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“This EXACT SAME Crisis Has Happened Twice in the History of Energy…” (Dr. Kent Moors)

Looking into the Energy Inner Circle teaser pitch about the shortfall in uranium supply and an imminent price spike

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, April 17, 2015

This article is a repeat of a solution to a teaser pitch that Dr. Kent Moors has been marketing very aggressively for almost a year.

Why? Because he and his publishers at Money Map are pushing it very heavily again, as they’ve done every few months, and we’re getting questions… and there have been some developments in the market since the ad started circulating. Our original article was entitled, “The Electricity Crisis that Dr. Kent Moors says could bring 100,000% returns” … so if you already read that one back in May of 2014, you can skip along to the bottom to see the additional info I added six months ago in November (and, if you wish, throw your thoughts and comments into the discussion pile… the original discussion is all still there at the bottom as well).

What follows was published on May 14 and has not been edited or updated other than the November 2014 update at the end. The original comments and discussion are also appended. The stock he focused on most, UEC, has bounced from $1 to $1.80 and back a couple times as uranium prospects (and prices) have fluctuated. Uranium is up a bit again in the last few months, to about $40 now (the recent low is $30, the highs were big spikes to $70 in 2011 and $140 in 2007).

—-from 5/14/2014—-

Dr. Kent Moors is pitching the upcoming electricity crisis as a reason to invest in his newsletter and reap your riches from the panic — I imagine you’ve seen this ad, because readers have been peppering me with it since it started running yesterday.

The first couple pages of it are mostly about how horrific things get when electricity production is compromised, with the huge hit to the economy from closed power plants and/or brownouts or rolling blackouts when generation can’t keep up with demand. He has a graph he uses over and over again that shows a gap, at some undetermined point in the near future, where electricity demand will be 16% higher than generation capacity. Here’s a bit of the spiel:

“Bottom line: The cost of a 16% electricity void would result in the massive loss of human lives and trillions of dollars.

“And make no mistake, we are on the brink of a crisis… a 16% electricity void that could decimate the global economy…

“Of course, world leaders aren’t going to let that happen. And in the rush to solve the crisis… you have an extraordinary opportunity.”

Here’s some more of Dr. Moors whetting our appetite:

“…this has happened twice before in the history of energy.

“Both times, it created a slew of new millionaires.

“In fact, the last time this happened, folks who got in early and followed the right signs had a chance to turn $1,000 into $1 million. And that’s on just one trade…

“The evidence makes the case: This crisis is happening again for the third time. And while it’s not 100%, there’s no denying this opportunity could change your life.

“I’ve been tracking this situation for eight years waiting for the right moment to get in. And I can tell you without a doubt:

“The pendulum is starting to swing and the upside is going to be huge.”

OK, so… wanna get a 10,000% return? Me, too! How does he think we can do that?

Well, as you’d know if you had the patience to sit through the first interminable minutes of the presentation or read through a few pages of blather (don’t worry, there’s no shame in NOT reading that far — sifting the blather every day is the strange path we’ve taken, but most people aren’t goofy enough to do that), he’s teasing nuclear energy and uranium. Here’s a bit of that:

“World Leaders Agree: This Fuel is Vital

“As I mentioned, I advise 27 governments on energy matters. And I can tell you right now, every single one of them considers this fuel vital to the world’s energy mix.

“In other words, we can’t do without it. Period.

“That’s because this fuel can do what oil, natural gas, and coal can’t.

“Like I said, it’s 9,500 times more powerful than oil… and 100 times cheaper.

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“And get this: This fuel is 100% clean. In fact, it generates zero greenhouse gas emissions.

“In other words, unlike oil, natural gas or coal… it won’t kill the planet.

“As you probably guessed, I’m talking about uranium… the fuel that generates nuclear power.

“Now, I realize nuclear power is very controversial, especially after the accident in Japan in 2011.

“And maybe you’re in favor of nuclear power, and maybe you aren’t.

“But the fact remains, nuclear power is an essential part of the global energy mix, accounting for 16% of the world’s electricity.”

Not the first time we’ve heard the “uranium will boom again” argument, to be sure — uranium collapsed after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, which spurred both the shutdown of Japan’s large nuclear fleet and the global “rethink” on nuclear power, particularly in Western democracies that have the luxury of debate and hand-wringing, but it has also been widely predicted as a commodity likely to boom both because of Japan’s gradual re-start and the continuing development of new nuclear plants in China and India, and because of the drop in supply (at least to the US) caused by the end of the “megatons to megawatts” program that had us cooperating with Russia to recycle their unneeded plutonium into uranium fuel. The end of “megatons to megawatts” was actually on December 31 last year, so I’ve been expecting uranium prices to rise this year — and many investors (and newsletters) have been predicting sharp jumps.

You can check out his presentation here if you’d like to see his arguments about Japan and Germany desperately needing to reconsider their fear of nuclear energy, and about the many countries who rely on uranium for at least a quarter of their electricity (particularly those who would otherwise be completely dependent on natural gas from Putin’s Gazprom or on coal).

But yes, the basic pitch is, “uranium prices should surge” — here’s some more, in his words:

“Uranium Demand is Off the Charts

“Right now, there are 434 nuclear plants worldwide consuming about 180 million pounds of uranium per year.

“Annual supply is only about 140 million pounds per year.

“That’s a 40 million pound supply gap! And it’s only going to grow…

“Already, there are plans to add 553 more nuclear plants worldwide… 70 of which are already under construction or ready to come online.

“That’s more than DOUBLE… and it’s only the beginning….

“…during the last uranium boom, prices soared 13-fold… to hit $140 per pound.”

In many ways this is similar to other “something’s gotta give” pitches — uranium demand increasing, uranium is currently (at $35 a pound or so) changing hands for prices that are too low to spur any development of new mines or expansion of old ones. Moors says that stockpiles are being depleted (like megatons to megawatts), and that $70 is really the price producers need …

“The price must go up – to at least $70 per pound – or uranium supply will disappear.”

And, unlike with most industries, the consumers are not price-sensitive — nuclear power plants don’t shut down because of high fuel prices the way a coal or gas plant might, because the vast majority of the cost is in building and maintaining the plant, not in buying the fuel. Uranium prices have very little impact on the price they have to charge for electricity to make a profit — the interest rate on the massive capital investment required to build the plant, and the cost of safety and maintenance operations, are both larger issues than uranium prices. Here’s what Moors says that means:

“Once their supply is threatened, once they feel the pressure of disappearing stockpiles, the nuclear plants are going to panic and drive prices through the roof.

“And once the price starts to move higher, it will just keep on going…

“This is what happened in 1973 when the price of uranium soared 10-fold. It’s what happened in 2003 when the price of uranium soared 13-fold.

“And it’s what’s going to happen again, for the third time, very soon. The pendulum is starting to swing, and now’s the time to act.”

So what should you buy? Well, obviously he’s suggesting we buy some sort of uranium stock. Here’s how he describes the situation for uranium miners:

“… during the last uranium boom, these companies took huge amounts of investment capital from other investors… and sunk it into their uranium operations.

“And now they are literally sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in equipment, infrastructure, permits, and geologists.

“In other words, their ‘war chests’ are loaded to the brim!

“But here’s the thing… because of low uranium prices, this immense capital investment isn’t reflected in their share price.

“In other words, these are world-class companies… armed to the teeth… selling for pennies on the dollar….

“And while I can’t promise we’ll see a 100,000% rise like Paladin did last time… the upside potential is there.”

So yes, finally, we do get down to the actual tease — he has four uranium investments to share with you today if you’ll subscribe to his Energy Inner Circle (currently “on sale” for $1,995, roughly half of the “list” price). One of them he gives away for free (yes, it’s the super obvious one), and three are “secret” picks he will explain to his subscribers.

But he does let loose with some hints and clues, naturally, to get you intrigued and excited — so we can tell you what the stocks are if you happen to be one of those intrepid souls who prefers to do your own research.

The freebie is, as you would have guessed the first time I typed the word “uranium”, Cameco (CCJ). Cameco is, as Moors says, the “blue chip” company in uranium, the only really large pure play on uranium mining. He says that “if you’re looking for a world-class ‘blue chip’ that offers good upside, Cameco is a good bet.”

And it’s pretty hard to argue with that — it won’t go up 100,000% because it’s not dirt cheap, it’s already producing, and it’s not a pie-in-the-sky explorer that can leverage a big discovery. But if uranium goes to $70 or spikes even higher, they’ll sure make a lot more money than they do today. They’re reasonably priced at about 15X next year’s earnings, they have a long-lived mine (albeit one that has had some problems, particularly with flooding that delayed production for years — mining is almost never a “safe bet” kind of industry, particularly if you rely on one mine for most of your revenue), and they have a solid enough balance sheet that they can even comfortably pay a nice little dividend.

But it’s a $10 billion company, you’ve almost certainly heard of them, and you can go form an opinion on your own. How about the “secret” stocks he teases?

Here’s the first one, and the pitch is thick and gooey:

“If you’re looking for maximum upside… and you could only own one uranium company to position yourself for the coming boom… this would be the one.

“Years down the road, when people talk about the uranium boom of 2014… this is going to be the company they point to and say, ‘My God, I wish I’d gotten in.’

“You have a chance, right now, to do just that…

“And listen, you’ll be in very good company. In fact, some of the savviest minds in the world are taking a serious stake in this company.

“For example, Li Ka-Shing – the richest man in Asia with a net worth of $33 billion – is loading up on this company.”

Some more details? We learn that Rick Rule, the noted resource investment banker, is also a shareholder, and that Spencer Abraham, former US Energy Secretary, is their Chairman. That pretty much gives us a definitive answer, but here’s a little more just to heighten the suspense:

“This company went public at the PEAK of the last uranium boom in 2007… issuing 89.5 million shares at the price of roughly $7.

“In other words, they raised about $625 million…

“What did they do with the money?

“Simple. They invested in their future… and prepared themselves for the next boom.

“They bought things like equipment, technology, infrastructure, permits, and mining rights… everything they needed to run a profitable operation.

“But here’s the thing… when uranium prices dropped, their stock price dropped to where it sits today – at about $1 per share, giving them a market cap of about $100 million”

It’s a funny kind of argument, that this company has already blown through half a billion dollars in seven years and therefore has become a great buy now — but there is some logic to it if their investments have really added value (reserves, equipment, production capacity) to their asset. So who is it? This is Uranium Energy Corp (UEC).

UEC has been a hotly debated stock over the last decade or so, going up and down on both promotional chatter (and short sellers who derided its stock promoter roots, like this Citron piece from 2010) and on the prospects for uranium. They didn’t actually raise $600+ million in their IPO, but the IPO was for about half that much on the AMEX back in 2007, and I’m sure they’ve raised more money since. They have some uranium production now, but it’s very small scale — their biggest project is the Goliad in-situ recovery project in Texas, and they also have a few neighboring projects that they think they can advance as “hub and spoke” additions near the core processing plant when it comes online.

The development of Goliad has taken many years, it’s at least a few years behind the original schedule — but I guess that’s no surprise, given weak uranium prices. They are explicitly soft-pedaling now, they say, to make sure they don’t ramp up production until prices recover. Production is on track to start this year, they say, but they are expecting uranium prices to recover this year to make it viable. And they are essentially stockpiling potential projects, with about 25 projects on their list, almost all of which are at the “exploration” stage and not currently the focus of investment — all but a couple of them are in the US, mostly in historically producing uranium areas in Wyoming, Colorado and the Southwest.

Will uranium prices really leap higher this year? Well, so far the answer is a resounding “not yet” — they’ve continued to fall, from the $40 that seemed too cheap a year ago to the $35 that seemed like a “breaking point” at the beginning of 2014, to now (depending on who you ask — there’s not really a “spot market” for uranium) dipping below $30. UEC’s cash costs for their existing production are in the $20-25 neighborhood, I presume that Goliad is cheaper but I don’t know — these are very low-grade deposits, but it’s also an in-situ recovery and refining process that I don’t really understand. This is very different from the massive high-grade uranium deposits in the Athabasca region of Canada, which are unique in having big, 10%+ uranium grades (like at Cameco’s Saskatchewan mines), but lower-grade deposits using in situ recovery are not unique to UEC — Cameco also uses in situ recovery at their US mines and in Kazakhstan, and presumably other global producers do as well, and many of them are apparently profitable to operate (if not build) with uranium at $30 a pound, so the high grades at the unusual Saskatchewan mines don’t necessarily mean that low grade mines can’t be developed or compete (and Cameco’s mines have been both geological and technical challenges in many ways, so high grade isn’t everything).

There are many factors impacting uranium pricing, including production and demand but also the drawdown of stockpiles around the world, uncertainty of new plant demand, the closing of old plants for performance reasons (old age) or political reasons, etc. There’s an interesting quick interview here about the current state of the market and the viability of the oft-rumored “Uranium Renaissance” if you want to get your head around it — interestingly, one thing that jumped out from that note for me was the analyst’s forecast that higher prices wouldn’t really come until 2016.

Which means … I don’t really know whether UEC will leap higher this year. It has continued to fall as uranium prices have fallen (except for this week, when Moors’ attention is doubtless sending the price higher — it doesn’t take much to make a $100 million stock all jiggly), and as they have failed to say anything particularly aggressive about boosting production immediately. Bulls and bears have debated the stock loudly at Seeking Alpha and elsewhere, and it’s a tiny little stock that bounces around like crazy on this attention, so beware — but I can certainly see it being among the more highly-levered names to the price of uranium if we do indeed get a huge spike in prices.

For full disclosure, I have some very speculative (and so far money-losing) options positions in both CCJ and UEC, my own little bet from a few months back that uranium chatter (and prices) would rise this year and the stocks might surge. Hasn’t happened so far.

UEC was clearly the stock that most excited Moors in this pitch, he closes with some speculation about the possible economics of their operations:

“At $70 per pound, this company has the capacity to produce five million pounds per year… five times their current production.

“And while they’re currently making about 50 cents per pound with uranium prices at $35… when prices go to the necessary $70… they’re all of a sudden making $35 per pound.

“And again, they have the capacity to produce five million pounds.

“So instead of making 50 cents per pound on one million pounds… they’d be making $35 per pound on five million pounds.
When uranium prices rise, their gross profits could explode from $584,000 to about $175 million… a staggering 300-fold increase.”

And Myron Martin, who writes a mining column for us, has also been a big UEC fan, calling it his favorite uranium stock back in December (he also had a followup on some other uranium juniors here, by the way).

But UEC wasn’t the only stock teased for Dr. Moors’ Energy Inner Circle — we’ve got two more.

I know, I’m getting a little tired of writing this one… and I’m sure by now you’re tired of reading it. But we’ve come this far. What are the other two investments?

Here’s the first one:

“One investment opportunity I’ve uncovered allows you to tap into the entire market… and profit from both rising uranium prices and the rapidly expanding nuclear power industry.

“The exciting thing is, this investment gives you boots on the ground in the biggest uranium-producing countries in the world, including Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Niger, and Russia.

“Plus, it gives you an interest in some of the most lucrative mining operations on the planet.

“For example, this investment gives you access to Canada’s MacArthur River Project, the largest uranium mine in the world.

“By the way, the ore grades at this mine are over 100 times the global average, making this project insanely lucrative.

“In addition, this investment gives you access to an exciting new uranium discovery in the world’s most important uranium district: Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin.

“This discovery was so unexpected – and so potentially lucrative because of its high-grade ore deposits – that it created a ‘staking frenzy’ as mining companies rushed to claim adjacent properties.

“When you add it all up, this investment allows you to tap into $80 billion of proven uranium reserves… all for just $17.

“As uranium prices rise – and remember, they need to double to keep the lights on – the value of these assets could double, triple, or more… sending this investment soaring.

“And uranium is only the tip of the iceberg for this investment. In fact, this investment gives you access to every aspect of the nuclear power industry.”

Well, Thinkolator sez this one is not a stock, it’s an ETF — the Global X Uranium ETF (URA)

Which does have exposure to most of the huge uranium mines and producers in the world, including nearly a quarter of its portfolio in Cameco and 10% in Denison Mines (DNN), and it also invests substantial chunks in Paladin, Uranerz and other producers… and owns little bites of a bunch of smaller junior names.

But it ain’t at $17 anymore, you can now pick up shares for a bit under $15 if you’re interested. URA has been the ugly stepchild of the nuclear ETF space, with several horrible years compared to the rather flat-to-decent performance of NLR and NUCL, the two broader “nuclear energy” ETFs, but that’s because URA is just uranium companies and NLR and NUCL are really utility ETFs that mostly own nuclear power companies (which are almost all broad-based utilities, like Duke Power and Exelon, who have nuclear plants as part of their portfolio). NLR and NUCL will probably be impacted (very gradually) by the popularity of nuclear power, but they move mostly with the broader utility sector and aren’t driven by the price of uranium — URA is.

And we’re still not done! One more uranium name pitched to us by Dr. Moors:

“The opportunity I’m going to show you now is a pure price play… and allows you to profit from uranium’s imminent rise with very minimal risk.

“We’ve already established that uranium prices must rise. Right now, they’re at $35 per pound.

“But unless prices are at $70 per pound, miners are not going to produce. Stockpiles are vanishing at 465,000 pounds per day… and unless prices rise, the lights are going out….

“the investment I’m tracking today is a new way to play uranium. It’s the brainchild of resource billionaire Eric Sprott, and it wasn’t even available during the last uranium boom.

“This investment allows you to own pure uranium… and profit from the price rise… without actually having to take possession of the uranium yourself.

“In fact, this investment allows you to participate in the coming uranium price rise… without the typical exploration, development or mining risks associated with owning stocks… they have fully licensed warehouses throughout the U.S., Canada, and France chock-full of pure uranium. About 10 million pounds worth….

“Goldman Sachs is sitting on 5,500 tons of pure uranium… and now you can too.”

So who is this? Uranium Participation Corp (U in Toronto, URPTF on the pink sheets). Which was indeed inspired by Eric Sprott, and which is essentially trying to be a “physical ETF” for uranium — they buy it (under the auspices of Denison Mines, which is their regulatory partner but doesn’t control the company) and warehouse it, with the hope of selling it in the future at higher prices.

And one hesitates to sound like a broken record when saying “hasn’t worked yet” … Uranium Participation has been around since the mid-2000s, it was started just in time to participate in the 2007 uranium “bubble”, but since that 2007 spike it’s been mostly downhill (save the brief jump up for uranium pricing in early 2011 just before the Fukushima disaster). They stockpile both U308, which is the main uranium fuel we think of, and Uranium Hexafluoride (UF6), which is used in uranium enrichment. I haven’t looked closely at what it costs them to warehouse this stuff, or how much trading in and out of it they might do at any given time, but they’re fairly passive and should generally be priced based on the current net asset value (NAV) of their warehoused uranium and on your expectations for where those uranium prices are headed.

Currently, U.TO is priced at about a 10% premium to their April 30 NAV — and that NAV was based on uranium a dollar or two higher than most folks report the price now. It’s a fairly simple proposition on this one — if uranium doubles, the NAV should double and the stock price might jump slightly more if folks bid it up to trade at a bigger premium. If uranium falls, the NAV should fall by about the same percentage and the stock may fall a bit lower if investor disgust with uranium causes it to trade at a discount to NAV. That means the possible pricing moves are far, far smaller for U.TO than they are for a miner, even a huge miner like Cameco, because miners should provide a levered response to the price of the underlying commodity (to simplify: if uranium doubles, the costs to produce it don’t necessarily double so profit should go up much faster than the commodity price, which would drive the stock price of producers higher… all else being equal, which it never is).

So there you have it — the consensus grows for a “uranium must go up in price” assessment, but even though the logic is sound the pricing has not, so far, responded to the logic… and the logic can’t tell us where and how large existing stockpiles of uranium are, or how quickly they enter the marketplace, or where political sentiment will go in major nuclear countries like France or Japan, or in waffling countries like the US and Germany, or in emerging and growing nuclear power producers like China and India. I do think we’ll likely see higher prices, and I thought we’d see them this year — but I could easily be wrong or early… and we should always be at least a little skeptical during times like this, when it seems like ALL the newsletter jockeys are 100% certain that uranium prices are on the verge of doubling.

It’s your money, though, so what do you think? Will the Japanese reactor restart get uranium prices rising? (They presumably have large stockpiles from their two years of shutdown too, don’t forget) Will nuclear power recover and grow as projected? Are we going to see a surge in uranium prices that drives the miners higher? Let us know with a comment below.

——11/5/14 update—–

This pitch, the current version of which you can see here, is essentially the same one Dr. Moors used early in the year, and you can’t be blamed for wondering when the uranium price might recover or what Moors meant by a price spike being “imminent” or “in the coming months.”

Just this week there has been a brief spurt of optimism, with spot prices coming back up to the $35 level they were at when Moors first teased this back in the Spring (they since fell down below $30 before bouncing back up again). Spot prices don’t mean a lot, though, since most producers sell on long-term deals… but they are a potential indicator. And UEC is still essentially sitting on its hands waiting for better prices.

As far as the actual prices and when pricing might rise sustainably again for uranium, Moors says this:

“With uranium demand exceeding supply by 40 million pounds, the only thing keeping the lights on is existing stockpiles…

“And those are disappearing at the rate of 465,000 pounds per day.

“At best, they’ll last six months.”

But that’s not necessarily the complete picture. In a recent interview that I found interesting, a uranium stock analyst (Colin Healey from Haywood Securities) noted that although the energy companies are gradually becoming more dependent on primary producers than on stockpiles for supply, the market has been in oversupply for so long that it’s a gradual process.

And importantly, Healey notes the much larger impact that new reactors (being fueled for the first time) have on the uranium market than do existing reactors that need regular partial refueling, so those 70 “planned and under construction” reactors expected to come online in the next few years are an important driver — restarting reactors in Japan is expected to help change sentiment next year, but not demand, since Japan is believed to have large stockpiles of uranium fuel. His firm, for whatever it’s worth, has a target price of $39.50 for uranium next year and $56 in 2016 and $75 “long term” … so it may be that we have to get to that “long term”, or at least an expectation of it among industry players, before there’s a lot more restarting of mines.

The full interview is here if you want to see it, I don’t (of course) know if he’s going to end up being right with his forecasts, but it’s a well-explained position — and his firm currently has “hold” ratings on Uranium Energy and Paladin Energy (PDN in Toronto, PALAY on the pink sheets) and “buy” ratings on Uranerz (URZ) and Ur-Energy (URE, URG in Toronto) and Denison Mines (DNN, DML in Toronto). I don’t know most of those intimately, though Paladin seems the riskiest because of their balance sheet issues (lots of debt due next year) — I mostly shared this interview info because I found that analyst’s nuanced position to be more compelling than Dr. Moors’ certainty.

I’ve kept the old comments on this article from May, so you can see those below — and if you’ve anything to add, or a perspective on uranium or any of these miners, or a likely trend for global nuclear power, well, I hope you’ll add your thoughts to the discussion. Thanks!

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hullevad
May 15, 2014 4:51 pm

I think that the use of Thorium is TOO logical to hold back forever. It is the fuel of the future.
China and India has a lot of Thorium within their borders. The chinese do not have to fight treehuggers or other enviromentalists. If the leadership are determined to build Thorium powerplants it will go forward very quickly. In the long run somebody like Lightbridge Corp. will benefit. They are the go to people when it comes to advanced nuclear fuels.

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gddoktr
Member
gddoktr
May 15, 2014 7:58 pm

I appreciate your analysis and candid comments. I have subscribed as many have in the past to various newsletters predicated upon a “hyped ” stock(s), only to be disappointed. My advice to your readers: “Save your money on over-priced newsletters and subscribe to Gumshoe”.

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Conrad Schudel
Conrad Schudel
May 16, 2014 5:16 pm

I was very disappointed in this presentation “The Electricity Crisis by Dr. Kent Moors”
What happened to Hydro-Electric? Niagara, Hoover Dam, and all the hydro facilities over the world that have been producing electricity since Tesla.
They are very efficient and no pollution!
Then there is the spent waste Uranium that we have no long term solution for yet.
I also think that the plants need to be built first before that fuel can be purchased and used. So invest in the plants.
Do you have some ideas on those Travis?
Thanks for your good work.
Conrad

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povhq1
May 16, 2014 7:26 pm
Reply to  Conrad Schudel

Hydro??? The environmentalists hate dams don’t you know. Just like they hate coal, gasoline and things nuclear. And for goodness sake, don’t chop down any trees or build windmills that scare the birds!

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Len Shara
Guest
Len Shara
March 6, 2015 12:09 pm
Reply to  Conrad Schudel

Also, there aren’t Niagara or Hoover type water facilities everywhere electricity is needed. Of course hydroelectric is the safest way to go, but you can only transport electricity about 700 miles (don’t forget about the ugly wires, and the electromagnetic filed radiation given off that environmentalists deplore). There is no one power option, but for certain, burning coal is NOT the future. “Clean” coal? Give me a break. Less sulfur, maybe, but you’ll always get megatons of CO2 when you burn coal, gas or oil.

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vivianlewis
vivianlewis
May 17, 2014 10:07 am

the main reason I am a nuclear enthusiast is because I lived 18 years in France which runs on nuclear power. the way they do it to build a plant on a stable surface (important vs Japan with Fukushima) near water (not hard to find in France) in the countryside. Then build another and another alongside the first once the locals are acclimated to the idea and feel safe. Thus about 3/4 of French power is nuclear sourced (they also have dams and tidal and wind power stations, experimental; and they opted to ban fracking because the French countryside is so beautiful.)
If you every sail or drive down the Loire Valley look out for the nuclear power stations amidst the chateaux!
But looking back I can recall as a teenager (before teenagers were banned from investing in stocks; I am that old!) investing in a uranium mine in Canada when I was at the Bronx High School of Science. It was the same then as now: a mine is a hole in the ground with a lier on top of it.
I now have to look into thorium. Thanks for the head’s up.

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hendrixnuzzles
April 5, 2015 12:18 am
Reply to  vivianlewis

Hello Vivian,
Could you please wander over to my thread OIL…GAS CONVERSION…NANOTECHNOLOGY
and let me know what you think ? It’s pretty lonely over there… just me, Patricia, Travis, Sogiam and Frank. It might be up your alley and I’d like your take on it.

Be sure to look at the links. The are pretty brief but very important.

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gard
Guest
May 17, 2014 11:30 am

I got excited about all the uranium hype 3 years ago and nibbled a bit at UEC. Then I read Travis’s article back then about how the price of uranium is based on long term contracts and doesn’t vary much on short term variables i.e. the Russian contract. So I sold UEC for a small gain(thanks Travis) before it slowly went down. I wouldn’t look for any great short term gains in uranium stocks and the long term is so up in the air that it’s no better than a guess. As for thorium, too much pie in the sky. If it were as great as pitched then it would be much further along, a lot of money, big money to be made. We haven’t needed any plutonium in a long time, plenty of nuclear bombs, including the dismantled kind around with plutonium parts so that argument doesn’t hold water with me. Thanks for all the comments and it’s great to be here

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j_upton
j_upton
May 17, 2014 1:48 pm

Great discussion. Just reading Citron Research on UEC’s history of over hype and questionable management in the link above in Travis’s commentary is enough to deter me from even short term investing in this company. Thanks as always Travis.

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david
Member
david
May 17, 2014 8:56 pm

ohhh yeah….Kent. We remember you, from a couple a’ years ago…..”the pieces are in place for $150 bbl. oil….” “i’ve got the knowledge from my dealings with the big boys….
of course, it never happened. And one quiet knowlegable cleam Mr. Moors became. I cancelled by subscription to his emails at that point.

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ALB
Member
ALB
May 19, 2014 5:11 am
Reply to  david

I agree with Moors being completely ignorant. I lost a lot of money on his stupid bullish oil prediction!

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PFWAG
Guest
PFWAG
May 17, 2014 9:10 pm

BTW, both India and China are looking into thorium based reactors. India actually has a prototype up and running. Thorium reactors have very little downsides compared to a uranium based reactor and, allegedly, the stuff is cheaper, more plentiful, easier to mine and process than uranium, can’t go critical, and thorium can’t be used for a bomb or even a dirty bomb. India has the largest thorium deposits in the world. The USA is #2 and we’re doing diddley squat with thorium. Maybe because GE and and Westinghouse are so into uranium reactors?

I wonder how many of those reactors Mr Moors was alluding to are actually planned to use thorium and not uranium? If so, game changer.

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Thomas Lepere
Guest
Thomas Lepere
May 18, 2014 10:31 pm

Tony Sagami teased with an impossible investment to walk away from Coopers Basin, Australia and for only an investment starting off at $1.21/ share. I had signed up for it, a TRIAL basis newsletter called “Disruptors & Dominators” for $49. Tony is touting the No. 1 Dynamo, now at 1.51 per share BEPTF on the pink sheets (BEACH Energy). Without him answering my Email asking Weiss Research to Email some log-in information so that I could access the touted info online, I did the next best thing which was to check the Stock Gumshoe archive for information about the stock that Tony was touting and I found the stock’s name and symbol during my TRIAL from Travis Johnson’s Stock Gumshoe; NOT from Tony Sagami!

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fedwatcher
Member
fedwatcher
May 18, 2014 11:26 pm

The Uranium Fuel Cycle is the old technology that has created many problems. It was chosen over the Thorium Fuel Cycle because it could make nuclear bomb making materials.

Today the problem is nuclear waste. The Thorium Fuel Cycle via the LFTR not only consumes nuclear waste but the basic fuel has been stored as nuclear waste. Thus free fuel and a solution to a big problem.

LFTRs can be built in many sizes so that they can be placed in a city center or on a ship. This means they do not require Grid upgrades. Also LFTRs are passively safe, the operators can go on strike and the facility does not melt down, which is why you can locate them next to where the power is needed.

So why are we all not going to LFTRs can be answered easily. All of the varied interests invested in the uranium fuel cycle are lobbying big time to stop it. Once we accept LFTRs, urainium is DEAD.

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fedwatcher
Member
fedwatcher
March 7, 2015 12:10 am
Reply to  fedwatcher

Thorium is still decades away unfortunately. So Uranium is still viable and the price should rise. Thus I bought equal amounts of CCJ (the proven producer) and UEC (has potential) today. Already I am down a little on CCJ and up a little on UEC.

All the nukes being extended or being brought back on line will need the old fuel and the new Thorium reactors will be needed to clean up after the old Uranium reactors.

But the Tease was long and boring and old. The Uranium story has been unfolding for a long time and Japan and Germany shutting down their nukes was a destined to be undone.

Long term Thorium wins, medium term Uranium wins.

In states like Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas Solar is the clear winner as it produces power when air conditioning needs it the most.

Many countries need nuclear to produce base load power. In the future Thorium can replace that and also replace natural gas based power as smaller reactors located near the points of use are possible.

Right now we are in a commodity downturn due in large part to a flight into the U.S. Dollar. I do not expect my Uranium investments to pay off for for a few years. I just needed to pull the trigger on a medium term play.

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lesm
lesm
May 20, 2014 4:32 pm

Uranium will come around again, and I will try to pass this time. I still remember the push on Blue Sky. The caveat is? The geology is great, but the government won’t let them mine it LOL.Pass
I’ll stick with the base metals. Nickel is climbing and Palladium has broken out again.

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Alvin Bojar
Member
May 22, 2014 12:03 pm

I’m not against 100,000% stock winners, but I am against finding my pot of gold in a uranium mine seeking to fill the needs of countless nuclear plants that are yet to be built, or perhaps even to be designed. These stock touts emerge whenever new ominous forebodings of global warming are issued. In the perspective of meaningful and lasting stock appreciation, these opportunities are still a long way off, while other equally enticing energy situations are closer at hand offering similar or better potential. One such stock, which I recently became aware of, is a small promising company with a patented technology capable or raising the API of heavy oil, and greatly reducing the sulphur content of high sulphur crude by a factor of 99%, so that it can meet the specs of sweet light crude. What this would mean in terms of stock appreciation is discussed in a separate microblog I created. Here is the link:
http://www.stockgumshoe.com/2014/05/microblog-genoil-gnolf-and-re-the-electricity-crisis-that-dr-kent-moors-says-could-bring-100000-returns/

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roy nicholson
Member
roy nicholson
May 26, 2014 9:36 am

Woke up yesterday morning with Dr. Kent Moors dramatic email touting uranium….read through it all and reminded myself of his last years bleating of $150 oil and $40 silver…was going to talk to my options broker about uranium futures but decided to check out Stock Gumshoe…as usual, Travis debunked all the hype and drama and gave us the facts….no need for me to contact my options broker now….not only are Gumshoe’s comments exceptionally valuable, all reader comments are excellent too!

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R. Ed Fox
R. Ed Fox
May 26, 2014 9:03 pm

I totally agree with your statement about Gumshoe’s comments and reader comments. I am not yet a member, but will be shortly.

jasonius
Member
jasonius
June 3, 2014 2:15 pm

Travis, I want to thank you for this great article. I spent quite a bit of time this morning listening to Dr. Moors’ sales pitch and when I got to the end and saw the amount of $$$ he wanted I was quite shocked. My searching afterwards to try and find the stock tips mentioned brought me to your site and not only have I found them, but I also got a good dose of reality from both you and your readers.
You have won over a new reader and prospective stock investor.
Thanks again,
Jason

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Anthony Baczkowski
Member
June 3, 2014 10:00 pm

Travis, is anyone who is bullish on Uranium buying Energy Fuels, Inc.? It’s considered the top company in America for mining Uranium. The stock closed at $7.51 on 6/3/14 on the AMEX.

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Myron Martin
Irregular
November 6, 2014 12:19 pm

Energy Fuels has gone through lots of ups and downs but is now well positioned in the industry to meet increasing demand when uranium prices finally rise to an economic level for producers to ramp up production. I consider it to be in my top 3 holdings in the sector.

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lukester
Member
lukester
March 7, 2015 6:38 pm
Reply to  Myron Martin

Have been ollowing directly in your footsteps on that for the last 2-3 years Martin. Not much longer to wait now.

hendrixnuzzles
April 5, 2015 12:21 am
Reply to  Myron Martin

Dear Martin,
Could you please wander over to my OIL…GAS CONVERSION…NANOTECHNOLOGY
thread and give me your opinion ?

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techscan
Irregular
techscan
April 5, 2015 12:45 am
Reply to  hendrixnuzzles

Hendrix… Will you please post the link to the blog.

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SoGiAm
April 5, 2015 1:10 am
Reply to  techscan
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Phil Simpson
Guest
Phil Simpson
June 4, 2014 1:13 am

I live in Tasmania (Australia) and our entire electricity grid is running on Hydro Electric Power. During the 1950′ to 1970’s before the advent of the ‘green movement’ the former Premier (‘Governor’) of Tasmania, Eric “Electric Eric” Reece instigated an enormous system that linked many dams, catchment areas and power stations into one ‘green’ grid.
To my knowledge we are the only 100% sustainable & renewable energy grid around.
The last big project on the Gordon and Franklin River was stopped by the environmental backlash – so you can still raft down the Franklin River through world heritage forest.
The many dams that make up the scheme have some of the best Trout fishing on the planet – for those hardy aesthete’s who like to fish with a fly.
I am eternally grateful that ‘Electric Eric” wasn’t “Nuclear Eric” – we can drink the water and breathe the cleanest air in the world here on this beautiful island (At Cape Grim on the West Coast an air monitoring station has proved time and time again – we have the purest air in the world, after it has been 2-3000 miles across the Southern Ocean).
Home of the Tasmanian Devil. Thanks for your informative newsletter – I read Kent Moors and it seemed like a lot of spin !
You guys are honest – a rare commodity in business these days.

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Lukester
Member
Lukester
June 18, 2014 8:56 pm

To all the posters here who nibbled at uranium stocks and then sold them when they dropped 50% or sold them after they rose 50% – you are totally unsuited to uranium stock investing. These stocks junk up or down even as much as 80% in any year. Using stops with uranium stocks is equally inappropriate. You must avoid them like the plague right after parabolic runs, and conversely, buy them in portions you can stomach holding through even the most extreme gyrations. Using stops with them or selling on a 50% drop is just naive. Research your bull thesis until you are positive the future holds a large rise. Then accumulate, and be the most hard boiled contrary an you can, adding significant new money on the big declines. Then HOLD THEM LIKE A PIT BULL for 5 years. Any other fancy footed approach to getting in or out of them is actually much more speculative and higher risk. Trading uranium stocks on a six month or three month time frame is silly and amateur for this sector. They will chew you up and spit you out that way. So if you don’t have a pit bull mentality buying them then … don’t buy them at all.

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Ron Levy
Member
Ron Levy
September 19, 2014 4:45 pm

Any chance I get, I de-promote Kent Moors. His email “alerts” aren’t worth the paper they’re not printed on. Subscribed to one of his Energy newsletters a few years ago and lost thousands. No different from any of the other dartboard gurus that hire good writers to promote educated but lousy guesses…

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Art S
Member
Art S
November 5, 2014 3:08 pm

Has anyone ever determined how much of the U market has been depressed due to the US/Russia deal to convert the Russian weaponry into mix oxides of uranium. At some point in the near future a significant % of US nuclear power will be fueled from former Russian war heads.

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