hotcopper perception and reality

I have known Chris Cairns since late 2004 just prior to his appointment as MD of what is now known as Integra Mining. As a broker at the time I took part in the 6.5c raising and probably held around 20% of the company for a large group of small investors. Since then I have attended numerous conferences, every IGR Christmas party, numerous presentations and was one of the lucky ones to be invited to the official mine opening.

Chris Cairns has also helped me understand the gold industry, which companies were worth a look and also which ones were struggling (all from publicly available information). Many in the industry are shocked at just how honest and diligent Chris really is, and his work ethic would put many others to shame.

I have been reading Hotcopper since 1998 during my old policing days, and I have absorbed the information like a sponge. Hotcopper helped me with my advising through not only information but also the wide gap that exists between perception and reality.

When IGR is running, Chris Cairns is everyones hero and we all feel as though we know him. When a gold fund (due to whatever reason) sells shares in a number of companies and their price drops, suddenly the support evaporates and we resort to bashing up Chris Cairns again.

This raising was pretty well flagged and is a result of exploration success not failure. IGR have just started production, so unless we are going to hold a nationwide appeal to support IGR or pass the plate around twice, I doubt Chris had much choice but to push ahead rather than wait to expand through cash flows.

Over the years I have developed one heck of a detector that can spot rubbish a mile off and it is a shame to see the tantrums being thrown here because more often than not investors are thrown out of a stock for no valid reason.

On the flip side they are piled into stocks that will only ever produce brokerage and shattered dreams at the expense of the real companies that create real jobs and shareholder returns. So much management time is spent talking to shareholders who perhaps bought at the wrong price and are only looking at a breakeven sale. The reality is that throughout a stocks transformation from explorer to producer there will be numerous corrections along the way that are a result of fear, capital raisings and large fund selling which also is responsible for the major re-rating in the first place.

Amazing how what you see on the screen I now refer to as being "Hollywood" when most mining companies are run out of offices loaded with maps, rocks and Ph'ds scratching their heads at the ASX speeding tickets sitting on their fax machine.

Hotcopper please don't change.


Cheers

Budfox