Altius MineralsIt seems I read somewhere in one of your articles that Altius was one of your core holdings. I wondered if you could shed some light on its recent dramatic share price drop.
This is a discussion topic or guest posting submitted by a Stock Gumshoe reader. The content has not been edited or reviewed by Stock Gumshoe, and any opinions expressed are those of the author alone.
I don’t consider Altius’ recent share price drop to be particularly dramatic, and my holdings have not changed in recent months. It’s quite volatile because it trades with commodities to a large degree, including copper and gold and potash, most of which are down on China fears and other sentiment swings, and because every now and then Dan Ferris at Stansberry has a widely distributed teaser campaign telling everyone how incredible Altius is and drives the price up by 10% or more, usually followed by some softness as the price drifts back down to “normal” when the attention wanes. US investors find it impacted substantially by the Canadian dollar, too — over the last year ALS.TO is down by about 15%, but ATUSF in US$ is down almost 30%. The move down over the last month or so has been entirely in sympathy with the broad market weakness, there has been no substantial news from the company or change in their operations that I’m aware of.
I’ll take another look at Altius after they report their next quarter, but this is my relatively low-risk commodity play (still quite risky, particularly when commodities are falling in price) and I don’t intend to worry much about the fluctuations in the price as long as I think they’re still being well-run — they are very much reliant on cycles, buying stuff that seems cheap when prices are falling and selling stuff when animal spirits return to the mining business… so if animal spirits don’t return, they will do badly. They should be reporting in about a week, I’ll post my updated thoughts then.
Appreciate you taking time to provide your thoughts…good point on difference due to dollar.
9-10-15: Very interesting thoughts on Altius, and all seems appropriate to me. I wasn’t aware of Altius reports. Lim looking forward to your interpretation, Travis. How do we follow you? Allen
When I have something substantive to write about a stock I follow, I cover it in the Friday File or a special article for the Irregulars, both of which are emailed out to readers and are on the site at http://www.stockgumshoe.com/category/friday-file/
Altius reported today, so I’ll look over the details and share at least a brief comment or two in tomorrow’s article.
I’ve been wondering if now would be a good time to add a few shares…will be looking forward to your update tomorrow.