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2015

Mar 2015 - Rags to Riches

Rags to Riches

Stewart McDonald opened his RIU/Vertical Events packed Explorers' Conference in Fremantle in late February 2015 to an audience of ~750 delegates, optimistically proclaiming that the commodity bear market is over, the commodity boom has restarted again.

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Jun 2015 - Bottomed Yet?

Have Resources Bottomed Yet?

Following the positive RIU/Vertical Events explorer's conference in Freo in late February 2015, and Stewart McDonald proclaiming that "the commodity bear market is over, the commodity boom has restarted again". The resource market slipped along with the weakening iron ore price into an even deeper funk, with many explorers focusing on devising methods to slow their dwindling cash reserves.

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Aug 2015 - Done it Again?

Have the ex-Avoca Team Done it Again ?

Many people can recall the Avoca gold company that started as a $7m minnow and evolved under Rohan Williams' leadership into the extremely successful Alacer with at one stage a market cap exceeding $2.6bn. ERA's last report on Alacer was in July 2011 (available on www.eagleres.com.au) at a share price of A$8.75 (or US$9.45) being over 30 times higher or in market cap times, over 80 times higher than ERA's first report on Avoca in April 2005 (also available on the website) at a share price of 26c and market cap of $33m.

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Sep 2015 - Focusing Alteration

Exploration Focusing on Alteration

This month's Paydirt GMJ column has been based purely on observation as so far this year of the companies ERA has visited I have noticed an increasing trend focusing on alteration compared to conventional gold mineralisation in quartz or other host rocks.

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Sep 2015 - Bun Fight

Bun Fight at the OK (Old Kalgoorlie) Corral (Goldfields)

A delegate remarked at Diggers 2015, "what we need is some action, to liven things up a bit. That banter between you and Cooky was great, it woke everyone up!". Just like Diggers, a "bit of action" has livened up the market being an emerging bun fight over Phoenix Gold Limited (PXG.ax), between the ~27.4% China SOE Zijin (with its ~$20bn market cap, 21.6bn shares and ~1.0mozpa annual gold production, plus copper, silver and gold refineries and other metals etc) and 0% Australia SOE Evolution (with its  ~$1.5bn market cap, 1.4bn shares and ~ 0.85mozpa annual gold production).

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Oct 2015 - Metal Cycle

Has the Base Metal Cycle Restarted ?

Doom, gloom, the end of the resources world is nigh - sound familiar. commodities continue to collapse, the A$ falls to US60c, and China continues to slow to only 6%pa GDP growth within the next 2 years (or as some forecasters have it). Or in other words, it could now take about 3 years before China's growth can rise by Australia's total GDP per year.

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Nov 2015 - One Belt One Road

OBOR (One Belt One Road) but not in China's GDP.

While the western world presenters at China Mining's October 2015 conference in Tianjin focused on standard supply and demand forces holding back commodity prices, the Chinese presenters focused on the new normal (of lower commodity prices) and OBOR (One belt one road).

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Dec 2015 - Geoparks & Green...

Geoparks and Green Mines

You may not have heard of a geopark, because despite Australia's geological historical potential for them, Australia does not have any, probably because one of the key criteria to qualify is government funding.  Australia apparently tried to have one but UNESCO disqualified it for failing to meet requirements (probably government funding), and one of Italy's 9 geoparks was recently yellow carded for having lost government support.

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