Things are Getting Ugly...but Soon the Cooler Heads Will
Prevail
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Well there really has not been much to write about recently
as the market has been crushed as 'Big Ben' (Mr. Bernanke) has gone about
squeezing the life out of what appeared a strong market. Gold is down nearly
$100 per Troy ounce, silver nearly $3, and crude down only $5 per barrel. With
all of this happening, the market has moved strongly to the downside...just the
opposite as many had predicted should energy prices begin to fall. One of the
most important ideas when it comes to investing is to run for cover when the
market is not making sense. And to be blunt, at this point not much is making
sense to us or the market. It seems everyone is worried that the Fed will
tighten too much and cause some serious troubles at home and abroad.
Well when all logic seems to fail you in these types of
markets (seems everything is falling everyday) you must invest in special
places. We are invested in energy stocks, be them uranium, oil and gas, or oil
sands, and believe that not much is going to change for the better in the next
year. In fact, we believe that the probability for things to get worse is much
higher than that of world situations getting better. So the recent sell-off in
energy stocks has us perplexed. Certainly the stocks are not broken as they
trade for six times earnings in some situations, and it seems that earnings are
getting better as old contracts expire and deleverage some of these companies.
We want to treat this market downturn as a sale of sorts.
Now for those of you who read “The Intelligent Investor” by
Mr. Graham (we believe that all should) then you understand that at this time
Mr. Market is worried about something beyond his control and at this time is
worried about his financial situation, thus he is unwilling to pay as high a
price for a stock as he was only a month ago. However situations change, but
some variables do not. The one variable that investors can control (think of
this as the independent variable of a calculus equation) is the companies and
sectors in which they invest their money. If you pick a high quality company in
a high quality sector you can insure that your money should be relatively safe.
That is unless the market conditions turn downward, in which case you may lose
money, but hopefully since you are in a high quality or promising stock your
money will not deteriorate at the pace of which the market indices do. In short,
find something 'special' to invest in and stick to your guns. This mantra has
treated me well over the years and in situations such as this has allowed me to
go bargain hunting and add new positions, or better yet add to my favorite
positions.
Currently we think that Cameco is a buy as they are the
strongest player in the uranium sector, so we will at this moment add to -theinvestar's
portfolio the December '06 Call Options with a strike price of $35 currently
priced at $5.60. The contract will give us high exposure to CCJ until December
(and hopefully experience the December run-up) and is currently only a few cents
from even. We will need a run to $41 to break-even, but we feel that this risk
is worth it.
We recently spoke to the Buick Group, who now represents
CWPC in investor relations and we discovered a few interesting bits that are
only now beginning to make some sense. This was last week we spoke to a
representative, but we discovered that Pasquia Hills has been renewed by the
partnership with Nova Chemicals but still no word has been given as to whether
they are drilling up there at this time. Also I was told that there is going to
be big news out in June, which yesterday was announced (Canwest taking 100%
interest in OilsandsQuest). Now at the time (I must say this because I did not
listen to the conference call today at 12) CWPC was still qualified for its
listing on a senior US exchange, which if I heard the slip-up correctly, will in
fact be the AMEX. Not really a surprise there, but it confirms our belief of
where they were heading from a few months ago. Now concerning the Oil sands
conference to be held in Houston, I was told I would have to call back in order
to see if the company was going to be in attendance. Maybe because they will now
that their merger is in order, and Chris Hopkins will now be taking the helm at
CWPC. That is also a very positive event in our eyes as he has been the point
man for the project as well as during the presentations and the face for the
analysts. About the Forbes article that many small resource stocks seem to be
plagued by recently, CWPC says it should not be a big worry. They were indeed
contacted by the reporter due to their ties to Pinetree Capital (which the story
really focuses on...due to their ties to certain characters) which owns roughly
1 million shares in CWPC. The company said they pitched their story the reporter
told them everything they could (competent managers and world class project as
well as who performed the drill core analysis). They felt that this was
sufficient but cannot comment on how the writer will portray them in the story.
So, once again we must maintain our holdings of CWPC in our portfolio and we
will in fact add another share to -theinvestar's portfolio at $5.80.
Canalaska appeared to escape unscathed by the market due to
their intersection of 1 foot of uranium in their drilling at West McArthur, but
in recent trading sessions has been pounded. We are forced to keep our shares in
hopes that the 1 foot leads to many cubic feet sometime in the future, as well
as a bounce after the chaos has cleared off of Wall Street.
SXRuraniumone and Paladin are two positions we have no
worries about doubling in theinvestar's portfolio as they will be opening mines
next year. This is truly an opportunity to buy the next producers at prices I
thought for sure would not be seen again, so we add one share each of SXR at
$8.80 USD and PDN at $3.35 USD.
Additions to -theinvestar's portfolio:
SXR @ $8.80
PDN @ $3.35
CWPC @ $5.80
CCJLG.X @ $5.60