Eaton Vance Short Duration (EVG)

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Eric Coffin: Stick with Exploration Stories that Work
Source: The Gold Report 08/04/2009

Investors have been beaten down and battered over the last year. With correlations between markets continuing to shift unpredictably, many are uncertain about where to put their money. "It's been a strange year," says Eric Coffin, co-editor, along with his brother David, of the HRA (Hard Rock Analyst) publications. The good news, he says, is that it's probably not going to get worse than March; the bad—a bear market this deep almost always revisits the major bottom. Read what Eric foresees going forward and why he's sticking with the exploration stories that work in this exclusive interview with The Gold Report.

TGR: Can you share with us some of the stocks that you think our readers should be looking at and buying today?

EC: I think for the summer season the gold specs are probably your best shot and all the companies I'll mention are active right now. That's very important. In a market that's still weak, if you're going to be trading, you need to know there's going to be news flow and, hopefully, a significant amount of news flow going forward because you need that to keep the market's attention when the market's still weak.

The first one I'll mention is a company called East Asia Minerals (TSX.V:EAS) (Download Hard Rock Analyst's "Special Delivery" news alert that covers East Asia Minerals.) It's an interesting company. They've got a couple of gold-copper porphyries. They'll probably have 43-101s sometime this year that between them probably have a million or two million ounces.

The real story for us though is a project of theirs called Miwah, in Aceh Province, Northern Sumatra. It's a large epithermal system, basically a big ridge. They noted that the gold all seemed to be coming up structures, which is normal for this sort of thing, and their take on it was the closer you get to these structures, the better the grades will get.

Dave and I sat down and ran the numbers based on the size of the ridge and the sampled areas. If the drilling replicates the averages that they're getting in the trenches, this thing honestly has room for 5 or 10 million ounces. We think it's going to be a very big story this year. We started talking about it about four months ago at about 42 cents. It's about $1.73 now. It's been trading a lot of volume lately. They raised money at 51 cents a little while ago. That'll carry them for a few months. I think if they get good results in the kind of price gain we expect, they'll probably put more money in the bank, but we think this one's going to be a pretty big story. (Note – EAS released its first drill results from Miwah after this interview took place. HRA is maintaining its strong spec buy rating on the stock)

Another company that we're following, Evolving Gold (TSX.V:EVG) (Download Hard Rock Analyst's "Special Delivery" news alert that covers Bravo and Evolving Gold), has put their initial results out and gotten a pretty big bump out of it. Evolving has a series of properties in Nevada and, more importantly, Wyoming, which is where they're working right now. It had a big run up about a year and a half ago based on hopes for hot results out of the Nevada projects. They did manage to put a bunch of money in the bank during that run up, but the Nevada results weren't really up to snuff. They put out some pretty strong drill results from their Rattlesnake Hills project in Wyoming last winter, but, of course, that was last winter, so it didn't really have much impact. Nobody cared then, but it got our attention and prompted us to initiate coverage at $0.35 before the current Rattlesnake Hills program began this summer.

They put out their first drill hole in mid-July from their current drill campaign. That was 67 meters of 10.8 grams gold. It was important for two reasons. One, obviously, it was 67 meters of 10 grams. That was enough for most people. But what it showed was that this project does, in fact, have the high-grade structures. Their model for this is the Cripple Creek mine in Colorado. That mine has produced about 20 million ounces and it's almost two systems overprinted on each other. There is the high-grade structurally hosted material, which is what got mined first at Cripple Creek. That is surrounded by a large halo of lower-grade bulk tonnage material, which is what is now being mined by open pit. Another project of this type is Porgera in Papua New Guinea. They discovered the large low-grade halo there first and it was several years before they hit on and started to chase the higher-grade structural material that made it economic.

The one caution I would give people is that it's had a big move—we started talking about it at 35 cents and it's about $1.73 right now and has traded tons of volume, so it's building a nice base. But because they are drilling different target styles, you shouldn't expect every hole to look like this last one. Some of the holes are not targeted on stuff that's going to be high grade. They are, in fact, targeted on a bulk tonnage target, so they might get 200 meters of .8 grams or something like that. And we've cautioned our readers, don't freak if you see a drill hole like that. It's probably a different target. Again, very well managed—very strong technical group, lots of cash; that's not an issue. They upped their drill budget to 25,000 meters for this year and just added a fourth drill so there's going to be tons of news.

http://www.theaureport.com/pub/na/2879