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AGORACOM Small-Cap TV – 6 Great Press Releases At The Open (April 7th)

Posted by AGORACOM at 8:19 AM on Monday, April 7th, 2008

Good morning to you all. Please find enclosed a summary of the great small-cap and micro-cap press releases we highlighted on our TV show this morning. It’s April 7th and we’ve found 6 great press release from both sides of the border to report on at the open. Another great day for the small-cap and micro-cap world.

You can watch AGORACOM TV right from our home page , or our archive where you can see or search all of our previous shows.

If you are new to the show, it is a daily, fast-paced, edgy report that we put out at or before the open everyday that strictly reports on the best small cap and micro cap press releases of the day in 3-5 minutes. You can watch the show by going to AGORACOM every morning.

Our daily show focuses on content over form so that you can get profitable information into your hands as fast as possible. The same holds true for these blog entries where I simply cut and paste my TV notes for your benefit, without any editing.

If you have any material information pertaining to any of today’s companies, be sure to share your knowledge by posting your comments for everyone to see.

As always, don’t forget to visit the AGORACOM Marketplace where we list compelling summaries for over 65 great small-cap companies that you can sort by exchange and industry to suit your personal investing tastes.

Now, onto our show notes for the day.

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Posted in AGORACOM Small-Cap TV, All Recent Posts | Comments Off on AGORACOM Small-Cap TV – 6 Great Press Releases At The Open (April 7th)

AGORACOM Interview: Jim Sinclair Issues $1,000,000 Challenge To All Gold Bears

Posted by AGORACOM at 6:21 PM on Friday, April 4th, 2008

Good afternoon to you all. The title is neither a mistake, nor a gimmick. Jim Sinclair, whom the NY Times referred to as “perhaps the best-known gold speculator of his era”, has built a legendary reputation for his gold market calls since the 1970’s. For example:

  • In the 70’s he predicted that gold would hit a high of $900 (it hit $875)
  • Achieved his renown status when he sold 900,000 ounces of gold at an average price of $810 in early 1980, when gold was capping a decade-long bull market that commenced in 1971
  • Called for a 15-year bear market in gold (it lasted 21 years)
  • Has been a buyer of gold since it hit $250 in 2001
  • Predicted that gold would hit a high of $1,650 in this cycle, since 2003.

PYMWYMI – $1,000,000 Challenge

With gold now about 10% of its $1,030 high, gold bears are saying the party is over thanks to a recovering US financial sector. Jim thinks otherwise but rather than wasting time “flapping gums” he is exercising his right to PYMWYMI (Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is) and challenging any bear to do the same by laying $1,000,000 on the line.

It looks like Jim is specifically hunting for big game by targeting “any party on Bloomberg, CNBC or CNN Business“. I don’t know about you but I personally admire anybody who will man up and lay down that kind of money to back up his words. Right now, Jim Sinclair is the Muhammad Ali of the markets for going beyond plain predictions and providing specific details of his victory.

THE AGORACOM INTERVIEW

After first hearing about the wager on my friend Barry Ritholtz’s blog, I had to know more and decided to call Sinclair directly. We had never met before and he was reluctant at first to conduct any kind of interview, stating “I didn’t do this for publicity, just tell your audience about the wager”. No publicity? Now I couldn’t give up. After 10 minutes, I convinced him that my intent was not to glamorize the bet – but to uncover his reasoning behind his gold call. … I also told him I was 6’4, 240 lbs and had a great working knowledge of Google Maps, so he finally agreed.

I interviewed him this morning at 11:00 and discovered this was no conspiracy theory ladened gold bug. He was incredibly well reasoned and even sympathized with Ben Bernanke and his actions, however futile they may be. Yes, the sky is falling but he prefers it wasn’t happening. He isn’t cheering for gold to advance as a result of a crumbling US Dollar but his logic tells him it is simply a consequence of events and policy that started with Alan Greenspan.

I could put together a highlight list but it would not do Jim’s words any justice. This is one interview you have to listen to.

Having said that, I will provide you with one provocative morsel:

“What else is there to do? If they stepped away right now and let Bear Stearns go broke, the ramifications for the man walking on the street is he should walk straight to the soup kitchen.”

I look forward to your comments.

Regards,
George

Posted in All Recent Posts, Gold $2,000 | 2 Comments »

3-Way Junior Mining Consolidation Is Pierre Lassonde’s “Peanut Butter Manifesto”

Posted by AGORACOM at 6:50 PM on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

If you’re an investor in the junior gold mining and exploration sector, then you owe a hat tip to Pierre Lassonde. Lassonde is apparently the man responsible for consolidating 3 juniors into one earlier this week.

If you haven’t heard by now, Metallica Resources Inc., New Gold Inc. and Peak Gold Ltd. combined to create a new, mid-sized gold producer with a market cap of approximately $1.6-billion. I’m not going to bother with the details, GlobeInvestor.com carried the full story here. I’m covering this because it points to both a problem and solution in the junior mining and exploration sector.

LASSONDE HATES PEANUT BUTTER..YOU SHOULD TOO

What the hell does that mean? Listen closely. This is important and will only take a minute.

If you had told me 18 months ago that gold, silver, copper, platinum, etc were trading at today’s prices, I would have danced a jig while celebrating sky-rocketing share prices in the junior sector. So would many of my friends at Sprott, Pinetree and Canaccord, as well as, just about every one of our clients in the space.

Unfortunately, that has not transpired.

Why?

Over supply. Much like an overbuilt condo market, there is far too much supply of junior mining and exploration companies, especially exploration companies. Today, just about anybody with a piece of land in a far away location, whose grandfather once spotted a shiny rock, has become an “explorer”.

This creates a peanut butter effect where investors are thinly spread out over a far too large sector. If you think this sounds cute, don’t be fooled. The Peanut Butter Effect can take down some pretty big whales. It almost took down Yahoo, until a Senior Vice-President wrote the now infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto“ in which he summarized the company as follows:

“I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.  I hate peanut butter and so should you”

This is exactly what is happening in this industry. A thin layer of investors spread across way too many companies, with no particular focus on the good companies.

CONCLUSION

Lassonde obviously hates peanut butter, so he took action. We should all hate peanut butter and take similar action. Let the fly by nights die, consolidate those with decent assets and let the superstars stand up on their own two feet.

Quality over Quantity folks.  It is that simple.

It worked for AGORACOM in building this community to more than 10,000,000 pages per month. It has started working for Yahoo in re-building its business.  It will work for the junior mining and exploration sector.  The sooner the better.

Regards,
George

Posted in All Recent Posts, Gold $2,000, Junior Resource Manifesto | 3 Comments »

AGORACOM Hits 10,500,000 Page Views For The Month

Posted by AGORACOM at 7:52 PM on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

It gives me great pleasure to announce that AGORACOM recorded 10,514,612 page views for the period February 25 – March 26. This is our biggest month since we announced the launch of our wiki-powered “Investor Controlled Discussion Forums” on October 11, 2007.

When we made first made the announcement, we set out to destroy the stock discussion forum status quo that we have all come to hate over the past 10 years thanks to unrelenting spam, profanity, stock bashing, stock hyping and assorted noise. Many thought it could not be done because we could neither change habits nor unseat the incumbents. We not only knew we could, we knew that we would. Now, more than lip service, the following numbers speak for themselves:

THE TALE OF THE TAPE

(Figures for February 25 – March 26, 2008. All figures reported by Google Analytics)

  • Page Views 10,514,612
  • Visits 711,385
  • Unique Visitors 133,641
  • Pages Per Visit 14.78
  • Avg Time On Site 10:48
  • Number Of Countries/Territories 161
  • Top 10 (Canada, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Sweden, Mexico, Austria, Switzerland)

The numbers look even better when you consider:

  • The middle of March is pretty much a write-off for financial discussion as parents go on vacation or spend more time with their kids.
  • The numbers stem from pure discussion. No spam, flaming and bickering traffic.

HAPPY TO SEE A HAPPY COMMUNITY

We are very happy to see the data back up our theory that investors deeply desire the ability to amalgamate and discuss individual stock investments in a civilized community.

However, we are even happier to read the reaction of our members. Here are just some of the raving testimonials we’ve been able to pull from the site so far.

While we’re talking about our members, I want to take this moment to thank each and every one of them for believing in our model, spreading the word and breathing life into it. Without them, this would be one hell of an application with no users. A special thanks goes out to all HUB Leaders that abandoned their former communities at Stockhouse, Raging Bull, Yahoo Finance and others in hopes of a better experience. I’m glad our promises to you have been fulfilled.

STATUS QUO ISN’T SHAKING – YET

Now, I know we haven’t shaken any boots at the big 3 (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft) just yet but the numbers and testimonials clearly show we have tabled a solution that is far more appealing to investors that are no longer willing to accept the unacceptable.

Until now, the trash has ruled the day, forcing the masses to abandon discussion forums and conduct due diligence either on their own, or in small groups. It is inefficient but it is the best option we’ve had for nearly a decade.

Eventually, the market corrects inefficiencies and AGORACOM has set its sights on correcting this one.

By refusing to sacrifice quality for quantity, AGORACOM is attracting and will continue to attract smart and conscientious investors that understand the wisdom of crowds. Eventually, quality begets quality and a massive community that both generates its own content and moderates itself will replace the status quo.

BLOGS CAN NOT REPLACE DISCUSSION FORUMS

With the advent of financial blogs – and some pretty great ones that include Paul Kedrosky, Roger Ehrenberg, Barry Ritholtz and Mark McQueen to name but a few – some might argue discussion forums are no longer necessary, even outdated. Don’t make that mistake. Blogs are great for insight into the most important economic issues from a wide array of great minds. However, they rarely stay focused on a particular topic for more than a week, if not a day.

Stock discussion forums, on the other hand, provide investors with an ability to exchange ideas and analyze one particular stock 24/7/365. You might read about macro events (i.e. sub-prime) on a blog but figuring out the ongoing impact on your specific stock investments requires an extended micro discussion that blogs can not provide.

CONCLUSION

This is Wiki meets IGC (investor generated content) at its finest. There are bigger communities to be sure – but can you find another vertical in which the need for a drastically more efficient model is more needed? Trillions of dollars are at stake. People’s futures are at stake. We can DIGG for this and Wikipedia that – but what are their implications for inefficient or imperfect information?

Stock discussion forums are vital to the lives of so many people. I believe we are about to witness a paradigm shift that makes them valuable once again. Stay tuned for more.

Regards,
George

Posted in AGORACOM News And Events, AGORACOM Traffic, All Recent Posts | 3 Comments »

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