Gold explorers and capital markets advisers predict that the Aussie-dollar price of the precious metal will hit $3000 by Christmas.
That was the clear prediction among panellists of a high-profile chatroom at a recent Mines and Money APAC virtual conference.
Featuring White Rock Minerals managing director Matt Gill, Artemis Resources executive director Alistair Clayton, Hartleys executive chairman Ian Parker and PCF Capital managing director Liam Twigger, the panel discussed the remarkable sharemarket recovery, the importance of foreign investment, exploration hotspots and – of course – the likely trajectory of the gold price.
Mr Parker said the Perth brokerage had seen a surge in new accounts while the COVID-19 triggered downturn appeared to have prompted investors to show a willingness for risk exposure that had typically been missing from the resources sector.
“I’ve never seen an appetite for risk like this. The quantity of capital raisings is extraordinary,” he said.
All four panellists were bullish on gold and three predicted that it would finish the year above $3000/oz.
PCF’s Mr Twigger said history gave him many reasons to be confident.
“I vividly remember the last gold boom back in the early 1990s, stocks went up 10-fold. If we think that this (gold price) is too high, go back and look at history. This can go a lot higher,” Mr Twigger said.
The billion-dollar question, as Mr Parker called it, is whether we have seen the worst of the COVID-19 market downturn or whether we are experiencing a false-dawn recovery.
Mr Parker said that since March 23, the market recovery had been “nothing short of remarkable”.
“The (cash) injection that the government has put into markets sort of outweighed, for the moment, the potential economic shock of the pandemic,” he said.
Artemis’ Mr Clayton, who is based in London, echoed Mr Twigger’s sentiment. He said the real test of the economy, especially in the UK, would be how business coped once governments’ furlough schemes stopped.
“We’re all really waiting with bated breath to see if these businesses are really opening and for how long they will last without government money,” Mr Clayton said.
In the meantime, Artemis is enjoying strong attention from gold-hungry investors.
Artemis resumed drilling at its two gold-copper projects in the Pilbara in March and its share price has jumped more than 180% since then, closing out this week at 6.5¢ per share.
Mr Gill, who led White Rock’s $7.35m capital raising to fund exploration work at the Last Chance gold prospect in Alaska, called the investment climate “bizarre”.
“We set out to raise $2m in March, roll the clock forward and we could have raised $10m. To think that we raised our market cap ($7m) on a gold stream sediment anomaly in central Alaska is nothing short of bizarre,” Mr Gill said.
“Half of the money we raised came out of North America and at the end of the raising, 20% of our register will be in North America.
“It only reinforces that good projects should be able to find funding no matter where they are.”
