A response to IKN

He posted a video of Paco de Lucia playing Concierto de Aranjuez. Something that, it seems, all flamenco guitarists need to play at some point in time, even if it can be a bit boring at times. Then again, you can't really speak of Spanish music without coming to Joaquin Rodrigo eventually. None the less, Paco is a "hero" of mine and I hold his body of work quite dear to me.

As a response, I post the best thing since Paco, Vicente Amigo...All in my humble opinion of course.

Callejon de la Luna is an excellent track from Vicente... pure flamenco...before he got into the more poppy side of things (Un momento en el Sonido is out standing by the way).

I was wrong

I was wrong about both PLI and OCG. It does happen, although I have had a decent track record with these two.

Anyways, just wanted to admit I was wrong

Sueños del Caribe Blog

I was engaged in one of my favorite pass times, trolling the internet, when I came across this blog written by one Ronald Hill.

It deals with the the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, an area which I visited a number of times, but not nearly enough, in my three years living in the country. Most social commentary in Nicaragua is poor, the product of a very small lens of perspective or heavily politically influenced. The potential for quality documentation and commentary on the plight of people in the small, but very diverse country, is huge, but few and far between are those who can offer insight which stems from both involved personal experience and wide perspective.

I recall my first visit to the Southern Atlantic coast nearly two and a half years ago and how captivated I was with the area. It was interesting to see how in such a relatively short distance just how much the country and its people could change. Poverty is abound in every corner of the country, some more than others, but the majority live day to day, consistently in a struggle against the few Cordobas they may carry in their pocket at any given time. In the little neighborhood where I lived, most were in an economic conundrum at any given time, money was a tangible representation of the constant struggle that is life and most, from what I saw, had a difficult time dealing with it.

This still applies to the Caribbean coast, once again some areas more than others, but there does seem to exist a paradigm missing from their pacific compatriots (or, the "Spanish" as they call them), one that allows them become relieved from the pressure of the situation, at least for a period of time. Basically, that laid back Caribbean attitude, where items of stress and hard ship can be dismissed by saying "alright", or one of the other words they seemed to use as a general response.

In point, both those from the Pacific and the Atlantic suffer the consequences of not always having what they need; stealing, violence, and further suffering are a direct result of these situations on both sides, but those on the Atlantic coast seemed to deal with it better.

Like I said, my time spent on the Atlantic coast is not enough, nor was not deep enough, to give any meaningful commentary on the matter, but this guy is, go read his blog if you are interested.

 http://hillron.blogspot.ca/

Prometic Break Out

Anyone who stops by this blog every now and then will know that one of my more recent trade vehicles has been prometic life sciences (T.PLI).

Don't know a lot about the company to be honest, but its ups and downs were fairly predicable allowing for a number of nice trades, a handful of which I had outlined on here.

Well, it appears that on the back of two good news releases (here  and here ...assuming you consider a drug that is marketed to treat a disease which affects less than 200,000 people good news) to have broken out into new territory; I had expected there to be strong resistance at the 2.10 level, but it did away with that quickly. So, that leaves it at 2.36 and it will be interesting to see where the dust settles. As I look at the chart two possible outcomes come to mind, it either plays off the 2.10 or the 2.00 level, of course I wouldn't put any money (literally) on these predictions.

OceanaGold trade

I'm setting up to take a position in OceanGold in the next day or two. I believe it will swing up from its level of around 2.50 up too 2.80/2.85 in run which will see up and down movement in the 2.50-2.90 channel.

I've played this stock a few times and had it work out all times but last.

Anyone who follows me know I have a handfull I have been posting about in the last two or three months.

Another one I like to trade, PLI, took a good swing up today but I don't currently hold a position in it.

Heres the OGC chart for a better idea of what I'm talking about.

EDIT: looks like they had good financials and they are reporting that they will be paying a dividend of 4 cents/share.

Kind of odd these days to see a miner with a good balance sheet. Read here.

Are the Mahdia Gold Posts Getting Old Yet?

I'm sure they are, but this company is just so fun to kick around the mud..they make it so easy.

That being said, I should clarify that I was once invested in the company as I felt that there was actually a project there. Unfortunately, as I have outlined in some depth before, the company is run by the likes of those who prefer to scam a bit of money out of retail investors then put in some honest work and develop a project. It was a good lesson and digging deeper into the past of some of these guys hiding out on venture/CNSX.

Now, the issue with Mahdia gold has always been its inability to spend the money they raise, something that a few years ago they did in no small amount (even getting Mike Wekerle to drop in 4 mill), on anything actually meaningful. Its been over 5 years now and with over 14 million raised in this course of time, not even a lousy 43-101 report. As I'm sure most would assume, the vast majority has gone to management costs, with Zaakir himself having years where his salary as CEO was close to a million.

I imagine that the end of Mahdia's time with the Omai property is coming to an end. In 2011 they entered into an agreement with the government of Guyana for a prospecting license. In January 2012 they were "officially"awarded the license and details of the agreement were released; the company was the pay an overal sum on $11,500,000 to the Government of Guyana Mines Commission (GGMC). So..go back a few months when the payment was due. The GGMC comes knocking saying they have not made agreed upon payments. Zaakir negotiates and extension, the terms of which were released on December 9th 2014. The terms of the extension state that they have until November 16 2015 to have the ten million paid off...in installments...the first of which is to be made March 15th 2015.

So...in a month and a half's time the company will have 9 months to pay off $10,000,000, assuming they are able to make the first payment come March 15th. The news releases do not state the exact structure of the payments; likely they do not want to scare of any dummys left who think this might be a good thing. Oh...and as per the last financials, the company had 67k cash in the kitty.

Managment "scoured the very difficult and trying financial markets" (their words not mine) for months and the best they could come up with an alluvial gold JV with a local "mining" company. The pictures on their website show just how small time their operation is. Of course, Zaakir has his hand in this company (there is now actually 2 JVs in place...). The company has cited thievery from the projects as reason for the consistantly dissapointing numbers. The highest yield yet was 118.5 ounces. The Mahdia stake in the two joint ventures is 25% and 50%. Needless the say..not a lot of money ending up in the Mahdia bank account.

I'll be paying attention to the March 15th date to see if they end up making a payment or if they defualt. I bet on default.

Checking in on Biosyent

I wrote this post on December 26 in which I outlined what I thought was a biosyent swing trade opportunity. I was right that it would break through resistance, wrong in thinking that it would go through some sideways movement before continuing up, it just continued up.

I exited today. Everyone has their stocks that they play, stocks which they have watched long enough that a certain variety of intuition begins to become clear and is truly a special feeling.

I have been posting more direct trades lately and should take a moment to make it clear that I am not, nor am I qualified to, giving financial or investment advice. Anything I write on here is merely a personal blog which tracks my personal investments, investment opinion (mostly related to the mining sector), and anything else I feel like posting.

Anyways...Updated chart.