Ann: Trading Halt, page-90

I'm sure we all have our sad stories, mate. You make me wanna tell mine. Dates are vague as
all my share certificates are at my work place so I can't double check, but the story is 100% true.

I got back into the market in 2014 (after a 27 year absence) after deciding to try to supplement my
future retirement income via the "dangerous end of the market".... the so-called "penny dreadfuls".
Online platforms made my old broker-based share purchases of the 80's obsolete. I loved it. Early
days I bought into a few promising stocks which in the end "died in the ar$e." (financial and tech
stocks IAM, XPE and NOR).

I also bought into a mining stock at a bargain basement price of $0.005 and $0.006 (180,000
shares) somewhere early on, maybe 2015. This stock was in the very early exploration stages for
iron and copper and had some promising WA tenements with good deposits, but were still a long
way from lift off. A while later (probably 2017) I needed some quick cash for an initial buy-in to
another stock. My Fe/Cu company was going nowhere, but the initial $800-$900 outlay was now
worth about $1400, so I sold out at $0.008, took my $450 profit and put the whole $1400 into the
new stock. I told myself I would buy back into the miner (which I still believed in) in a few weeks
when funds were available. None of this was big money stuff.... I was just dipping my feet at that
stage looking for the "golden goose" stock.

I never bought back in and the original miner became just a memory. Earlier this year I was going
over my watch lists and came across the old miner I'd sold out at $0.008. The stock was Venturex
Resources (VXR now DVP) and the share price was $0.79. Yep.... that made it about a 155 bagger
if I'd only held onto it and valued my initial 180,000 shares at just under $140,000 from the original
$900. To say I was shattered is somewhat of an understatement.

The story had a good ending though. The company which I invested that $1400 in was an early
stage lithium miner Core Exploration (CXO). I continued to buy in over the next 3 years to the
extent I ended up with 460,000 shares averaged in at about $0.044 ($20,400 total). In the past 14
months since then CXO has 15-bagged for me and put the memories of VXR and the "what ifs" far
far behind me.

Retirement comes in about 3 months time and my "golden goose" CXO is showing a profit of about
a quarter million with more to come. Along the way I also bought into DRE (800,000 shares at about
$0.014) and have a few bags profit already as I await alongside most of you for the coming week's
announcement.

Investing at this end of the market is pretty harsh on a person unless they have a philosophical
attitude and a tough enough hide to handle the hard times - and there are plenty of them. But when
a person has success at this end of the market and earns the right to use the phrase "I told you so!"
it's a fan-fkn-tastic feeling. I really hope you all get the chance to use that phrase to the people in
life who doubted you.

Good luck to each and every one of you and may the gutsy decisions of the past make all your
dreams come true.

Life is good.


PS: This is my 1000th post on Hot Copper. I hoped it would be memorable. At least it is for me.