Past Artical by Brent Cook.
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Welcome To The Strikepoint Gold HUB On AGORACOM
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2/17/2008 5:36:08 PM | No Recommendation | 512 reads | Post #20206744
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investor, really has little chance of interpreting to his or her strategic advantage. Compounding this inherent handicap, and as unbelievable as this may seem, all too often the objective of a news release may not be to actually inform and enlighten, but to baffle and bamboozle, or, at a minimum, put the results in the best possible light. Fortunately there are, I believe, a couple of empirical analytical filters an individual can use as a first pass discriminator when investigating a news release: Is data missing or ignored? Call and ask the company "how many times has this particular property been cycled through the Vancouver hype machine?" All previous sample and drill information should be available, or at a minimum referenced with the appropriate 43-101 disclaimer. Quite often a company will go back into a property and slightly offset a previous spectacular hole to "confirm" the spectacular results that may have been "confirmed" at least twice before (with very vague reference, if any, to previous holes). Now maybe I'm missing something here -- and please help me if I am - but quite often the problem in earlier rounds of drilling wasn't the spectacular holes, but all the other dead holes. Wouldn't it make more sense to re-drill the dead holes in the hope of being surprised by spectacular results? Regardless, aren't the previous drill holes germane to our evaluation? How does the company present the project results? Poor or incomplete presentation and interpretation of the results generally doesn't bode well for a project or company. If a company is particularly proud of a property there should be ample information on their web-site and in press releases to show off tables, maps, sections with drill intercepts and interpretations. Each news release should contain enough information in the form of maps, sample locations and some interpretation to get you going in the evaluation process. Again, we are all too often presented with "significant" results from some holes without mention of the other holes, which presumably missed. You have to wonder if hole number 3 and hole number 17 were spectacular, what happened to the rest? Worse, without a location map and sections, we have no way of telling if the holes are meters or hundreds of meters apart. There is no excuse, in my mind, for not having this basic information available. A company geologist, forlornly sitting the drill-rig in the cold and dark, generally has plenty of time to plot drill progress and plan his next move whilst the driller is committing blasphemy and throwing tools at his dog (or at our much maligned geo). Obviously this first-pass screen isn't fool-proof and there will be numerous legitimate reasons why certain data isn't presented or referenced, and within that void some good "buys" may exist. There are also many other factors that bring context to drill-hole interpretations (e.g. grade, thickness, depth, nugget effect, metallurgy, location, strip ratio, infrastructure, etc.) that render blanket generalizations dubious and risky. However, I guarantee you, that on the whole, missing or poorly presented data augur ill for the prospect and company. Always look for context and supporting data. If it's clear that the company is competent and quite proud of its results, there should be ample documentation. If, however, the data is incomplete, missing information, or very generalized, you have to wonder why. Not that said company is hiding anything, but how are you expected to know the difference without the facts? And after all, it's in their best interest to convince you to buy, right? Brent Cook ***** Brent Cook is an independent exploration analyst and advisor.Rate this:
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usefulness : 0investor, really has little chance of interpreting to his or her strategic advantage. Compounding this inherent handicap, and as unbelievable as this may seem, all too often the objective of a news release may not be to actually inform and enlighten, but to baffle and bamboozle, or, at a minimum, put the results in the best possible light. Fortunately there are, I believe, a couple of empirical analytical filters an individual can use as a first pass discriminator when investigating a news release: Is data missing or ignored? Call and ask the company "how many times has this particular property been cycled through the Vancouver hype machine?" All previous sample and drill information should be available, or at a minimum referenced with the appropriate 43-101 disclaimer. Quite often a company will go back into a property and slightly offset a previous spectacular hole to "confirm" the spectacular results that may have been "confirmed" at least twice before (with very vague reference, if any, to previous holes). Now maybe I'm missing something here -- and please help me if I am - but quite often the problem in earlier rounds of drilling wasn't the spectacular holes, but all the other dead holes. Wouldn't it make more sense to re-drill the dead holes in the hope of being surprised by spectacular results? Regardless, aren't the previous drill holes germane to our evaluation? How does the company present the project results? Poor or incomplete presentation and interpretation of the results generally doesn't bode well for a project or company. If a company is particularly proud of a property there should be ample information on their web-site and in press releases to show off tables, maps, sections with drill intercepts and interpretations. Each news release should contain enough information in the form of maps, sample locations and some interpretation to get you going in the evaluation process. Again, we are all too often presented with "significant" results from some holes without mention of the other holes, which presumably missed. You have to wonder if hole number 3 and hole number 17 were spectacular, what happened to the rest? Worse, without a location map and sections, we have no way of telling if the holes are meters or hundreds of meters apart. There is no excuse, in my mind, for not having this basic information available. A company geologist, forlornly sitting the drill-rig in the cold and dark, generally has plenty of time to plot drill progress and plan his next move whilst the driller is committing blasphemy and throwing tools at his dog (or at our much maligned geo). Obviously this first-pass screen isn't fool-proof and there will be numerous legitimate reasons why certain data isn't presented or referenced, and within that void some good "buys" may exist. There are also many other factors that bring context to drill-hole interpretations (e.g. grade, thickness, depth, nugget effect, metallurgy, location, strip ratio, infrastructure, etc.) that render blanket generalizations dubious and risky. However, I guarantee you, that on the whole, missing or poorly presented data augur ill for the prospect and company. Always look for context and supporting data. If it's clear that the company is competent and quite proud of its results, there should be ample documentation. If, however, the data is incomplete, missing information, or very generalized, you have to wonder why. Not that said company is hiding anything, but how are you expected to know the difference without the facts? And after all, it's in their best interest to convince you to buy, right? Brent Cook ***** Brent Cook is an independent exploration analyst and advisor.Rate this:
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more articles by Brent Cook Beware of Drill Holes By Brent Cook January 14, 2005 www.paulvaneeden.com Deciphering drill-hole results from news releases is not always as straight forward as it could be, even for those within the exploration industry. For the non-technical speculator, the odds of appreciating the subtleties contained there-in and projecting their importance into the geologic past for future monetary gain, quite candidly, ain't so good. There are however, a few tricks that may help some. First off, one thing we can say for certain about drill-holes is that there is virtually universal agreement amongst the inner circle of the exploration elite that the single best way to trash and burn a perfectly good exploration property is to drill it (that's why it's usually better to let someone else pony up for the drilling costs). Of course, drilling is the inevitable test of an exploration concept and the reason we get such wild swings when drill results are released. Now, the actual tactic behind the sighting of these drill-holes of annihilation goes something like this; after all the available geologic, geochemical and geophysical data is meticulously considered and judged by the wisest of the wise, a well reasoned opinion, steeped in sound scientific analysis and grog, is hurried off to the head office where the soothsayers put the final "this is the place" on a map and it's: "Game on boys". In due course, the drill-hole assays come in, fingers are pointed and the much anticipated news release comes out in which we gamblers hear of the "spectacular" drill-holes measuring x grams of gold over y meters and so on. Once the results are released, it then falls to us to make a thumbs-up or down call. Ultimately, what we are after in this speculative game of drill-hole revelation, is to get a "ballpark" sense as to the ultimate economics of a mineral system long before the engineers and bankers have a chance to plug the numbers into their spreadsheets. To get there we need to be able to evaluate all the available data ("all" being the operative word here). Drill-holes provide the first look into the third dimension (depth) of a mineralized system, where the tonnes and value lies. Reputedly, a collection of spectacular holes will eventually make an economic deposit, or at least suggest to someone, somewhere, somehow, that one is in the making. But how in the world is the average guy, sitting at the exploration roulette table, to know the difference between a good hole and a bad hole? All grams per tonne over some number of meters are not equivalent, and although size and grade do matter in evaluating drill holes, context is ultimately the critical factor. Context for which the average, non-technical
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