Making Hay Monday - March 11th, 2024
High-level macro-market insights, actionable economic forecasts, and plenty of friendly candor to give you a fighting chance in the day's financial fray.
“So the pizza guy just asked me about NVDA. Not kidding.” -Kevin Muir in his March 10th issue of The MacroTourist, quoting his former boss.
Go Small To Win Big
Champions
When two of the smartest money managers in the gold mining sector are saying and/or writing the same thing, even I am wise enough to pay attention. In this case, that refers to Sprott’s John Hathaway and former Barron’s Roundtable member, Fred Hickey. The latter publishes one of my favorite newsletters, The High-Tech Strategist. Despite its name, it is usually about half-devoted to precious metals miners and with a generally positive bias. The other half is typically on the dangerous euphoria toward tech stocks right now.
Both stances have been contrary to recent market trends but Fred has had an enviable track record of being right in the long run. When it comes to gold and silver miners, he’s definitely willing to sell into strength. For example, he did a considerable amount of profit-taking during 2020’s extraordinary surge by gold and silver miners. In other words, he’s no perma-bull, similar to my opportunistic approach to this highly mercurial group.
Also like yours truly, he holds the management teams of most large miners in something well short of high esteem. (By the way, those at the helm of Agnico Eagle, AEM, are a notable exception to this lukewarm appraisal.) This leads me to one of the key points of this Making Hay Monday: Fred’s preference for the mid-sized and small-cap precious metals (PM) miners.
Similarly, over the last month, I’ve had the pleasure of two different social events with the esteemed John Hathaway. If you Google that name, this might be one of the first images you see:
Or course, he was a lot younger when this photo was taken — just kidding. As you may have suspected, this isn’t THE John Hathaway (see below) who plies his trade at the natural resource specialist Sprott. But his reputation in the gold field is equally impressive… just in a slightly different way.
So what have both Fred Hickey and John Hathaway been telling me recently?