Skousen: “The Goose That’s Set to Lay Golden Profit Eggs on March 25!”

by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | March 24, 2008 10:48 am

“Last week everything was going down the drain, and now everything’s perfect” — that’s a comment I heard on CNBC this morning, facetious though it was, that goes a long way toward mirroring the movement in gold[1] prices. Last week armageddon was coming and everyone wanted to own gold, today maybe the world financial system will recover so perhaps we don’t all need to buy gold.

But even though the price of an ounce of gold has come down by close to 10% from it’s crazy highs over $1,000 in very rapid fashion, it’s certainly still got everyone’s attention. And Mark Skousen[2] is aware of that.

Which is why his latest “buy this one before earnings” alert is about a company that’s somehow related to gold.

Skousen seems to rely on this as one of his core marketing techniques — picking out a company he has recommended that’s abou to release earnings, predicting blowout earnings, and urging you to buy the stock. As soon as you’ve subscribed to his newsletter to find out the name of said stock.

In this case, the subscription being peddled is the Skousen Hedge Fund Trader, which is one of his pricier offerings at an introductory price of about $1,000 a year. Actually, just about the same as an ounce of gold … I wonder which one is the better buy?

So I must warn you, my intrepid sleuthing friends, that this may be an effective marketing technique but it’s not necessarily a guaranteed money making strategy. Skousen in my memory has been mildly right once or twice and largely wrong a couple times in making these “earnings bounce” predictions — though to be fair, an ability to predict earnings bounces probably has little relation to his overall success rate. Making predictions like this is generally a good way to go broke, since it’s very hard to both predict whether a company will beat estimates and predict how the market will react to those earnings and to whatever guidance might be offered. Calling it a “crap shoot” is an insult to back alley dice rollers everywhere.

But hey, maybe he’s right. Maybe this company will have blowout earnings tomorrow. Here are his words:

“I’ve just uncovered a gold stock — one that’s up close to 40% over the last three months while the S&P was down double-digits — that’s set to unleash a glowing earnings surprise on Tuesday, March 25! And I fully expect this earnings announcement to send this stock soaring… even higher than it has been recently!”

“I’m predicting this gold company’s March 25 earnings announcement will be the scene of a stunning earnings surprise. And when the company reveals that they’ve handily beaten analyst expectations, the stock will likely soar instantaneously! … It’s no exaggeration to say that come Tuesday, March 25, you could take home some of the biggest gains of 2008!”

What else does he tell us by way of a clue to this company’s identity?

“Last quarter, total gold production soared 48% to 131,366 ounces. Not to mention revenue quadrupled to $199.7 million and earnings per share rose 20-fold!”

So that’s plenty of information for the mighty Gumshoe Thinkolator to chew on. I can tell you that this company is …

Yamana Gold (AUY)[3]

They will be releasing earnings tomorrow, assuming that you’re reading this on Monday. They’ll be releasing their next results, the year-end earnings, on Tuesday … but if you’re reading this on Tuesday you’re still probably in plenty of time, the release will be after the market close and the conference call won’t be until Wednesday morning at 11am, both of which could move the stock price in either direction.

That quarter of growth when their production soared 48% was last year’s third quarter, the last one released.

It’s down about 20% from its highs — and those highs were set just a week ago with Gold cresting over $1,000. So that’s one example of the way that mining companies often trade as whips at the end of the tail of the gold market. Big moves up or down can make the miners move even more dramatically, even big miners like Yamana.

Here’s a chart comparing AUY with GLD, the gold ETF that’s a pretty fair tracker of the spot gold price — you can see the blue AUY line moves around a lot more than even the fairly jumpy price of gold. This is more or less the same kind of thing you’ll see with most gold miners:
AUY vs. GLD

Yamana is a fairly diversified gold miner based in Canada[4], with mines in Nevada, Mexico[5], and throughout South America, but their main revenue generation and success has come from Brazil[6]. According to the company, they hedge a lot of their copper[7] production but do not hedge their gold production, which means they can potentially do much better as the (if the) price of gold moves up.

They’ve also been growing through relatively small acquisitions from their Brazilian base, and have certainly gotten plenty of attention over the last couple years. For a while this was Jim Cramer’s favorite gold miner, but that was probably in 2006 and I’m not sure what he thinks of them today (or if that matters). This was also the solution to another teaser that said you could buy gold for “a penny an ounce” — a teaser that has been around for eons but still gets trotted out now and again (I don’t think I’ve ever written about them before, but there have been several Yamana threads on the forum, including this one[8]). Whenever you see miners touted as being incredibly low cost, it’s often because of the ancillary revenues from a secondary product that they’re mining — which in the case of Yamana and most other gold miners is copper. Copper miners will tell you that they can extract copper cheaply because they’re subsidized by the gold that also comes out of the ground in the same mine, gold miners will tell you the reverse. All great, as long as they hedge well or their commodity prices remain high.

So … wanna buy a gold miner? I’m not in the market for one at the moment, but Skousen is convinced that these shares will explode this week. Maybe he’s right, maybe not … I’ll be watching.

Happy Investing, all … and for those of you lucky enough to have been on spring break, stop bragging about your sunburn and get back to work!

Are you getting our free Daily Update
"reveal" emails? If not,
just click here...


Endnotes:
  1. gold: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/gold/
  2. Mark Skousen: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/skousen/
  3. Yamana Gold (AUY): https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/auy/
  4. Canada: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/canada/
  5. Mexico: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/mexico/
  6. Brazil: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/brazil/
  7. copper: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/copper/
  8. Yamana threads on the forum, including this one: http://oneguysinvestments.com/gumshoe/comments.php?DiscussionID=55

Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/hedge-fund-trader/skousen-the-goose-thats-set-to-lay-golden-profit-eggs-on-march-25/


7 responses to “Skousen: “The Goose That’s Set to Lay Golden Profit Eggs on March 25!””

  1. Todd says:

    Good cmmts as usual Gumshoe. If anybody looking for some more research on Skousens earnings predictionsbelieve you can look at VOLC, ABB, and RIO that he typically does this with. Again a very mixed record at best. I would bet that he got his paying subscirbers in well ahead of this teaser(think I saw first one start of mar) so some of them may not be happy. Note JAG(tsx) reported today and these results not real good due to rapid appreciation of Real so couldbe intg to see if this affects Yamana. Also, think AUY could be affcted a bit by that Meridian acquisition that was closed in that quarter as well so guess that could be good or bad.

  2. stringman (Steve Woloshyn) says:

    In January of 2005, I picked up shares of a promising copper play in north west Argentina called Northern Orion Resources. It was identified by Steve Sjuggerud’s “True Wealth”. NNO picked up the Agua Rica property from BHP Billiton. NNO had “earnings [46%(?) ownership in Alumbrera] from Alumbrera was $46,755,000 ($0.33 per share) in 2005, compared to $32,659,000 ($0.30 per share) for 2004, an increase of 43%.” NNO was working on developing the near by Agua Rica property when Yamana entered the picture. NNO appeared to be doing all the right things environmentally, financially, and socially with the people in the area with respect to that property.
    I was disappointed further when I heard that, after the merger. Yamana was not interested in developing the copper property! So with an ACB of $6.09 I should not complain but I would still like to see the potential cash flow from Agua Rica down the road. (I had figured on holding NNo 10 years!)

  3. Luke says:

    Yep, AUY is still Cramer’s favorite gold play. He interviewed Peter Marrone, the CEO of Yamana,in January of this year:
    http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=622467451
    Cramer has been touting that $1,600/oz figure ever since.

  4. Larry Robinson says:

    I received a newsletter from Steve Sjuggerud at Daily Wealth talking about making a fortune on 500B shares. What can you tell me about this?

  5. brenda says:

    Well, another indicator that “blowouts” can’t be easily predicted. AUY’s earnings were better than expected, at least the way I read the release (quickly) … but the stock still went down a bit today.

    And Larry, I wrote about 500b shares a few weeks ago: http://www.stockgumshoe.com/2008/03/sa-dividend-grabber-500-b-shares-double-your-money.html

  6. The dailywealth newsletter teased a goldminer in china about a year ago. The company Sino Gold SIOGF.pk commissioned the plant in March 07, and produced at capacity for the last 4 months of 07. The last quarter report gave forward guidence on 08 production and news on a second mine to open in 09. This company is doing great and I have owned since it was $3.00 share. I am playing this as a long term investment.
    Biodieselmama

  7. Auric says:

    I would note that not only did AUY not go *up* after March 25, 2008, it went significantly down, and fast.

    In fact, ironically, the closing price of $16.91 on that date has never been reached again in the entire period since.

    So Skousen was right that this was a significant date for AUY, and 100% wrong about its significance.

    Mark is a very bright and knowledgeable guy, but I wish he would stop involving himself with these hyped-up promotional campaigns, filled with empty hyperbole and making impossible promises. As an economist of the Austrian school — in the tradition of Hayek, von Mises, etc. — he should know better.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.