Kevin Barker writes serious stuff about investing. He specializes in profound analysis of ore body, drill hole result, world demand, political climate etc. Not the stuff of a blog like this where you can claim that it is the people in the game who make a mine a good investment or a bad investment—and you can get away with it. So when he wrote the advice that I repeat below, the obvious decisions was to post it here and not with his serious finacial evaluations. If you make money from this advice, let us all know.

 

Seriously, Kevin writes as follows:

How do you know if a company has hidden reserves? Just call them up and ask them. As an investigative reporter I spent years learning how to get people to tell me things I’m not supposed to know. The secret is just this: You have to listen for it. I get insider information all the time from companies. Why just the other day I got advance warning of somebody’s press release, a big one too, representing a material change in the company’s business. The guy didn’t mean to tell me, it just kind of slipped out.

Companies spill the beans all the time but the investor doesn’t hear it because they’re not listening. They’re hearing what they want to hear. Most have already made up their minds anyway and just want the company to co-sign their own theories. That’s not listening. That’s projection.

Here’s a great opener: ‘Do you have more than half a billion tonnes of recoverable ore in that project?’ It’s very easy to tell from the answer to that question whether the company truly believes in the project. You can tell by the inflection of the voice, the hesitation or lack of it in answering. Still not sure? Call back in a week and ask the same question in a different way. See if you get the same answer.

Most of all, be prepared to hear things you’re not expecting to hear. The best information I get is usually given totally gratis, without my asking for it.