I think it would be useful to compare the difference in every aspect of the management that you see here with what you see in the management of similar smaller mining focused company managements at SRSR or CYLPF. Look there, and you will find useful standards of comparison in many facets.
If you want, start first with taking a look at the potential of their holdings. There isn't really much of a shortage of high potential mining properties that are not yet fully developed. If they can keep it, SFMI "has" access to a nice enough opportunity for a small company... even though they haven't shown yet that they have a proper plan for getting it developed, much less into production. They also perhaps don't "have" it in the sense that other miners "have" the properties they are focused on... which the layering in the structure as an issue requires you look at very closely.
SFMI has a check in the box for the property... and then, the more you look, the less you find to give you any confidence that they will succeed, or even that, given the structure of the incentives, that they need to get anything like the level of success investors need to have happen in order to get the benefits they have structured for themselves. They've structured things to ensure THEY get paid first, and get paid a couple times over for the same work... never a good sign... but what they show you is consistent with prior history.
Look at management experience and track record... and while noting the differences in qualifications and experience in the different companies, also note that good management knows the value of, and brings with them the ability to attract quality team members. Who is on the team, and what sort of commitment to the team do they have ? Who has skin in the game, and how much skin in the game do they have ?
Compare what those managements say in their forward looking statements with what happens and when it does relative to when they say it will. They do what they say they will do, and generally get what they intend to do done in the time they say they will get it done... and in the rare instances that they don't, look first at how they handle the need for correcting the deviations, and then how they address their failures to meet the expectations they set for themselves.
The first and most critical fact in any company is that the people leading the company are what will both define and limit the potential.
Once you qualify management in terms of skill and ability, you will also want to pay close attention over some period of time to see how they structure their own interest relative to the interest of their investors. The most obvious errors made by investors playing in the shallow end of the market pool are errors in DD related to vetting management, and then, those made by investors in mistaking "a good story" for "a good story that is solidly connected to the value of a share".
Particularly when you see a management that seems it has been successful in profiting from their structuring of their own interest in prior endeavors, while not ever delivering a success that matters much for their investors, you should be enormously cautious. I will agree with others here that you can spend some time watching how the shares in a penny scam stock trade, and use it to trade the charts just like you can any other stock. Safer doing that once you take the time to see how managements work the stock, so that you can expect you are betting with them in TRADES you make... without ever making the mistake of expecting you should be investing.
The sort of movements you see in the stock now really only matter to traders... a couple up days every one in a while don't matter to investors. For traders, too, the benefit of having the share price increase is only that it offers an opportunity to sell and take profits ? Nothing wrong with that, of course...
I came here to do the DD necessary to qualify SFMI as a company I might be willing to invest in. Not looking now like that is going to happen here. That doesn't mean I think you can't trade SFMI. I've found it a fairly predictable trader in the past, and don't see any reason that should change. Knowing more about it now, it seems even more predictable... but, given the issues in timing, I'm not expecting it is near to doing anything like what it did when I first bought it, back in 2007. Then, it was a new story stock, and it was the story that mattered. Now it is a story stock accumulating some heavy baggage on the way to having to prove the story, and prove the story matters, because they are capable of properly exploiting the opportunity... while connecting any success they do enable to the value of a share. The bet, now, isn't based on the story in the potential of the property... but on the story in the potential management can make the company succeed.
Brass tacks...
Management here appears primarily ego driven, not driven by what they need to be driven by for you to expect they will succeed. JMHO. They aren't doing what they need to do to "make this work", they are doing what they need to do to make this work for them. That means they will structure it to benefit financially whether you do or not, and it means they value the ego rewards tied to their maintaining control more than they value the rewards that others seek, that come from doing it right and succeeding. Investors here at SFMI have WAY more skin in the game than management does. Those factors, IMO, greatly alter the odds YOU will succeed as an investor, here, although, note, I'm not saying I'm betting management won't succeed in getting theirs ?
I've done the DD on those other two and qualified them as suitable for me, great management with proper focus, which doesn't mean there isn't any risk in them, or that you don't need to time entries, etc. Investors ARE traders, only long term traders with additional criteria beyond timing and chart skills. Price and value are still different things... and much to most of price is still far more a function of noise in demand and supply of shares than it is anything related to the ability of market participants to find, qualify and quantify value in a share. Traders are betting share prices will change. Investors are betting value will change AND be recognized.... and need to see success happen by finding unrecognized values that WILL be successfully developed and reflected in future share prices...
That doesn't mean SFMI will fail predictably on a date certain because it seems less and less likely to me to succeed, given the clocks that are ticking, what the structures are, etc. In fact, I have significant questions about whether or not it is even intended to succeed... rather than designed to fail in some very particular ways that are linearly dependent on some elements in timing under the control of those with the ability to control events... and, of course, it doesn't mean anything about the success you have, or not, in trading shares.
The effort in DD isn't wholly wasted... but, here, for me, it means knowing more about a stock you might want to trade... the effort qualifies this as a penny trading stock... and, thus far, not as anything more.
AI
.JPG)
