My all-time favourite movie

Yet another glowing article about the greatest movie of all time, I've probably read a hundred such pieces and they never fail to get me clicking through, they're like catnip. The film with everything; great gags, a star-defining lead role, the most beautiful leading lady imaginable, wonderful supporting work, deft directing, smart editing and above all an intelligent and coherent script that works on many different levels. Read it yourself, right here.

Good to see US citizens caring about their politics for a change

Checking out other people's political rallies, shouting things, calling each other names, people arrested. It all made me think of this.

Fire and Ice (Robert Frost)

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Hey Chicago, hey St Louis, calm your jets people. You're falling for the biggest trick of all, that the person you elect will make a substantive difference.

Youtube here.

The Friday OT: Kula Shaker; Hush

Kula Shaker were (are) a bit of a Curate's Egg and were always in love with themselves a bit too much, but they made a few standout songs (Tattva, Govinda, 303, others) and this one, their most famous. 

Which still kicks trasero today.

Straight-shot, no-frills, Friday-feelgood, crank-it-up, Rock-And-Roll-Music.

Hey, I wonder why Casey Research is so keen on pumping Brazil Resources (BRI.v) at you?

Ah yeah, that'd be it:

That's 3m shares and $1.35m of the recent 45c placement ($3.39m) was taken by the Switzerland domiciled Casey fund, KCR LLC, by far the biggest single chunk of the placement. Filing here.

Funny how Casey constantly pumps these Amir Adnani dog stocks that offer nothing but unfulfilled promises and dreams of riches to the naive, isn't it? It's almost as if they're in cahoots on a scam....nah, perish the thought!

Franco Nevada (FNV) and sixty

We've mentioned Franco Nevada's issues with the U$60 level on a couple of recent occasions (here and here to be precise). So the chart today...

...has my attention. There you see:

1) FNV moving significantly above U$60 this morning.

2) On real fundies too, it's the reaction to its 4q15 and year-end results.

3) Volume strong.

Can FNV make this stick? Only time will tell (and if gold reverses all bets are off, por supuesto) but to my eye this time has a better shot than previous occasions. And if it does, it would be a strong bullish signal not just for Lassonde/Harquail but for the whole sector, as FNV has proven and franked lead indicator credentials.

Reality, y'see.

The IKN Clive Johnson poll results are in...

...voting closed yesterday and here are the results:

Notes:

• On the rare occasions IKN runs a poll we get about 200 voters. This time 451, which is a lot.
• Voting was split so I don't think we can draw any scientific conclusions about this one. However we need to bow to Vox Populi a little and recognize that the "he's an alcoholic" option came top.
• The jokey get-out option polled lowest. From that I'd infer that yes, BTO does have a problem on its hands here. 

Bottom line: You may be a "F__king CEO", Clive, but these days nobody is indispensable in our caring and wonderful world of capitalist corporate culture. Got the message yet?

Brexit news: Boris Johnson tells his fellow citizens that, 'We can be like Canada'

In fact Boris, you're already closer than you think:

Report here.

Mining Journal: "Compliant documents mislead investors"

This links to one of the better PDAC reports out there, one from Mining Journal on the presentation that demonstrated the limitations of 43-101 and shows how the failed system is being used by the BS promo pump companies to hoodwink investors. Strangely, none of the very same of the promo pump sites in cahoots with the BS-merchants, getting paid to trump up the crap and fleece the investment public, made any mention of this talk over the week. It starts like this:

"Within a light-hearted presentation on NI 43-101 reports at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada’s annual convention came a hard message: the industry is publishing speculative project studies that are misleading investors."

Full report here.

PretiVm (PVG) (PVG.to): You are small, you are not special, run away little people

PVG NR today here, which starts like this:

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - March 11, 2016) - Pretium Resources Inc. (TSX:PVG)(NYSE:PVG) ("Pretivm" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that Orion Co-Investments II (ED) Limited ("Orion") will subscribe for 752,906 Pretivm common shares (the "Common Shares") at a price of US$4.58 per Common Share in a non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement").

And here's a chart:

It's called 'entitlement', little person. Get a sense of it yet?

Chart of the day is...

...six months or so of the Gold/Copper ratio:

You real chart people with very important official technical analysis qualifications* are much smarter than me on these things and have probably noticed the pattern (those red lines, I drew them in) before your humble scribe ever did. Never mind, I think they're worthy of a little airing today.

*e.g. the brass necks shysters who predict gold under U$1/k for months on end and then conveniently forget all that talk when their random walk call fails to materialize, preferring to bask in the gold rise they didn't call. Pretend all you like, failures, real people were watching.

Posting will be light today

For secret reasons.

ZIRP, NIRP and mail

Japan pulls the interest rates down, Yen pops. Europe pulls the interest rates down, Euro pops. Beginning to see a trend?

Meanwhile, smarter comment by far from reader Claudio, who reads IKN from the other side of the pond. His mail:

The three questions to take away from PDAC 2016 so far

1.) Who trims Brent Cooks beard?
2.) Who chooses Rick Rules ties?
3.) Do they smile a little more smiley when they are interviewed by Daniela Cambone?

btw: the world is still standing here in Europe although the ECB announced some crazy shit today. I mean everybody is screaming about zero % key interest rate but what is far more interesting in my eyes is that the ECB now buys corporate bonds with Investment grade Rating as well to be able to pump 80 Billion euros in the system. As this is a quite small market with around 500 Billion or so the ECB could end up with a fourth of the corporate Investment grade bond market. Which then would destroy any margins for Banks who would be willing to give loans to companies... Thank good I am not responsible for investing the reserve funds of an insurance company nor the own book of a bank.

Continental Gold (CNL.to): Police arrest the heads of the Buriticá illegal mining

Country expert Paul Harris of The Colombia Gold Letter has all the news over at his blog. This is how his post starts:

Police in Colombia arrested Eduardo Otoya who is suspected of being one of the organizers behind criminal mining in Antioquia, including the invasion by thousands of illegal miners at the Buritica project of Continental Gold. Upon hearing of his arrest, President Juan Manuel Santos Tweeted “congratulations to [the police] for the decisive blow against criminal mining in Antioquia. Capturing Eduardo Otoya, alias ‘The Doctor’”.

Full story here.

Jemi Fibre (JFI.v) bought by CanWel (CWX.to)

When a big player buys a small player, the people owning the small player usually win big. Except of course when the small play is a Bobby Genovese bullshit pump and dump scam.

News release here.

Taboe Resources (TAHO) (THO.to) continues to keep its worker deaths a secret

The Tahoe Resources (TAHO) (THO.to) year-end financials were reported this evening and Kven MacArthur continues to refuse to acknowledge the death of his worker at the Escobal mine in Guatemala. The death of a worker while on duty at Escobal in a workplace accident during the fourth quarter in November 2015 is not mentioned in the Year End disclosure.

Pretty disgusting, Kev. You should be ashamed of yourself. I know some of your staff are.

PDAC attendance down yet again

It's "over 22,000" this year according to the official PDAC NR just out. That's down from 23,578 last year and marks the fourth year running of declining attendances.

So now you know. NR here.

Peru: Julio Guzmán and César Acuña barred from Presidential election

The verdict has just been handed down by Peru's election people.

Particularly controversial is the barring of Guzmán, more on electoral technicalities and the use of legalities by his opponents, he was until today a clear second place in voter intention polls and set to contest the run-off with Keiko Fujimori.

Banana Republic.

The song for PDAC Wednesday

Enjoy:

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

IKN viewer stats

So I get this mail from reader AK who says:

"...something crossed my mind last night when looking at the online poll re Clive. Have you given any consideration as to what the poll might reveal about your readership volumes / subscription volumes - and if that matters?"

To which your humble scribe replies:

You think I care?

But then I get to thinking that even if I know 400 answers to a poll like that is a lot, you might think that's all the people who ever come over. And then as you cats that get killed by curiosity might care more about the viewing figures at IKN than I do, I thought it might be fun to show you. So I took this screenshot of the Google-run back office blog stats page about four minutes ago, you can see for yourself:

Basically, 10,000 pageviews yesterday, 2k and bits so far today (it's early), 142k last month, coming on for nine million since the blog started (obviously it's got better viewer figures now than in the first years). And these numbers don't include the people who read IKN via the e-mail daily digest (couple of thousand of those) or the RSS service (I have no idea, could be 1,500). Finally, please consider that IKN isn't a multi-page web-designed and marketed SEO special-technique thing. It's just a single page blog, doing its thing on a very niche subject.

Capstone Mining (CS.to) hedges

News this morning from Capstone (CS.to) is that it's hedged itself to the eyeballs in order not to go Chapter 11 in 2016. There are several angles to this news:

1) CS.to now says its price fixed 90% of its 4q15 copper sales at U$2.13/lb. I'd dearly like to know how it managed to do that when in its 4q15 audited financials it claimed an adjusted 4q15 price of U$2.26/lb. I mean, I know that copper sold at U$2.30/lb or so in the first weeks of 4q15, but a 13c/lb difference on just 10% of non-priced copper? That sounds weird. Sure would like to see the details on that little deal.

2) Let's be clear about the quality of assets at Capstone too, because there's a crystal clear message here: CS.to has been shopping them around but clearly no takers, nobody wants to buy Santo Domingo, nobody wants to buy Cozamin, nobody wants to buy Minto. And whole we're here, CS must have been offered a particularly shitty silver stream deal from April 2017 onward to have refused.

3) Darren "drop the" Pylot tells us today that "...our first priority is to reduce our debt risk...". This is the very same Darren Pylot that stuffed the company full of the very debt now strangling it financially. No sign of a change at the top, though. Ask yourself why.

But for me the real story, the bottom line is that sooner or later these blown-out corporations have to stop pretending and putting on brave faces and admit the obvious, the issue that we've been covering in the case of CS.to at IKN for many moons in pieces such as...

...this dated August 18th 2015

...this dated November 27th 2016

...this dated January 18th 2016

And that issue can be condensed down to one simple phrase, one of the favoured messages here at IKN:

LOOK AT THE BALANCE SHEET

You cannot ignore the disaster area of this company's financials. The IR department and the CEO and the paid pushers in the sell side studios can rah-rah all they like, it's pure bullshit when the talking stops and the money gets counted. Capstone, though far from being the only example, has been killed as a company by awful management decisions that start at the very top of the organization. The people running the company today do not deserve to be in charge, period.

Joe Mazumdar and his willing assistant Brent Cook do BNN's Market Call

From BNN tonight, one hour of views and opinions that any mining sector person who do well to watch. As usual a smooth and polished performance from the industry legend. Cook wasn't bad either.

The link to the show is right here, go use it.

Here are the tickers of companies they fielded on the viewer's questions sections (rather than their boring past picks or new top picks, watch the vid yourself for those), with IKN translating the duos' sometime diplomatic answers:

• GSV.v: Not bad, the corporate buying (OGC and GG) is interesting, next set of drills (to South) will be critical.
• ER.to: Run away.
• PVG: Leery.
• NXE.v: Great discovery, but will need plenty of drilling out. No value in owning now.
• THO.to: They like it, but then again they don't understand the off-scale Guatemala risk so don't blame them too much.
• MND.to: Likeable
• NMI.to: Joe likes and is buying. As he's the boss of the duo that's good enough for me.
• CLZ.v: Brent likes and owns, new discovery.
• EVR.to: Brent likes/owns it. Backing the jockey (the new geol Alain Charest)
• EMX.v: Fairly positive noises.
• TGM.v: Neutral, but now it's being bought out no biggie.
• EDV.to: Buying TGM, neutral noises.
• VIT.v: They tried hard to say something diplo and almost succeeded. Run away.
• BSX.to: If they get the permit they'll like it more. Duh.
• RMX.v: Run away.

Bad news for the gold price momentum

Right here:

Casey Research, the contrarian indicator to beat them all.

It's International Women's Day, and...

...in order that you understand its importance to Latin American politicians and thought-leaders, your humble provides the link to last year's March 8th post on the subject. 

For what it's worth, it was one of my personal favourite posts of 2015 (and it only contains four words).

Roxgold (ROG.v): Brokerages get out of jail

A lucky escape for the brokerage syndicate (led by Cormark and Macquarie) that ran the $23m bought deal on RoxGold (ROG.v), as it was common knowledge up to around ten days ago that the placement was severely undersubscribed and the houses were staring a large baghold in the face. Then came the gold pop, life got beautiful just at the right time, the sales desks hit the phones and today ROG gets to announce the bought deal plus the overallotment is filled.

And some stuffed suit somewhere will get a fat bonus instead of a pink slip. Better born lucky than rich, they say.

The Vampire Squid doubles down on its bearish commodities call

Here's the very latest from Goldman Sachs, who are calling copper lower by 10% and gold to move back down to U$1,100/oz in the near-term, among other pearls.

Don't kill the messenger, people. This is capital markets, not Sparta.

Thanks due to A.Reader:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

1. Market views on reflation, realignment and re-levering have driven a premature surge in commodity prices that we believe is not sustainable. Last year commodity prices were driven lower by deflation, divergence and deleveraging which were reinforcing through a negative feedback loop. Deflationary pressures from excess commodity supply reinforced divergence in US growth and a stronger US dollar which in turn exacerbated EM funding costs and the need for EMs to de-lever though lower investment and hence commodity demand. While we believe that these dynamics likely ran their course last year resulting in signs of rebalancing, the force of their reversal has created a new trend in market positioning that could run further. However, the longer they run, the more destabilizing they become to the nascent rebalancing they are trying to price.
2. The reversal started last month with ‘green shoots’ of rebalancing. Deflation turned into reflation with evidence of long-awaited oil supply curtailments in both the US and other non-OPEC producers which supported energy prices. Divergence lost out to realignment with increased fears about US economic growth. This together with strength of EU manufacturing data over the same period and a pickup in China credit data in January led the market to question the idea that the US is fundamentally outperforming its peers. These worries are reflected in the recent weakness of the US dollar and strength in the gold price. And recent policy announcements in China combined with the pickup in Chinese credit raised the prospects of leverage-driven investment demand as a focus on de-leveraging faded.
3. While these dynamics could run further, they simply are not sustainable in the current environment, in our view. Energy needs lower prices to maintain financial stress to finish the rebalancing process; otherwise, an oil price rally will prove self-defeating as it did last spring. The most recent macro data coming out of the US reinforces US growth divergence. Increases in core CPI, strong employment growth and a rebound in manufacturing, pushed the US MAP score – a metric for how much macro data surprises – up significantly to nearly positive for the first time in 2016. Most importantly, our US economics team continues to expect solid consumer spending growth of 2.5% to 3.0% in 2016. Finally, credit growth in China remains too high relative to GDP growth underscoring the need for de-leveraging.
4. While we still believe oil will likely rebalance this year and create a deficit market by year end, ‘green shoots’ of a deficit alone are not sufficient for a new sustainable bull market. Only a real physical deficit can create a sustainable rally which is still months away should the behavioral shifts created by the low prices in January and February remain in place. Commodity markets are physical spot markets, not anticipatory financial markets that are driven by expectations. This is why an early rally in oil prices would prove self-defeating before a real deficit materializes as it would reverse the supply curtailments that are expected to rebalance the market in 2H16.
5. The ‘green shoots’ for oil include US E&P’s guiding production lower (c.600 kb/d), supply disruptions in Iraq and Nigeria (c.750 kb/d), non-OPEC ex-US producers reporting significant potential reductions (c.400 kb/d) and strong US oil demand. While the Iraqi and Nigerian disruptions will likely prove temporary, they do help in the rebalancing process and have likely helped to tighten Brent timespreads. However, the other green shoots are both price sensitive and are still more relevant for expectations of rebalancing, than the rebalancing seen to date. The current oil market is still in a large surplus as witnessed by last week’s large US inventory build and the large global stock overhang. To keep the financial pressure on producers, we maintain our near-term view of a trendless oil market with substantial volatility between $40/bbl (under which creates financial stress) and $20/bbl (under which creates operational stress).
6. We also maintain our bearish view on gold that has rallied along with the other commodities. Our short gold recommendation (which we opened with a 17% upside, in line with our $1000/toz 12-m forecast) is currently at a c.5% loss, with a stop loss at 7%. This gold rally was driven by a lack of conviction in divergence in US growth as a weak US dollar has been highly correlated with a higher gold price. We believe this realignment view of weak global growth is not supported by the US data, which will likely reinforce higher US yields, a stronger US dollar and the return of divergence, particularly should strong US consumer growth dissolve market fears regarding US growth. This in turn will likely put downward pressure on gold prices towards our near-term target of $1100/toz (current price is $1265/toz).
7. Despite a continued deterioration in Chinese manufacturing data in the face of recent easing measures, copper and metal prices have also surged to fresh highs. Again we believe these rallies are also not supported by the broader financial environment in China. China is credit constrained and likely to use limited stimulus to promote consumption over investment through fiscal policy. The only real avenue for metals demand growth is through an improvement in property sales and prices that will eventually feed into higher construction activity, which the current data does not support and would be a difficult policy outcome to achieve by design.
8. The Chinese government is publicly targeting a reduction in the inventory of residential structures to create higher housing prices and promote associated positive wealth effects, such as improved consumer confidence. As a result, the government is restricting new starts in cities with high inventory levels while stimulating sales through credit availability. As a result, China property new starts and completions are likely to remain weak in 2016 despite the recent policy measures. Accordingly, we are maintaining our near-term copper price target of $4500/mt (current price is $5000/mt).
9. Iron ore rallied the most in the past week, breaching $60/t today. We believe this rally too will likely prove temporary and are maintaining our end-of-year target of $35/t . The rally in iron ore prices was the result of a surge in steel prices needed to widen mill margins in order to incentivize operators to pay the restart costs and rebuild operating inventories of raw materials as China enters this year’s peak construction season. However, the physical shortfall in steel supply can be filled easily and the subsequent deterioration in steel margins is likely to put iron ore prices under renewed pressure. In other words, the market fundamentals are unchanged and the current rally is only a brief lull before production cuts at high-cost mines are required to make room for low-cost producers.
10. While deflation, divergence and de-leveraging are all likely to reassert themselves and reapply modest downward pressure on commodity prices in the near-term, we do believe that the negative feedback loop that they create has mostly played out in this cycle from a bearish price trend perspective, particularly in oil which is why we maintain a bullish end-of-year view in energy. However, it is important to remember that in the end this was a supply-driven bear market and will not trade like a demand-driven market. In a demand-driven market, once demand gets ahead of supply following an economic recovery, supply struggles to catch up as it was also likely slowed by the lower prices. In the current supply-driven market, demand hasn’t really changed, it takes lower prices to push and keep supply below demand to create a deficit. As a result, higher prices are much harder to sustain in a supply-driven market since supply is primed to return with higher prices. But this lesson will likely only be learned through false starts.

PDAC's biggest mystery

 

Clive Johnson, the ("i'm a f__king") CEO of B2Gold (BTO.to) (BTG), has apparently been absent from the show up to today. Anyone seen him yet? If anyone spots him, IKN is offering a reward.

Any idea why he might be missing from PDAC? Not a clue here, y'know...

PretiVm (PVG) confirms the bull market is back...

...by immediately reverting to one of the nastiest habits of the BS promo marketer, smearing the drill assays. This morning's NR from PretiVm-We're-Cool-For-Going-All-Roman Resources (PVG) trumpets this...

Hole VU-565 intersected 206.23 grams of gold per tonne uncut over 17.00 meters, including 6,980 grams of gold per tonne uncut over 0.50 meters

...at the top of the shop. You're supposed to be impressed of course, but when you stick it through the handy-dandy drill hole calculator you get this:

Yup, that's 16.5m of 0.9 g/t gold and a thin, high-grading vein.

And why are they doing this? That's because PVG is still trying to convince the world that VOK is an underground bulk-mining operation. And that's because if they bowed to the obvious and admitted it was a thin vein mine, they'd have to greatly reduce their annual production estimates. 

Hey, wonder why that PVG COO resigned all of a sudden last month?

Katanga Mining (KAT.to): This is not good at all

There's nothing pleasant about relaying this sort of news. IKN sends its best wishes to the families of the seven missing people.

ZUG, Switzerland , March 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Katanga Mining Limited (TSX: KAT) ("Katanga" or the "Company") today announces that at 06.00 local time on 8 March 2016 , a geotechnical failure was experienced on the north wall of the KOV open pit mine at Katanga's operation in the DRC.  Seven persons who were believed to have been working in the vicinity of the failure are currently unaccounted for.  In addition, an unknown amount of damage to the dewatering infrastructure in the pit is expected to have occurred.  KCC has mobilized its search and rescue team and the process of locating the unaccounted for personnel is in progress, as well as an assessment of the damage and recoverability of the affected infrastructure.  Mine operations are currently suspended. The families of the missing workers are in the process of being contacted and will be offered full support. All relevant authorities have been informed and KCC is working closely with them. Further updates will be issued as appropriate.

Breaking: Michael Bloomberg will NOT run for the US presidency

Jeesh, what a whuss. Here's the op-ed he's just published, "The Risk I Will Not Take"

That leaves us with mediocrity to choose from on either side. Again.

The most successful country pavilion at PDAC is....

...Ecuador! Organized by its Minister of Mining Javier "We're A Serious Mining Country Honest Mister" Cordova. And here's why:

The best buffet in town, gratis. Buen provecho, varones blancos gordos y viejos.

UPDATE: Reader Claudio says:

"Biggest surprise of the PDAC 2016 so far: Rick Rule did not make IVN his Top Pick on BNN. 

Second: Ecuador's buffet."

And before you get too cocky about your latest junior mining trade win, investor boy...

...remember that if a crap-assed rip-off company that relies on paid pumpers to get its sorry message out, returns constant losses, has a balance sheet that should be taken to the emergency ward immediately and with nothing but pain for its backers for a full decade like Metanor (MTO.v) can see its shares double...

...any piece of Canadian equity shit can. You aren't impressing anyone. Run along now whippersnapper, and stop mailing me with your hubris-laden wastes of bandwidth. We're all geniuses now, yaknowz.

Chuck!

Looking goooooood there, Chuck!

See you down The Pilot, Chuck!

PS: Oh nearly forgot! See you down there too, Daryl!

Chesapeake Gold (CKG.v): Reader RW says it best

I was checking out this morning's NR from Chesapeake Gold (CKG.v) which announced (on PDAC Monday! Wow that's a lucky coincidence!) its "updated pre-feasibility study" results and and wondering all to my little self "Oh lordy lord, where do I start with this heap of dogshyte?" when all of a sudden reader and mailpal 'RW' pops into my mailbox with this (name removed to protect innocent and guilty alike):

Ah yeah, "Because optionality!", thanks RW, you saved me time and effort this fair and sunny Monday morning. I owe you a beer. 

As for CKG.v, the word most closely associated with this project is "never". A stock that could only ever appeal to the greenhorn or the hardcore mouthbreather end of the goldbug community. Or Rick Rule.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

"Hello Otto

"I drop in to your site from time to time and was greeted with your take (via another site reader) on CKG. I am disappointed on the IRR but had thought that at $1600.US+ Au the project was possible. I always trusted Randy Reifel and thought that he did a good job and was honest. Kept cash in the bank and a low float. Anyway I sold 1/3 of my position because I value your comments."

IKN back. My question is why did he only sell a third?

Argentina at PDAC

Here's the scene at PDAC's Argentina presentation...

...standing room only and that's not a bad thing. Though it seems to be SRO for overweight middle-aged white males, so we can debate the merits of the demographics separately.

As for the contents of the Argentina Mining Minister's speech (delivered in Spanish, oh how the overweight middle-aged white males loved that detail, you can see how rapt be their attention to the front of the room), it's sadly more style than substance.

• We wantz to be teh mining country yes.
• We like miners.
• We have teh good community relationz.
• We likes teh business peoples.
• etc 

But fear not, the journalists will make it sound more interesting in their gushing purple prose reports later. Because CFK's not there any more, y'see.

First Mining Finance (FF.v): Yet more dilution, yet another piece of moose pasture

You would have thought that even Keith 'Bantamweight' Neumeyer would have got the message by now, but apparently not. Despite a price chart that compares to the real junior miners like this...

...he continues to dilute his suckers shareholders to kingdom come, today adding another 2.54m shares to the count by buying a property from Brionor (next to the other überdog thing he picked up recently, Clifton Star, the reason behind last week's fisticuffs...poor guy can't take a joke). Anyway, that puts the FF.v shares out at 358.6m pro rate, up from 73.8m less than a year ago. Crazy, zero respect for the people paying his wages (and his juicy deal bonuses, of course).

An old man's broken model, nobody's falling for your smoke and mirrors any longer Keith. If you don't believe me, take another good hard stare at that price chart above. Seriously, what's the point in plonking down cash into a risky junior story if you get a far better return from good old gold bullion? You guys are supposed to run positive beta to the underlying metal, not negative!

Peru Presidential Polling: Keiko Fujimori and Julio Guzmán lead the field

Released last night on Peru's political TV show 'Sin Medias Tintas' (aka "Son Medios Tontos", know your Spanish and know your Peru political talking heads to get the joke) and a link here to a report with the numbers, here's the latest voter intention poll for the Peru Presidential election set for April 10th (just a month plus days away now):

Once again we see Keiko with a solid lead. Once again we see the outsider Julio Guzmán consolidated in a clear second place (if he's allowed to run of course, yet another judgment coming up against him this week). He's up 6.2% since the last GfK poll taken on January 31st. Then come the stragglers, with PPK down 2.6% since January 31st, Alan García getting absolutely nowhere (that's a big surprise) and César Acuña down from second spot at the beginning of the year to a disaster today. He's ruined.

Aside Guzmán, the other uppers on a minor level are Alfredo Barnechea, a Lima centrist politico, and Verónika Mendoza, the lefty and the only candidate among all those to offer a different economic model. Both those have risen slightly, but it's looking too late to be able to challenge Guzmán for second spot. If Guzmán's candidacy gets thrown out by the judges this week however, all bets are off. That's possible, not probable.

The IKN Weekly, out now

IKN356 has just been sent to subscribers, a copper-coloured edition,brought to you by the music of Paco de Lucia and JS Bach.

Nancy Reagan and Aaron Ramsey

Just saying.

UPDATE: Man those guys at Wikipedia are fast.

Talk of a "curse" returned in late August 2013 when Ramsey scored twice in Arsenal's 2–0 victory in the Champions League against Fenerbahçe; interviewer Sir David Frost and Irish poet Seamus Heaney died three and four days later, respectively. Other celebrities whose deaths have been linked to the Ramsey effect are actor Paul Walker,^[113] actor/comedian Robin Williams,^[113] and actor/filmmaker Richard Attenborough.^[113] David Bowie died the day after Ramsey scored in Arsenal's 3–1 league win over Sunderland,^[114] and actor Alan Rickman died on 14 January 2016; Ramsey had scored in a 3–3 draw with Liverpool the night before.^[114] On March 6th, 2016 Ramsey scored against Tottenham Hotspurs, and the following day former First Lady, Nancy Reagan passed away.^[114]