Market Update

General - Finders

Good afternoon

with all this hype around battery-metals, the market might finally wake up to the fact, that some good old-fashioned metals like copper , managnese and nickel are also needed for batteries, or wiring of electrical cars! For the first time, one could feel speculative interest in stocks like Panoramic today! may it last long! 

Obviously, the demand for nickel is not significantly influenced by battery-demand at this stage - but this will change over the enxt few years. It might be a bit early to buy nickel now - but a miner with a 10-year mine life - and probably much longer - which is not wasting it´s reserves to supply into a market, which at this stage is not tight at all, should have it´s attractions in times, when you get no interest for your money, anyway! And this is even before you count on the cobalt as a meaningful byproduct.

Zinc got some attention again, with Glencore buying control in a large, privately owned zinc producer, Volcan, for a price, which looks pretty full. We had heard before, that Glencore is still very bullish on zinc - this action would certainly underline their buliishness - and Glencore is the largest trader/producer of zinc by a very large margin. In other words: If somebody knows, where zinc prices are heading, it´s Glencore! It might be worthwhile to revisit some of our zinc stories, like Heron Resources, Venturex and especially Foran Mining in Kanada! Trevali in Kanada has made a new 6-year high yesterday, and Lundin Mining, a mored iversified base metal producer, is trading just below it´s high.

Having started pretty strong, metals are giving in to a slightly stronger US$, and some profit-taking ahead of the weekend. 

German factory orders very strong today, while labor market numbers were weaker, as a consequence of teh hurricanes, I guess. Weekly earnings rising faster than expected - in my opinion, higehr interest rates in the US as well as some form of tightening are inevitable. Mrs.Lagarde is indicating, that the IMF will upgrade their GDP forecast from 3.5% this year, and 3.6% next. Resources are still the place to be, in my opinion - for as long as ineterest rates don´t move too strongly.

Finders Resources - takeover! BUT I think this is the first takeover I am unhappy with! In fact, I am pretty worried! The two largest shareholders + another, Indonesian party have joined a JV to pool their shares ( 19.8% ) and have made their intention clear, to shortly make a formal 23ct- cash takeover-bid. No premium at all, for a company, which is very cheap...any bid should at least have a 3 in front....These shareholders have been very instrumental in Finders getting ( finally ) all government permissions to build the kine on Wetar, which previously, had taken them years of waiting. Obviously, these guys are well conencted and pretty powerful. They have also stated, that tehy would exit Finders register alltogether, if the bid would not succeed, as the current investment would be way too smal for them to worry about. This is, what frightens me a little. But even more frightening is, that the takeover-parties are the same, who made a bid for Intrepid, another Indonesian-, and very dirty story, indeed, a few years ago, which ended horribly for independant shareholders. I will be in Pertrh the week afetr enxt, and have already made contact to the chairman, and another director, to discuss, as I ahve a significant shareholding in this company, as you know. I have not discussed the takeover with anyone in Australia today - so the above comments are my very personal and subjective comments, as usual!

Have a good weekend

WS