really, really positive thing that's evolving for lithium supply and supply and demand balance going forward over the next few years. And I think most people buy into that. What's kind of cool is what's been happening and what came out through the battery day of Tesla. Tesla has obviously been the leader amongst OEMs,

23:07 automobile manufacturers in terms of reinventing how you build a car and distribute it. They've now decided to move upstream. That they're creating a battery hub in around Austin, Texas that'll include

23:24 obviously the assembly of batteries but also the manufacturing of cells that go into the batteries and producing the materials for the cathodes that go into those cells. And then ultimately also making the lithium hydroxide that goes into those. And it's key to point out that if we see the massive growth of European and North American cars, EVs in particular, going forward, those require larger batteries for range, and they require higher quality batteries, which drive the need for

23:58 high nickel batteries in particular, and that that requires Lithium hydroxide and that requires really pure Lithium. Although we've seen a growth in Lithium production of Lithium spodumene concentrate in Australia, and that's created an inventory overhang in the short term. That's pretty low quality stuff that really struggles to be upgraded to the purity, the quality that's needed in biz. So refocusing on critical elements, we have the Rose lithium tantalum deposit in Quebec, and that is one of the highest purity deposits in the world that's undeveloped at this point in time. So that's a real positive, the purity side of it. I think another positive is that while we've seen the emergence of a battery hub or witnessing the emergence of that battery hub in Texas, there's a really strong case to see Quebec become the next battery hub.

25:00 And the reason for that is the strategic geographic location, servicing both Europe and North America, as a lot of the OEMs and battery manufacturers shorten and regionalize their supply lines. But also you've got great human capital in Quebec. You've got real money. You've got capital that the Quebec government is now talking about putting 1.4 billion into this battery hub concept, starting with the miners. And you've got a power grid that's established, selling power at 4.5 cents a kilowatt hour and that power is largely hydroelectric so a very low carbon footprint and in this ESG world that's super important. So where are we at Critical Elements? We've got a feasibility study for phase 1, which is mine and concentrator.

25:52 Permitting for that should be around the corner over the next few weeks. We're pretty confident about that. The next step is to do a feasibility study for phase 2, which is that lithium hydroxide conversion. Again, would be producing some of the purest lithium hydroxide in the world. So we're excited about that as well. So all of that is coming together. And consequently, there's some really great news flow and some really great important catalysts. All that the Quebec hub needs right now is a really good champion to come in like Tesla is the champion for Texas. I firmly believe we're going to see a champion emerge, whether it's an OEM or a battery manufacturer, or even look at some of the oil and gas companies that are going towards the renewable side, like Lithium Americas, which has been a star in the lithium space. One of the earlier strategic investors in lithium Americas was was Bang Chiak Petroleum from Thailand looking to go green. So there's a potential strategic investors that will work alongside with critical elements to see this this emerging battery hub in Quebec. We're quite excited. Great, Eric.

27:05 That's a good synopsis. I know the one thing that when I first got involved in the stock that the singular thing that I remembered was at the time it had the lowest market cap to feasibility study valuation. I thought, can't go wrong there if you actually think this thing is going forward. And I believe it is going forward. And that was, you know, I know you guys think your stocks turned around and made a nice little run. So I think there's a clear ceiling ahead for you and wish you good luck. Michel, why don't you talk to us a bit about Windfall Geotech? Yeah, I began in 2005. I was the broker of the president of the diagnosed at that time. And when he invited me in their office, I was a broker, I finance many junior companies. That's why I was not a mining specialist. But when you finance some junior company, I can understand the big picture.

28:04 And he invited me at their office and showed me what the algorithms can do, okay, with using public data. And I was so impressed. I was just wow, okay, if you can do that, okay, you can repeat that, you know, many times using, you know, different type of public information, everyone in the world. And we began, you know, to talk with some of my investors, okay with some of my clients, you know that I financed and Dino signed 2 contracts with this and the story began on my part, but I decided, you know to sell my book and and to to start, you know promoting, you know using artificial intelligence in the mining sector. And that was in January 2005.

28:59 So you're an overnight sensation here, 2020. Yeah, I can tell you when I began to mention and we're using algorithms and at that time you know that was data mining. What? What? You know, it's I can't I can't understand you know because it took me many months you know before you know I can't understand exactly the power of all of the algorithm, what they can do. But today, after 15 years, okay, because windfall about, you know, all the technology, all the water patterns, because everything was inside, you know, But I can tell you is, check, the best example is you, Terry, you just saw some results on your project in Chidi, and that was, it's very positive. But at the same time, if I just check, okay, what we have done, okay, for the last maybe 5 to the 6th last client, they went to validate seriously our target, they did something, okay? Our rate of success right now is more than 80%.

30:07 But algorithms, as you know, and when you begin to talk about using AI, a lot of people, my nickname at the beginning was Black Box. I checked Black Box right, no? I was just, I checked another Black Box, okay? I can show you the patterns. And that's why we never use, you know, neural network algorithm, just pure Black Box. That's why we create our own algorithm to be more transparent. We're talking about transparency, we need to be more transparent. But again, it's today with, we all know, okay, then algorithms and artificial intelligence they are there to stay and 1 one area where the people they don't use you know everything's on the on their day-to-day the only sector they don't use on the day-to-day is mining okay in the petroleum gas and the healthcare and the banking sector everyone you can talk about every sector, they're using algorithms and AI, but not in the mining.

31:12 I know they are very conservative, but I can tell you, everyone will use the way that we're using the data right now, okay? Because it's tough, okay? When it's covered by our burden by 5, 10, 25 meters, okay, you're talking about, it's tough, you know, to be geologist today because all, if you check in North America, maybe 99% of all the discovery was done 100 years ago or 75 years ago or 50 years ago, because, okay, 1 prospector or 1, 1 geologist, you know, went there and they saw some rock on surface, on outcrops, and they took some sample and they found some gold there. But now the next one should be under maybe 5, 10, 25 meters overburden.

32:01 And the only way, okay, is to use many tools on the same time and use algorithms to digest and analyze all this good information. And as you know, geophysics penetration is going under maybe 0 and 200 meters. That's why if you already found something on your project or if you are in the same geological trend, okay, then a discovery on a mine, we can go to extract the signature of this area there and go to find back exactly the central context. And I can tell you this tool is so precise that it's just fantastic. But I can understand that, okay, it's maybe new for a lot of people, but for me, I spent 15-years of my life to promote this idea.

32:55 And then, Ned Goodman, it was behind us for many years. He was our biggest investor. And in 2011, when he came into our office, he just told us, because Ned Goodman, as you know, was a geologist, told us, you know, I'm mining and they are very conservative. That will be a tough fight. But I know what you're doing is the future and we are the future at 100%. So I understand now like, you know, like I know, you know, Chilean full disclosure, we hired Michael's firm. I actually was at a technology conference that I met Michael at before PDAC, I think about 2 years ago, was actually sort of when I started saying, it's sort of a weird time in life, I guess, where I met some very important people. And I was at the conference when you had the big nickel discovery that's become Canada Nickel, really.

33:45 And, you know, I was at this conference, didn't really know Michel. And then literally the press release hit and this big base metal discovery that's becoming a fairly hot play now. And So when I saw it in real time, I was like, okay, well, this guy's not, like there's a lot of bullshit in mind and you guys all know this. You know, that Mark Twain quote is very still much in everyone's mind, but the liar in the hole, you know? So I think there is that, but yeah, when you see it in real life and then you go through, you know, the many companies that have used it, and I think it's starting to take speed. And I see that you've changed your business model. Like you're now, you're taking stakes in deals, you know, and you know, you made the investment back in Chilean and because you believe in your magic. And that's really, I think, in some ways, I see you more as a prospect generator with technology than just a pure technology play. And I think that market hasn't quite figured that out yet. And when they do, that's gonna be a good thing for your stock.

34:53 So you will see in the next weeks and months, you know, we will modify a little bit our business plan because as you know, it's a dream for me, you know, to do all the mining camp in the world because as you know, Australia, Norway, Finland, we can have access to a big database, free, free data. And I can stay in my office here, okay, and upload all the data. I don't need to go when I when we sign you know the contract with Todeco in Chile. I never went to Chile. You just receive all the data by internet and you know we just you know using our tool and give that give back you know the the targets you know to to their team and explain them you know using WebEx or something like that. Very, very, very easy, you know, to use. But, and this COVID, when this virus arrives, I can tell you, it's the best way to, because you need to use all the tools today, then you can have access.

35:59 And we are just another tool. And We will always stay a tool. Yeah, no, it makes sense. Makes sense. Listen, the last member isn't representing a company but he's representing a sector that I'm a big believer in. And in many ways, the newsletters have become, have replaced a lot of the analysts. And obviously we have a great analyst on side and they're still there, but I mean, there used to be a lot of you guys, now there's so few, you know? And used to be analysts would move stocks and There's still a few, like when Eric was there, he would actually move a stock, but they seem to have less impact now than they ever had. I don't know why that is, but it seems like the newsletters, the good ones, and there's newsletters, I think some of them got some bad rap back in the day when they were pumping dump places, but the good ones were they actually are working for a subscriber where the subscribers pay and the analysts are just trying to find good investments both for themselves and for their subscribers.

37:01 And I can tell you that Nick Codge is one of the best in that I've been a long time subscriber with Nick and made a lot of money with him. Thank you for Midas, Nick. I still, and it's a bit, yeah, he's got a string of good ones now, Revival Gold, he's got some great ones. But Nick's Now starting a new entrepreneurial, I guess Resource Doc Digest has been around for a while, but you and Gerardo, so over to you, Nick. Tell us about what's new and what's happening with Resource Doc Digest. A lot of good points made there already. Back to transparency, yeah, you know, you have newsletter writers that take cheap shares and don't disclose or they're in an earlier rounds and then they're promoting to their list. You know, we don't do that at Giordano and I at Resource Doc Digest and our new publications. We're transparent, we're writing checks into the deals. I financed Critical Elements personally, wrote a check at 30 cents and had my subscribers in at the same price And in fact, if you recall it it below the financing price for just a 2nd There's I had retail subscribers in at 29 cents that have doubled their money or more in the past month. And so transparency is a huge thing, obviously.

38:07 And about replacing the analysts. Yeah, if you can be honest and attract a loyal following of high net worth, accredited investors, like a couple of us have been able to do, you can raise significant value. I mean, I've raised tens of millions of dollars. I'm not a broker, but I'm a facilitator, right? I give access to my deal flow. And so that's been great. Turning to batteries, you know, I've been doing this, Terry, since 2008. I'm not sure if you know my Genesis story. I was hired to write blogs about cleantech back in 2007 and 2008 when the Chinese solar stocks were on the back of the Wall Street Journal every day as the highest volume traded equities, right? And so I thought this was easy. I picked B.Y.T. In China and made 1000 percent on that when I was, you know, 24 years old. And I thought it was a rock star in the lithium space. And so that quickly went away.

38:58 And so but but, you know, I've cut my teeth on the cleantech space. I co-wrote a book called Investing in Renewable Energy in 2008. I wrote Energy Investing for Dummies in 2013. And then I went on to finance and help promote some of the more successful lithium stores in the years. And we've had many booms, right? So 2008 was sort of a clean tech boom. And then we had a lithium run in 2016 that I wanna talk about for a second. You know, I was able to finance companies like Lithium X at 15 cents and watch that get acquired at over $2.50 in 5 months. So if you can make 1500% on your money in that sort of timeframe, that's good work. If you can get it. I financed a couple of other ones that were highly successful. Millennial Lithium, we made several hundred percent on financed advantage lithium, which was ultimately taken out by Oracobre for shares in a much more liquid producing vehicle.

39:51 And now here we are in 2020, having financed critical elements, right, with this sort of renewed interest in lithium. It's, it's never really went away. The world has always been going electric, right? It's just different iterations of it. What Elon Musk was saying many years ago, I'm going to source my lithium from North America. I was laughing at him. Like, no, you're not, guy. What are you thinking? And of course, he wasn't able to do that. And that's when all the South American plays ran. And now here we are, 5, 10 years later. And what, he had to build it himself to get the lithium from North America, which has been wonderful, obviously. You spoke about Austin, Texas. And Piedmont got the deal. That chart looks fantastic. Know those guys as well. Congrats to them, but what's next? What are the next high quality sputumine deposits in North America that have superlatives and that are in that development cycle where they're about to hit this part of it, right?

40:47 And that's like critical elements coming out of the permitting cycle, which we know is, if not months or weeks away, right? And so I look for high quality deposits in the development stage. You mentioned Midas and Revival, Terry, those are both companies with established resources. Those are the things I like that I can sink my teeth into. I've never been much on drill hole plays. I'm not a geologist, I don't understand that stuff. But if I can look at the deal and look at the numbers and a proven resource and the team and their track record, like Stephen Haber, having sold his previous company, Rockwood, for 600 million or whatever that is, right? Those are the superlatives and the stories I'm attracted to and how I've had my success in cleantech and beyond in the past. And so I had been attracted to critical elements, thanks to you, Terry, for a while and watching along.

41:35 And fortunately this year had the ability to participate in the financing, which has gone quite well. And so, look, the world is going electric. They need lithium, They need clean nickel, they need clean cobalt. And if we can source that in our own continent and know what that provenance is, I think those are the stories that are gonna gain traction in the market going forward. Cool, cool. Well, listen, I can honestly give Nick a plug. You go to resourcestockdigest.com, check it out. There's lots of great information there. There's a number of services he's offered and it'll be the cheapest dollar you ever spent. You're gonna make your money back. So if you're an investor in the space, trust me, you need to have a few newsletters and he's definitely one of them. So there's, yeah, it's the truth. I really believe it. So at this stage, one of the things that we'd like to do is we've got an audience out there. They're listening and they've got some good questions and we want to sort of tap into that and, and and flow through some stuff.

42:37 I got a question from Richard. He says, can you comment, each of you, on the highlighting by issuers, companies that constant news flow during corporate presentations to investors and investment community? So, Eric, what are your thoughts? I mean, basically, you know, I guess maybe he's wondering about, you know, disclosure and, you know, promotion. Not sure. Promotion has a bad rap. I think there's good promotion and there's bad promotion. As an analyst sitting on one side of the table, you could get the full spectrum of good promotion and really abysmal promotion. And I recall getting phone calls saying, while the market was still open, we're reporting such and such an intersection with such and such a grade tomorrow. And you're going, what?

43:27 So obviously there's unequal disclosure that is a real problem for the retail investor. All you can do is look at the management group, look at their track record, and have confidence that the better management groups play by the rules, do things properly, watch their disclosure, and make sure that all things are done on an equal footing. That's primarily what I've got to say about it. And by the way, Nick, it was Stephan Haber who was the president of Rockwood when he sold that to Alba Marl that was for 6.1 billion US. I had the number wrong. There you go. Much more. An order of magnitude. That's a good one. We have a question from Rob.

44:15 Rob says, I use fundamental analysis and some technical analysis making my investment decisions, yet based on comments, it seems that the weight of those offshore short sellers is overbearing. Clearly the deck is stacked against me. This is very discouraging. As a retail investor, is there any reason for me to invest in junior mining stocks? So Nick, why don't you take that one? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, look at what Doug Casey used to say, you don't want to take, you know, 100% of your portfolio and swing for the home run. But if you can take 10% of your portfolio and swing for that 10 bagger, that's what it's all about in the junior mining space. You mentioned Terry having a couple of good newsletter writers. That's very important. You're talking about disclosure as well. It's not about going over the line. It's about just being in tune with the market and showing up every day and reading those press releases and reading between the lines, you know, determining, you know, what the management team is really trying to tell you. And then figuring out how the market has reacted to that and determining if that's the right reaction or the wrong reaction. Look, I'm a retail investor.

45:19 I've had significant success in the space. And so if you look at where the next generation of minerals and metals are going to come from, I know this is a lithium thing, But let's just look at gold and how people are out there. Sean Boyd, Mark Bristow talking about consolidation, Garofalo saying, you know, gold reserves are down 50 percent over the past 7 years. Where's this next generation of supply going to come from? Well, it is those junior mining companies. And so if you can separate the wheat from the chaff, separate the lifestyle companies from the companies that are actually trying to develop an asset and move it forward and using that good promotion that Eric was talking about, not to create liquidity for themselves to sell, but to build a company and raise money at higher prices.

46:05 That's the teams you need to be attracted to and that's what I try to do and get retail investors into. And the other thing I would add to that Rob is that you know what's interesting in mining to I want to you know I'm not saying there isn't cases that's still happening because it is still happening, but mining get crushed so hard. It's like that chart we put up, which showed that we're trading 65% or below where we usually are. It's been, it's so devastated that, and like still, stocks have bounced off the floor because the floor was sub, sub, sub basement. So in many ways, they've done a horrible thing for capital formation, but in terms of value propositions and I think everyone here, you can just look across the board there's there's tremendous valuation you're buying these things for pennies on the dollar now and yeah there's still the structural problem but there's going to be some remedies there there I 100 believe the Ontario Task Force is going to put some teeth into some new rules that will, will it eliminate predatory short selling? No, I don't think that it'll ever get eliminated because these guys are crafty rascals.

47:15 But I believe it will substantially reduce it and that will be hugely positive for our stocks. And in the interim, you've got this generational, you know, commodity swing here, that's gonna be, you know, it was coming anyway, the commodity swing was coming, And now the COVID crisis and the helicopter money is probably going to exacerbate it and create even more commodity price drive. So yeah, I mean, it's like in my mind, get yourself some good newsletters. And there is some great junior mining stocks out there and get in them and yeah, the short sellers will be out there, but generally speaking, in the long run, if you have a really good company, those guys go away because you can't stop.

48:03 If Critical Elements gets its permits, that's gonna become a mine. And that's gonna be- Win. Yeah, win, exactly. That's my point. So it's gonna be worth several fold. And those things, it's not just critical elements. I think that the windfalls of the world are gonna have an opportunity because of their new approach. So anyway, so I think there's reason to be hopeful. And it's about being intelligent and hopeful. The great boom was what we saw with the emergence of China. And that was a demand drive situation. This time around what we're seeing is not necessarily demand driven, although there's some great stories 1 can spin around demand.

48:50 It's a supply supply deficit story. We had many years where there was a complete capital strike, that we didn't see the expansions that we needed in mining, We didn't see the expansions and exploration required to keep that pipeline full. And so what we're seeing right now is supply deficits on the horizon and equities are gonna respond to that, have already started to respond to that. In fact, lithium on average, lithium equities have outperformed even silver equities. So since the COVID crash. So sometimes it's good to get in at the very bottom. Absolutely. Yeah, it's sort of one of my favorite investment theses is going from bad to less bad, right? You know what? It's not. So I think in many ways in mining, that's what's happened. We've gone from bad to less bad. We haven't gotten to good yet and certainly not to great. And I think those are coming. Michelle, we're gonna have one more question. One more question. Go ahead.

49:48 We're seeing re-rating as these companies are developing, are coming into production as we address the supply deficit, but we're also seeing re-ratings on the valuations. A lot of these stocks are still very cheap. Yeah, they might be up by quite a bit, but they're still very cheap relative to many of the other stocks that are out there. Exactly. Or if you tried to duplicate it today. Michel, one last question and then we're going to take one more section here. The question was from Enhan, not sure if it's, you know, but the question is, please discuss your business model in terms of revenue generation, you know, shares, royalty, cash. There you go. Yeah, we began to last year after this discovery, you know, of Nobel's project, they become, became canadiennical.

50:35 We're worried that the most trade is stuck, you know, on the Fiat's adventure for the next, you know, for the, for 2 months. Discovery of Noble's Peau Jus d'Iqdat, they became canadiennical. We were the most traded stock on the PSX Venture for the next, for 2 months. And how we can create more value for our investors. And we decided to invest, to have the skin in the game in our client. That's why we began to invest some money and to own some shares. Because if we are so confident about our target, our client should get something. That's why we began to own many shares on different companies. Right now, our portfolio on 7 different companies and it's grown to 1.5 million and we made close to $450,000 with this idea.

51:27 But right now, if I check what the positive, because it's 15 years we're doing this. And I saw many cycles. As you know, mining is always about cycle. The cycle is good for a short period of time and is negative for some time, you know, 8, 6, 7, 8 years. That's why I think where we are going, you know, the cycle for Gold and Silver, we are there And we all know that Silver and Gold should go higher. And after that, that should be, you know, base metal, Nickel, Zinc and Copper and Lithium. But again, I think the best, the next, on our business plan right now, what we want to do is to open an office in Toronto, and to begin, you know, to maybe, to begin, you know, to own some, a part of the targets, because the value is to own just not selling just our services, it's to own a part of all these targets because we know the value on the company is the claim that they own.

52:47 If you cannot own the claim and you just sell the services, how you can create value? And that's why the drones arrived. We began to do some R&D with drones. And it's an idea I had a few years ago for the landmines. We began to use our technology to detect landmine using drones data because the resolution is so good. And we began to do some tests is very impressive. Okay. And, and you will see, you know, more news about that. We already signed an agreement with Dragonfly, is one of the biggest US manufacturer, drone manufacturer in the US. And we will begin to do some serious tests in the next, You will see. But again, yes, a lot of things will change for windfall in the next, but we already spent 5 million.

53:39 It's 15 years. And the know-how is so important that we, our team is the same since the last, our data scientists, they are there for the last 14 years. And to keep our team is, I think is the key of the success. We need to be able to keep the team. Fair enough. We're gonna have one more question, Eric, over to you on, basically, have you been approached by battery manufacturers OEMs yet for the project? And what do you think needs to happen to trigger this? It's fair to say that we publicly disclosed that we're working with our financial advisor, which happens to be Canaccord Genuity, on evaluating strategic opportunities.

54:30 When you go back the last few years, you can see that the road is littered with a lot of offtake agreements that are memoranda of understanding or letters of intent. There's no equity participation. And frankly, they're not worth an awful lot and a lot of them haven't gone anywhere. Obviously I don't include Piedmont's most recent offtake agreement. It's great to see Piedmont get a third of its potential production spoken for by Tesla. Obviously we're looking at a lot of different opportunities where we could have looked at all kinds of low quality arrangements that wouldn't make sense for our shareholders. The reality is that we want to tie all of this together. We want to have a strategic partner that comes in with skin in the game, that is interested in seeing that vision come through, not just for critical elements, but also in the province.

55:27 And so it's a matter of staying tuned and watching what happens. I can't be any more part of that. Perfect, that's good. Listen, thanks everyone for the questions. Wish we had more time, but we gotta wrap it up. We got 5 minutes left before we check out. And we always like to check out with what I call the stock picker. So I go around the horn and obviously, one of the benefits of having industry people is they're in the thick of things so obviously we don't ask them to recommend their own stock because we know that you obviously recommend your own stock, you believe in that every day. But, and today we're lucky because we actually have a professional stock picker, in Nick. So, without putting everyone on the spot, but Nick, you're used to being put on the spot, so give us a pick of, or a couple of ideas, what are you liking these days?

56:22 Chicana Copper is drilling a property called Soledad in Peru right now. They've had drilled about 15,000 meters in a couple of breccia pipes. They have over 2 dozen breccia pipes. They're high-grade mineralized gold, silver, copper, you know, 1, 2 percent copper. Dave Kelly, who runs Chicana, says some of the early holes they put in those breccia pipes were some of the best holes he's ever seen in his career as a geologist. Several hundred meters of multi-gram gold, silver, and multi-percent Copper. They're embarking on a drill program right now. They just released high-grade channel samples last week. We should start getting first results next week. And in this market, I think the results that Chicana will deliver will be market moving. Perfect. Thanks very much. Michel, what are your thoughts? I can't tell. I have many ideas about that. But the first one is, I began to accumulate physical gold and silver maybe 3 years and 0.5 ago.

57:16 And I think everyone should own a little bit. I don't want to tell you to own 20% of your portfolio on physical gold and silver, but you should own a little bit. It's a way to do a good diversification. And right now, I think my best idea is maybe Dignos, because we're working in the same office, their stock was 80K, their symbol, and just maybe 1 month ago, a new chairman arrived and This guy was this chairman of capital and he wasn't and before that he was living in Asia for I think the last 10 years and he was in charge of the health care fund for Goldman Sachs for many years.

58:06 As you know, it's always a question of contacts today and since Vincent is there, the stock was at $0.15, now it's going to just get $0.65 in 1 month. I needed that pick 2 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago. But again it's a good thing because what we're doing that is exactly what we're doing. You know what we're gonna cut you off just because we're running out of time and I wanna get to Eric's pick, Eric. Yeah, obviously since I can't talk about, I can't talk about critical elements and I probably under your rules shouldn't talk about TR Silver, which I'm on the board of, which I also love. So I'll throw 3 names at you very quickly.

58:53 These are all 3 in my PA, so forewarned. Owale, which is ticker ARIC, run by the same management that sold Hod Madin to Sandstorm. It's a project that they're doing very well with in Cote d'Ivoire. Great results that they're getting there. Number 2 is Orezone. I own the warrants there. Orezone is advancing the Montmoret project. Superstar president and CEO there, Patrick Downey. Great project, very low cost, and I think is probably a takeover target. And thirdly, I'll say High Gold, ticker H-I-G-H, which has got the high-grade Johnson track project in Alaska where they're getting super results and some really interesting Timmons area projects as well that are high grade. So I'll leave those 3 names in addition to my directorships.

59:44 Fair enough. Okay, well, you know, it's funny. I obviously last, when I first started this exercise, my first pick was CRE, which I disclosed that I was a shareholder of and a fan of, and it actually went from, I think it was 30, and it went, as Nick said, it went down a little bit and then it ended up and it's had a good run and obviously doing very well. Still a believer, still have a soul to share. I like Scotty Gold, they're a gold triangle play. Both have some results out. I mean, it's a results play, no doubt, but they're in some, I mean, we just made an acquisition in that area So I like that area a lot and we've done a bunch of work on it So I I'm a believer and then it's not bullshit that there's a there's a serious mineral flowing there And so that's my 1. I like that for a speculation. So so that's it Mark Twain was a miner before a writer, right? That's why he was paid against them.

1:00:43 Oh yeah, I was in, I'm trying to think of the town in California where they have like, they've remade like the town into like a gold mining town and you can go in it. Actually, he went there. It's where they had a silver strike, gold strike back in the day, like lodestone, or it's like, It's one of these edited Western novels. And I went there with the kids, Nick knows my son. And it was such a, just an amazing experience to sort of see how, and I mean, gold mining, there's so many great stories, right? There's so many great stories about, you know, and the truth is often stranger than fiction. Anyway, it's interesting times, but thanks everyone for being on board.

1:01:29 And If you want to help Save Canadian Mining, if you want to help your own investment portfolio, please go to savecanadianmine.com, join our site and support us if you can. But mostly just tweet it out. We need to get exposure. The world is waking up. Our investors are waking up. Companies are waking up. And we're going to do a lot more over the next month or so to really push this because there's a chance and there's a really good opportunity for the government to do the right thing here and make a more even playing field for individual investors and for individual companies and for us to create real jobs and growth for our community. So anyway, with that, I want to thank everyone. Thanks to the panel for coming and I hope everyone has a great weekend. Cheers for now. Thanks for having us, Terry. Have a good weekend. Bye. You