The top three most visited IKN posts this week are...

...in reverse order:

Third Place: "Sandstorm's (SAND) Nolan Watson with a chunk of plain truth". I got interesting feedback from posting up this interview, including how "I posted it first" from another blogger (doesn't surprise me, I don't pay much attention these days), how Nolan shouldn't throw stones while living in a glass house. I just posted it up because I wanted to quote the transcript of that one section. It stands as-is and I agree with it. That's all.

Second Place: "GMO does IKN and RTZ". I'm going to become GMO's booking agent.
 

First Place: "The name of the buyer of the 23m shares of Red Eagle (R.to) yesterday is...", in which IKN broke the news that Vertex One is the buyer of the block. Unsurprising, the scoop posts always get plenty of hits.

Northern Dynasty (NDM.to) (NAK) and the roaring silence

Isn't it amazing how Marin Katusa, Porter Stansberry, the whole of Casey Research and all the other assorted hangers-on and scumbag pumpers have suddenly stopped screaming their collective heads off about Northern Dynasty (NAK) (NDM.to) and the Pebble project?

Answer: No it's not amazing, it's the way these scoundrels operate.

So much for the benefits of 80 years of mining and 80 million ounces, these guys won't hang around 80 minutes if they can't hoodwink a bunch of idiots into their scams.

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This just in:

The Friday OT: Chicken Attack

Prepare for an incredible sound and vision experience. This song and its most wonderful video has to be seen to be believed:

Youtube here.

Chart of the day is...

...the US ten year TIPS yield, last six months:

Because it keeps on predicting the gold price. Chart from here.

GMO does IKN and RTZ

A couple of items of interest in the latest edition of Global Mining Observer:

1) A strong report on Rio Tinto and its plans to divest uranium assets. On this link.

2) A lightweight piece of guff and nonsense in which the Intrepid Alex W of GMO interviews the author of IKN and The IKN Weekly. In other words, me. That's here.

Make of the second one what you will, though I will guarantee that it's not going to become a habit.

Santacruz Silver (SCZ.v) and San Felipe: The magic of Canadian mining numbers

In July 2012 Santacruz Silver's (SCZ.v) CEO, Arthur Préstamo, explained to us all that its San Felipe project was, and I quote, "...a significant and major asset of the Company".

At the end of 2013, San Felipe was valued by the company as $28m of its total of $33.6m in exploration property assets.

Later and even after a hefty impairment, according to its latest Year End financial report San Felipe was still worth $18.68m (out of a total of $26.3m carried in exploration assets). Which is even funnier when you realize SCZ spent $11m of the company's own cash on the project development.

Late last year SCZ tried and failed to sell it for $15m. That even after the rebound in the price of silver.

Today, after selling it on for $7m in order to pay down debt, we note that in the NR announcing the sale San Felipe had been demoted by CEO Préstamo to a "non-core asset". Funny dat, innit? Préstamo said he was pleased with the deal too, bless his heart.

Consider this a quick lesson in where your money disappears to when you hand it over to people who don't have the first clue about mining.

Mining imitates sport imitates art imitates life

H/T reader MP

You cannot make this up: Ex-Canadiens enforcer John Scott has been hired by Enforcer Gold. As publicity stunts go I've seen a lot worse, but we can only presume he got all the aggression out of his system on the ice in his previous career and there's none left for the mining anal yst community or fellow sector peers. If not conference season could get fun.

Not much scandal at the BMO conference this year...

...which presumably means The Clive skipped the whole thing. The only minor incidents to report were Wade Dawe (Metallum, Fortune Bay etc) having a testosterone-charged moment and getting in the faces of a few people (security stepped in and stopped the scene before any fists were thrown), and of course Dev Randhawa getting wildly drunk and being his normal offensive racist self. However, Dev's lack of manners, social skills and general boorish behaviour isn't news to anyone.

Toachi: There are some who call me TIM

Toachi Mining (TIM.v) came out with some very decent grading rock from drills yesterday, including a headline 3.58 m at 2.38 g/t Au, 93.3 g/t Ag, 15.92% Cu, 2.31% Zn and 0.16% Pb at its 'La Plata' project in Ecuador (yeah...Ecuador...ugh, but let it slide for just one day). The numbers got Beacon Securities in a vertiable full-scale gushing mode this morning in its client mailer:

"Toachi (TIM) – fantastic results out of Toachi yesterday after the close. These results are very exciting - you don’t often see these types of grades outside of the Congo. Buy this stock!!!"

That near-orgasmic gushing from Beacon isn't really surprising, considering how they're the house behind the recent private placements in Toachi (I particularly enjoyed the triple exclamation marks, oh sympathetic Beacon person) and for sure the numbers are good, but if you ever feel like buying the same sort of rocks, the same sort of grade and the same sort of upside potential but in a company that's actually producing and making strong positive free cash flow from the very rocks in question, instead of TIM.v that's going to burn your cash for years to come instead of making you some, here's an IKN top top hint and suggestion: But Atico Mining (ATY.v) rather than TIM.v.

Disclosure: Long ATY.v, in solid profit on the position and with a specific price target. No position in TIM.v.

Chart of the day is...

...the Dow, monthlies:

I'm really stupid and nowhere near smart enough to understand the Dow's movements, let alone try to call a top. I'm really smart and nowhere near stupid enough to try to call a top in the Dow, let alone try to understand its movements.

In The IKN Weekly this Sunday...

...a full and detailed analysis of Minera IRL.

My favourite bit of the CIBC note on Asanko (AKG)...

...dated Sunday Feb 26th and using the Friday close price of CAD$4.00 as reference:

"Although concerns may remain, we see limited downside for AKG shares in the near term in light of the recent ~20% decline..."

Here we are three days later and AKG is another 12.5% down. This is the type of "must sponsor" company that's at the very heart of the sell side brokerage racket. Denial is not a river in Egypt, Jeff Killeen.

Liberty Silver: The Bobby Genovese scam is back...

...and true to form, the scumbag at the centre of it all is already ripping people off. Today's news that Liberty wants to raise $1.5m by selling 1,500,000 shares at a Loonie apiece...

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Mar 1, 2017) - Liberty Silver Corp. ("Liberty" or the "Company") announces a proposed private placement consisting of up to 1,500,000 shares of common stock (each a "Share") at a price of CAD$1.00 per Share for aggregate gross proceeds of up to CAD$1,500,000, subject to necessary board and regulatory approvals. Proceeds of the Proposed Private Placement will be used for general working capital purposes.

...comes just six weeks after a different piece of newsy news. That's because on January 20th, as quietly as he could (but he's still got to declare the move on the Reg Fs) the scamster rip-off merchant Bobby G decided to swap the debt he was owed by Liberty Silver into shares. And here's the really funny bit:

• On November 30th 2016 Bobby Genovese lent the company U$1.4m
• He charged the company a crazy interest rate.
• In no time at all the debt went to U$1,686m.
• Then six weeks ago he swapped that debt for 8,990,986 shares.

Do some math, folks. If you take the final debt number, the swap was done at U$0.1875 per share. Call it CAD$0.25 on the forex. But if you take the original U$1.4m loan as the start point the conversion price was U$0.1557...call it CAD$0.207 a share.

And now, six weeks later, this idiot wants you to be an even greater idiot and pay a Loonie a share for a part of his scamfest company with a worthless piece of crap asset in the middle of it all. A company that already fleeced a whole bunch of people in the previous cycle via a paid pump campaign where Genovese gave James West a mountain of share options in exchange for a breathless BS campaign that let Bobby G sell his shares to the world for a massive profit.

Right now there are 21.345m shares of Liberty Silver outstanding. Bobby G via his BG Capital vehicle owns over 62% of shares at the moment and what's more, aside from that he just gave away 4.5m shares to favoured pals and partners in the crime to come. It's crazy to think that once the current placement closes (and it will, this scumball knows all the angles and will have the cash ready from somewhere to fill the placement, potentially from his brother hanging out in Monaco) the implied market cap would be nearly C$22m. 

C$22m for an utterly worthless company that's set to rip off market greenhorns. Welcome to Canada.

The name of the buyer of the 23m shares of Red Eagle (R.to) yesterday is...

...Vertex One. At U$0.50 apiece Thiessen has got a bargain.

Sandstorm's (SAND) Nolan Watson with a chunk of plain truth

And they wonder why IKN has been beating on this drum for years. Here's the Q&A with Cambone of Kitco, the fun bit is at the end:

Transcript for your reading pleasure:

Nolan Watson: "...we've build up a technical team, we spend a lot of time going digging into the guts of drill databases and understanding metallurgy and all these types of things and I think one of the things that has to be addressed is that when we actually get in there and see behind the scenes a lot of the times, things are not as advertised. There are a lot of assets out there that are fundamentally wrong and broken, and CEOS are lying to their shareholders about it and I think something needs to be addressed. 43-101 attempts to do it, but it's still not working."

Daniela Cambone: "So, too much promotion?"

Nolan Watson: "Promotion is a very nice way of saying what some of these people are doing with their assets. It's lying, really."

Thus speaks somebody who has learned from experience. And fair play, if Watson can come away from the Colossus debacle and put that knowledge to use it wasn't all wasted money. Fact: Sandstorm has no position at all in Continental Gold.

Colombia's Constitutional Court rules in favour of local Marmato miners and against Gran Colombia Gold (GCM.to)

This just out.

Hot on the heels of the news that Serafino Iacono's abject failure of a mining company, Gran Colombia Gold (GCM.to) is laughably trying to sue the nation of Colombia to the tune of U$700m regarding its contentious Marmato project under Canada/Colombia Free Trade Agreement rules, we hear today that the country's Constitutional Court has ruled in favour of the local traditional miners there and against GCM.to.

The ruling means that the local miners were right all along, they have been legally mining the zone and are free to continue to do so. This is the exact opposite of the usurping position taken by the idiots at GCM who poured the cash of Frank Holmes and Frank Giustra down a very large and expensive toilet. It also means that the chances of the GCM lawsuit against Colombia prospering (a move designed largely to hoodwink shareholders) has moved from "very unlikely" to "snowball in Hell".

What a pity. Not.

And Graña y Montero has just sold its big block of Red Eagle (R.to) shares

The epitome of the phrase "distressed sale".

IKN hears that the buyer is a very smart fund and is easily classed as "strong hand holder".

PS: Here's the official letter:

GyM sold 23m shares (8.69% of R.to shares out) at u$0.50 apiece. GyM didn't sell all their holding (still own 10.54m shares) because if they sold more than 10% in one shot they would have been stuck with an extra tax liability.

Graña y Montero Iron Mountain robbery

Hey, you know how far Graña y Montero is in the doo-doo? Well here's a fun twist to the story, because this morning in Lima there was an armed robbery at the Iron Mountain document warehouse and....weirdly and bizarrely and in pure coincidenterationals, the only thing the armed robbers stole were all the Graña y Montero files stored at the facility.

You heard it here first.

A Flash update...

...has just been sent to subscribers on this fair and pleasant Tuesday morning. A modest purchase planned.

Catching up with the Inca One (IO.v) scam pump and dump

Remember back in 2016 when this humble corner of cyberspace called Inca One (IO.v) "A Scam Pump"? There was a good reason for that, you see. It's because it was, is, and will continue to be a scam pump. Kinda simple really. This is the tiny junior that paid out almost half a million in cash to the scoundrel Daniel Ameduri to get its stock pumped to the idiots who swallow all the Future Money Trends idiocy. The same scamjob junior that employed the failed CEO Bruce Bragagnolo just before the scamming began.

And here we are today:

Hey, I wonder who was selling all those 30c and 40c shares when the dumbasses were buying? Any ideas, Edward Kelly?

The IKN Weekly is boring

Here's part of the intro to The IKN Weekly issue 406, out last night. Kind of reads well after what happened to the GDXJ this afternoon:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The  IKN  Weekly  is  boring
I  look  around,  see  the  breathless  promotions  out  there  at  the  moment  and  consider  how tedious  it  must  be  at  times  to  read  a  publication  such  as  this  one.  Out  in  the  wonderful  world  of promotion,  ramping  up  right  on  schedule  for  PDAC,  there  seem  to  be  no  end  of  exciting  deals  in which  you  can  participate  (for  a  modest  entry  fee)  backed  by  people  who  always  strike  it  rich and  never  make  a  wrong  move.  Here  in  the  plod  and  drudgery  of  The  IKN  Weekly  your  author is  raising  some  cash  with  a  couple  of  sales/partial  sales,  tinkering  at  the  margins  and  for  the time  being  just  letting  the  main  trades  run  on.   It’s  boring.  It’s  not  good  for  the  newsletter  business.  I  should  be  out  there  feeding  you  ideas, stock  tips  and  STRONG  BUY  recommendations  galore,  raising  pulses  and  diving  headlong  into the  cut  and  thrust  of  capital  markets  at  any  given  opportunity.  And  all  those  things  are  easy  to do  in  fact,  even  easier  when  you’re  a  tipster  service  selling  thought  and  no  skin  in  the  game. When  it  becomes  more  difficult  is  when  it’s  your  own  money  at  stake  and  with  the  realization that  of  the  1,500  or  more  stocks  swirling  around  in  the  Canadian  capital  markets,  the  vast majority  aren’t  just  mediocre  but  outright  wastes  of  time  and  money.  There  are  no  end  of  great stories  in  the  wonderful  world  of  the  TSX(V)  but  there  just  aren’t  that  many  good  companies, not  for  my  money  at  least.  What’s  more,  stocks  haven’t  looked  particularly  cheap  for  a  number of  weeks  which  puts  a  value-oriented  investor  off  the  trail  early.  Thus  another  week  goes  by, watching  covered  stocks  and  failing  to  find  a  new  bargain  name  but  don’t  worry  about  me,  I’ll find  something  interesting  to  do  with  my  recently  raised  cash  soon  enough.  The  rest  of  you  can get  your  kicks  trading  Northern  Dynasty.  

The IKN Weekly, out now

IKN406 has just been sent to subscribers. The usual junk and nonsense.

The IKN Weekly slightly late this evening...

...ladies and gentlemen subscribers. Should be with you around midnight EST.