Chris Berry, the President of House Mountain Partners, LLC and Co-Editor of the Disruptive Discoveries Journal. He is a well-known writer, speaker and analyst, who focuses on Energy Metals, which are metals used in the generation or storage of energy. He has been a guest lecturer at the Federal Reserve and has testified to U.S. Congress, on natural resource policy, focusing on strategic supply chain development of minerals.
According to Mr. Berry the big stories at the 2015 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) Convention will revolve around when the current bear market will end, and how this may occur. Central to answering these, are a few more questions Mr. Berry expects to address at PDAC.
They are: “Will Mergers and Acquisitions create value or just rid the sector of too many companies? How will juniors continue to get funded if the appetite for exploration doesn’t come back soon? Why isn’t gold responding to a multitude of geopolitical events? And can investing in technology and innovation help get the mining industry back on its feet?”
As a result, PDAC should shed some light on these questions, but in the meantime Mr. Berry is not interested in any particular juniors at this time, however he did comment on the recent rise in prices of junior Rare Earth Elements (REE) stocks:
“This is a result of the Chinese abolishing their quota system for rare earth exports, which was ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization. Prices for a few select rare earths have risen on this news and it has breathed much needed life into the space. Also, Molycorp’s news of increased production has reinvigorated their share price and likely pulled the share prices of REE junior miners along with it.”
When questioned if this was sustainable Mr. Berry suggested:
“Rather than whether or not this rally is sustainable (I’m not certain), I think a different question to answer would be whether or not REE juniors can expect it to be any easier to raise capital to fund development of their projects. To this, I would say definitely not.”
Uranium’s spot and term price have risen recently, however Mr. Berry’s 2015 outlook for uranium and uranium stocks has its challenges.
“We may continue to see the uranium spot and term price increase marginally, but I don’t expect this to help most uranium companies in 2015. The uranium market is in oversupply and will remain that way until a majority of Japanese reactors come back on line and the much-heralded build out of nuclear reactors in emerging markets really surfaces. I like uranium long-term, but 2015 will continue to be challenging for uranium companies across the entire value chain. Most uranium juniors should be viewed as long-term call options on the price of uranium.”
