Our Dear Leader, having seen a mix of commodities with Arkle and Andrada in Part 1, has now moved on to the "gold and copper" leg of the trip. On the Friday, he joined Ongwe Minerals at Nguni, where the company is currently drilling for gold; the site felt like the middle of nowhere, but with a huge amount of exploration acreage to match. Ongwe is in many ways a truly Namibian company, founded by two young Namibian geologists from Swakopmund, Carl Joone and Harmen Potgieter.

Our Dear Leader has been on his annual two-week summer business trip, and this year it has been to Namibia, visiting five companies; Arkle Resources (ARK LN), Andrada Mining (ATM LN), Koryx Copper (KRY CN) and Ongwe Minerals (OGW CN). Highlighting the rising interest in Namibia, two of these companies only acquired their Namibian projects this year! For good measure, Andrew is also making a small detour to West Wits Mining (WWI AU), which although actually close to Johannesbu

Our Dear Leader who has only just returned from the sunny climate of South Africa, is back out there and has gone west to colder pastures. He was actually in Washington and theoretically New York seeing investors and Government officials before heading to Toronto for the Red Cloud Pre-PDAC event and the PDAC event itself where he was joined by Ollie O’Donnell and Paul Renken (the VSA Mining Research team). PDAC starts on a Sunday and Andrew had meetings throughout the weekend

Our Dear Leader and his faithful colleagues, Raks (Andrew Raca) and Ollie (Ollie O’Donnell), are back again for the annual Investing In Mining Indaba in Cape Town. This year though could be quite different thanks to the drought in the mining sector of the last 17 years having ended and the Bull Market starting. So far it is a very well attended event and spirits are high. The VSA team simply take it all in its stride as they do every year, although Andrew has commented that

Our Dear Leader has now arrived in Hyderabad on his first visit to India. Hyderabad is the fourth most populous city in India with a similar population to London. The name Hyderabad means "Haydar's City" or "Lion City" and it was established in 1591 by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. A popular legend suggests that he named it Bhagya-Nagar ("fortunate city") after Bhagmati, a local nautch (dancing girl) whom he married. She converted to Islam and adopted the title, Hyder Mahal; the c

Our Dear Leader is once again on his travels and this time he has started in Dubai. This was not a visit to explore a permanent move to get away from the looming Budget, although appealing, we know he does love the Cornish Lair. This trip is to attend the Dubai Airshow with Aurrigo ( AURR LON ) to look for local partners for a potential “Hub” for the Middle East. Dubai is interesting, not just because of the vast capital in the region, but its huge focus on airlines and ai

Our Dear Leader does have a packed trip visiting four mining companies in just two weeks and getting around Mexico can take time; long drives can be standard when helicopters aren’t available! It was, therefore, only fair that he had a weekend break in Zihuatanejo which although in the same province as Luca’s Campo Morado, is almost impossible to get to direct and so he drove the eight hours back to Mexico City before flying to the west coast. He also found it useful to be ba

Our Dear Leader has been in Mexico for two weeks and although he had never been to Mexico before and was keen to visit, this is a full-on business trip visiting the mine sites of four gold and silver producing Juniors.   VSA continues to be very bullish on both gold and silver and so a visit to what could be termed the "home of silver" did seem very timely. Our two-part ‘Dispatches from Mexico’ will give a flavour of the trip and once back, Andrew will be hosting manageme

Our Dear Leader has been in New York for a few days attending the Mining SME conference. The conference is run by SME (Society for Mining Metallurgy and Exploration) but is actually CTMF 2025, Current Trends in Mining Finance. In today’s changing world, it is so important to be close to the action and at the moment that is in the USA. Also, Our Dear Leader is a believer in Bamboo Investment Banking and so will happily go to where the capital and best projects are. Those that

Our Dear Leader has swapped the warm sunshine of Cape Town for the freezing snow of Toronto as he attends the pre-PDAC conferences and the PDAC itself. He finds it quite frustrating that Indaba and PDAC are so close to each other as it does keep him out of the office at a time when it is also busy in the UK Markets, and in fact our Dear Leader and VSA are very busy currently and we have seen him smiling a lot which is good as we haven’t seen that for quite a few years! Last

The intrepid VSA Capital team has been back to South Africa for the annual Mining Indaba and as usual comprises our Dear Leader, together with his trusty team of Raks (Andrew Raca) and Ollie (Ollie O’Donnell). This year we have pushing the boat out with the VSA budget for entertaining and business development (although no boats were actually involved). The VSA Capital Trandem Those that know Our Dear Leader will know that he is a very active sportsman and extremely competi

Our Dear Leader often feels the first week of January is a good time to travel as there is very little happening in the City and after Christmas he had no desire to celebrate the New Year. So he left for Zimbabwe on New Year’s Eve. We have various thoughts on why Our Dear Leader was in Zimbabwe: 1: To get a feel of how the UK will be like after 5 years of this Labour Government; 2: Because with his Zim Dollars he thought he was very rich and could have a great time (but act

Our Dear Leader is now in Australia. Whilst on his travels, he nevertheless managed to agree and announce a landmark strategic partnership in the UK with Drakewood Capital Management Limited (“Drakewood”) . With offices in London, New York and Singapore, Drakewood is a leading investment manager bringing metal sector opportunities to institutional and other types of investors. VSA and Drakewood will support each other across commodities trading, commodity fund management and

Our Dear Leader is back on his travels; going east again to Hong Kong and Australia to meet with clients, foster existing relationships and make some new ones. As he is always fond of telling everyone, ideas don’t come out of screens, you have to get out there and meet people . Before Andrew had even set off, he had noticed a change in Hong Kong hotel rooms, which used to cost a small fortune for a tiny room and are now at least half the price so you can afford more room t

Our Dear Leader has left the delights of sunny Cape Town and now is in cold but still delightful, Toronto. The good news is that he has now got a replacement mobile phone and is being very careful to make sure no one steals this one. He is in Toronto for Pre PDAC and PDAC, which is the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada and where traditionally junior exploration Companies present to raise money to go drilling in the summer. 30,000 people attend and there are ove

Our Dear leader is back again in South Africa for the African Mining Indaba and as usual taking Andrew Raca (Raks) and Ollie O’Donnell. He believes he has now attended 16 times and so is a rather old hand to this event and he suspects that this year maybe like most other years where half of London turns up to attend many parties and claim they are winning new business. The 'Renowned Sunday Night Party' was an unrivaled success with around 600 guests. Despite this experi

Our Dear leader has spent this week in Vancouver on his two week road trip with VSA client, Invinity Energy Systems (AIM and Aquis: IES). Before he arrived, he spent the weekend in San Francisco where he enjoyed some of the sights such as the Golden Gate Bridge followed by a trip to Sanoma Valley for some wine tasting. He also took the opportunity to do some washing at a local laundrette (laundromat) as this was the halfway stage and he has been travelling hand luggage only.

Our Dear Leader has once again ventured over to North America on a whistle-stop tour of numerous cities. This time he is marketing the importance and advantages of Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) and his favourite player within that space; Invinity Energy Systems (AIM and Aquis: IES). He has actually come up with a unique comparative story on why LDES is about to become massive and why flow batteries will be the big winner. There is a 20-page presentation available which

Our Dear Leader has retreated to his Cornish Lair to escape the "noise" of the Market and to consider the future of the investment banking and broking industry without distraction. He tells us that he needs to think about the last 20 years of de-equitization, the potential impact of AI on the industry and what the future for stock markets looks like and thus, the future of investment banking. These are big questions that are sometimes better thought through whilst walking al

Our Dear Leader has gone to Tel Aviv as his global travels continue searching for new Company ideas and pools of capital to try and offset the De-Equitization of the UK. He is worried that the FT30 may have to come back into use as there might not even be 100 stocks publicly listed to make up the FTSE100. Today the FT30 is known as the FT Ordinary share index but is rarely used. It was started in 1935 by the Financial News which later merged with the Financial Times, and it w