That’s a tough question to answer and your personal circumstances and attitude to risk will be different to mine.
I can’t remember where I found this diagram, so I’m unable to credit it unfortunately. It’s useful as you can see the potential number of years these investments can take, though not all of them will follow this path.
All of the companies in the list in the post above I’d still list as juniors in the mining sector, some are still pre-discovery, some have discovered and one or two have discovered and de-risked. It’s more challenging to do any financial analysis pre-discovery as the resource estimates aren’t there, but that’s often where the biggest gains are. You could have bought GGP in January 2018 for les than 1p, and made over 40 x your investment when it hit 38p recently. But you’d have had to wait for a long time with almost no growth for months on end during which folk were making a lot of money because they thought Elon Musk was cool.
If it’s an explorer you’re after you’d need to consider:
- How much cash do they have? What is the burn rate?
- Has the management team done this before?
- If they have, how did they treat existing shareholders when they needed more cash?
- How well and often do they communicate? Do they have skin in the game?
- What jurisdiction is the mine in? Australia and USA are good, places in Africa can be a nightmare
- How will they mine? Open pit, decline, block cave? Each has a bearing on the cost of extraction
- Where will the extracted materials be processed? Build a new plant, ship elsewhere?
The list isn’t exhaustive and there are more things to consider. A good resource for research is: AIM Mining Companies - AIM Sectors | AIM-Watch
I currently hold five of the companies on the list, have held four others and sold them. There are others companies not on the list worth looking into, Solgold mentioned above, great resource indicated, lots of squabbling though. Pure Gold & Panther Metals are others worth consideration.
Finding a good company is hard and harder still is having the conviction to hold. I came late to GGP and first came across it on this board. If I have the courage and discipline to just hold it and do nothing I expect it’ll max out my SIPP over time. It helps to be stubborn and a bit lazy at times also.
Based on the list I’ll have a look into BZT as I hadn’t been aware of the size of the opportunity there. If I was just getting into the sector now and was prepared to risk losing a chunk of my funds I’d look at Power Metal Resources, POW. Their Chairman has a bad rep from previous endeavours so some aren’t keen at all.
Company website: https://www.powermetalresources.com/
Presentation from December: https://www.powermetalresources.com/Uploads/8967-POW_Presentation_3rd_Dec_2020.pdf
Projects overview: https://www.powermetalresources.com/s/30/projects
Projects summary: https://www.powermetalresources.com/Uploads/8668-POW_Project_Summary_Updated.pdf
Recent Q&A with the CEO - https://www.share-talk.com/a-live-qa-session-with-power-metal-resources-plc-pow-l-webinar/?utm_content=buffer96535&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#gs.q0mvpu
I have some money in POW, though it’s a fraction of what I have in GGP.
Anyway, I hope this helps and have fun researching.