At the Cambridge House Vancouver Resource Investment Conference this past Sunday and Monday, we had the chance to ask respected mining analyst Brent Cook for his outlook on the sector for which he is best known. Here’s what he said:
Right now one of the biggest risks given how 2015 is starting off so positive for the junior sector and gold, not copper or base metals, but certainly for gold… The biggest risk is not to get caught up into this and start buying worthless zombie juniors. That’s the biggest risk. Be focused, buy quality, don’t buy crap. That’s the biggest risk.
This is the third year running where most of my counterparts have called the bottom. I think we are bouncing a long, in the gold sector at least, along the bottom. This reminds me a lot of how we initially started to come out of the 1997 to 2002 bust, this is what this whole bust reminds me of. We came out, it came out slow, but it picked up and did quite well. Hopefully we’ll see that again.
The Swiss move was major. In the base metals space, copper is interesting. I suspect there’s not near as much copper coming into the market as a lot of people think, so we may be in deficit later this year, so copper is one to watch, but really its the gold price that’s carrying everything right now.
To me, it looks like we’ve certainly formed a base, and I’m biased towards the upside on gold. Long term, certainly, this year, I think we’re going to be higher at the end of the year than we are now.