Idaho is mine

Phoenix Global Mining (LON:PGM) yesterday reported encouraging drill results for its to-be-revived copper mine in Idaho. Apparently there are further figures due within, say, a fortnight or three weeks.

PGM was IPO’ed at 4p about four months ago, raising £4 million. There is £2.5 million left in contrast to a capitalisation of c. £9 million. Right now the copper price is bonging along – c. $7,000 a ton.


The ore grade is very high and thus profitable with gold and silver credits chucked in on top. If one is really romantic there could be cobalt as well.

I have heard it claimed that this share price can go past 10p and, if we’re lucky, 20p. I paid 4.2p for my wife this morning. It is a thin market (both ways).

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Westminster has finally gone completely potty. Ordinary citizens are concerned to be properly governed and are indifferent to the incidence of knobbly knee testing.

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Yesterday evening on Radio 4 Dominic Lawson asked Bill Browder of Hermitage a few questions. I had never heard all this before. However, essentially, Browder went to Russia immediately after the Berlin wall came down since he had noted that the likes of Gazprom were quoted at around one two hundredths of equivalent American oil companies. He made a fortune and, in doing so, encountered the fact that the oligarchs were stealing money left right and centre on a heroic scale. He kicked out but hit resistance. For instance, his lawyer was murdered by the oligarchs and/or Putin.

The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was publicly displayed in a wire cage in Court, was Putin’s masterstroke in that a further 20 oligarchs were made aware that they just had to hand over 50% of their ill-gotten gains and all would be well. The problem was that the money went to Putin personally and not to the state.