What is it with the obsession of my history and parsing the reasons I'm posting? It would be flattering in an Oscar Wilde sense (the only thing worse than being talked about...) except, frankly, it's a pretty shallow pool of commentators. P120 is the only sensible poster still bothering these days, and his last post nailed all that really matters... which is debate over factual analysis and opinions based off those facts. I don;t claim to be any great geo, just smart enough to take basic training and leverage that into reasonable understanding and usually fairly accurate judgements of any project, any where.
That is reality for all geos. Learn the basics at Uni and practice as a junior, perfect how to come up to speed on a given area's geology, then apply rigorous science, logic and creative thinking to making discoveries or predicting/extracting ore from mines etc, etc, etc. As an investor and follower of junior explorers, I knock Dean for making inaccurate or misleading statements and releases as I see them. DRE is acting in the public domain, soliciting investors into buying financial instruments of high risk, and I firmly believe there is a moral, if not legal, duty to do that job with a certain degree of accuracy and clarity. Made this point ad infinitum, really very simple whether you agree with my perspective or not...
Never met Dean myself, but have heard very good things about him as a person, and have no reason to think he isn;t first rate outside my personal objection to his reporting/communication style. As coincident has it, was out to dinner last night with Darcy's of Lyndon Station (next door to Mangaroon) and they think is a fantastic bloke, very happy for his REE exploration success. This idea that 'good people' make successful explorers, or antagonistic posters can't know sheet, is all so ridiculous. The rocks have changed for 1B years and explorers will only discover what's there to be found. No amount of happy clapping or pessimism will change that fact, or conclusions of logical deductions as the facts are uncovered. I genuinely wish DRE exploration success, but that doesn;t change the way I see data, or the way I see misleading reporting. They have a lot of interesting exploration going on and it suits me to sit at the HC table and add my opinions to the mix... suck it up people.
It's completely irrelevant and really nobody's business, but I'm proud of my life and career choices and so see no need to hide them. I left geology well respected by those I worked for/with, but it's not a bed of roses. A lot of my friends were unemployed late 90's to early 2000's, driving taxis and leaving the industry. It was a tough, boom bust cycle, with seeming shorter booms and longer busts culminating with the dotcom 'black smoke industries are dead' mentality. During the busts, if you were lucky enough to stay employed as I was, companies still screwed down the hierarchical structure, promotions were hen's teeth, and pay for often long stints out bush was not great (I once worked as an underground mine geo for almost considerably less than what a teenage nipper was on). Overlay that with marriage and a child on the way, and I'm not the only geo to wonder if it really is a young man's game...
My friends that haven't left have gone on to very senior positions with the biggest companies, or running explorers, or running consultancies etc as you'd expect after +30 year careers. Each position is very different and requires a very different skill sets and work approach if you can imagine. Are they all happy... meh, yes and no. I chose to step away after the birth of my first child and try something different, buying into a small business in Perth. Made over $1M in three years income, sold the business for 6 time what I paid for millions more, then was lucky enough to successfully punt that on the market 2008 onwards (killed in with Orecobre first lithium boom for example). Done a lot more business, with much more interesting stories since fwiw, and still happily married can't be said for many exploration geo's of my vintage or older...
So where does my confidence and arrogance come from you think? Perhaps it's from being in a happy place, successful by my own standards and a winner according to the game I chose to play... not somebody else's. I love junior resource companies and the markets, always have and always will. So is it really that surprising a retired geo who doesn;t work in the industry gets his geology fix and tries to stay sharp by sparring with others on HC?
GLTAH
DRE Price at posting:
3.3¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
(20min delay)