This time last year, some had hope
Last year in the approach to PDAC, the mood at Vancouver’s Roundup had been slightly more positive giving hope to the junior end of the market. February then witnessed a huge and increased financing for Franco Nevada demonstrating investor confidence in the large caps.
Unfortunately, by the time the March PDAC came around, the mood was back to dismal, particularly for minerals exploration.
PDAC 2017 – The mood is decidedly positive
PDAC 2017, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Convention, will run March 5-8 at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre http://www.pdac.ca/convention. The mood is decidedly positive. The TSX Global Mining Index (“TXGM”) at time of writing traded at 67.73, up from last year’s March 1 close of 46.98, a gain of 44%, granted off from a higher peak. Numerous financings have been announced and, better, closed for exploration companies on the TSX-V. The enthusiasm has been across many commodities, ranging from precious and base metals, to battery minerals such as lithium and graphite, and even to industrial commodities such as Zeolite.
Further, Roundup 2017, held January in Vancouver, was well attended, and hopping. This show focuses on the early stage markets and deals were getting done. Farther afield in Cape Town for the February Indaba the atmosphere was much improved. This conference tends to have more service providers and government groups. It takes a more advanced bull market in which Africa is in favour to make this venue productive on the deal side. The funding we are seeing so far into Africa is coming from Australia as the Aussies tent to assess the risk as less.
Given the lengthy duration of the down part of the cycle and increasingly positive economic news, we are hopeful this optimism will become entrenched and help fund some meaningful discoveries. In the event of a serious rally, there will be a serious lack of new projects.
Have a good PDAC!
