October 01, 2026
Here’s what was covered in episode 382:
Macro Musings — Gold’s short-term bear market tests the long-term bull.
Gold, silver and the mining equities remain under short-term pressure, but the long-term bull market is intact.
Gold’s correction from roughly $4,600 has now reached about 10%. The metal broke below support at $4,375, $4,240 and $4,175 before holding the critical $4,000 level. To regain its bullish momentum, gold must reclaim those former support levels in reverse order before challenging the highs near $4,660.
Silver looks weaker and could trade down to $54 or $55 before its correction ends. Copper has held up better than either precious metal and remains constructive despite pulling back toward $6.
The macro headwinds are clear. The Federal Reserve raised rates by a quarter point, sovereign bond yields have climbed globally and the U.S. Dollar Index moved back above 100. That combination has punished the precious-metals complex, with the GDXJ falling roughly 17% over the past month.
Yet the same debt and spending problems driving bond yields higher also support the long-term case for gold. Central banks and large funds remain buyers, and Nick continues to view $4,000 as the level that keeps the secular bull market intact.
Uranium remains pinned near $89–$90 per pound while many uranium equities trade well below their 52-week highs. Lithium has fallen more than 20% from its recent highs but remains roughly flat to modestly positive year over year. Recent lithium acquisitions carrying premiums of approximately 50% and 75%, combined with unusually low Chinese inventories, suggest larger players are preparing for potential supply deficits and disruptions in 2027 and 2028.
Gerardo emphasized the importance of matching positions to your risk tolerance and time horizon. He and Nick are writing substantial checks into companies they intend to hold through exploration programs and potential discoveries — not simply until their four-month legends come off. The objective is long-term value creation, with the additional benefit of qualifying successful positions for long-term capital-gains treatment.
Market Takes — Institutional money crowds Beaver Creek while Wall Street’s breadth collapses.
Beaver Creek was exceptionally busy, with approximately 220–240 companies in attendance and noticeably more institutional capital in the room. Major mining companies and banks conducted meetings throughout the event, while large financings and project-development facilities continued to get funded.
The industry does not appear concerned about short-term volatility at $4,100 gold. Instead of launching a wave of outright acquisitions, major producers have increasingly taken strategic 9% or 19% positions in junior companies and funded exploration directly.
Companies are also unlocking value through spinouts. Aldebaran is spinning out Centauri, Riverside has already spun out Blue Jay Gold and is working toward another transaction, and Latin Metals spun out Latin Explore. Meanwhile, drill rigs and assay capacity remain tight — evidence that substantial exploration activity is underway despite weak public-market sentiment.
The broader equity market is losing breadth. An equal-weighted S&P 500 portfolio has fallen approximately 6% over the past month and a half, while the capitalization-weighted index has been supported primarily by technology, AI and energy stocks.
Oil has quietly retreated from approximately $106 per barrel in mid-September to as low as $92, which may already be helping bond yields ease. Nick expects third-quarter GDP growth near 4%, possibly higher, while inflation could climb toward 3.7%–3.9%. He expects both growth and inflation to slow as the economy moves through the fourth quarter and into early 2027.
That combination would be challenging for the broad market, but it could force the Fed to turn dovish. Lower yields and a weaker dollar would provide a much more favorable environment for gold, silver and mining equities late in the fourth quarter or early in the first quarter.
Crypto has been one of the few speculative sectors showing strength, with Ethereum rising approximately 70% over three months. Marijuana stocks are also beginning to stir after years in the wilderness. The MSOS ETF fell from roughly $50 to below $4 before recovering toward $5.
The federal marijuana-rescheduling case was delayed again following a Government Accountability Office report, but Nick does not believe the delay necessarily derails the process. With the midterms approaching and Republicans searching for politically popular accomplishments, he believes marijuana reform could become an attempted olive branch to voters.
Bizarro Banter — Government can’t execute, regulate or represent.
Gerardo opened with the ultimate sign of institutional incompetence: reports of another botched execution in Tennessee. The state allegedly failed to execute a death-row inmate properly, left her with brain damage and then transported her to a hospital — while she remained under a death sentence. He cited estimates that approximately 7% of state executions are botched in some fashion.
That led into a broader discussion about a country increasingly unable to perform basic functions competently. Nick pointed to planned obsolescence in consumer products: modern appliances can fail after only a few years and cost more to repair than replace, while refrigerators built decades ago continue running in basements across America.
Both hosts remain deeply dissatisfied with the political choices heading into the midterms. Campaigns increasingly amount to warnings not to vote for the other party rather than coherent explanations of what candidates intend to accomplish. Republicans label Democrats communists; Democrats focus on Trump’s corruption; neither side offers credible solutions to debt, spending, education, public safety or declining institutional competence.
Nick brought the argument down to the local level. Spokane officials resisted voters’ demand to prohibit homeless encampments, later claimed credit for limited enforcement and are now seeking another sales-tax increase in the name of community safety. Washington voters also supported freedom of energy choice, only to have the measure overturned by the state Supreme Court on technical grounds.
His conclusion was blunt: politicians from both parties routinely say what voters want to hear, then ignore those voters once elected. Stop treating them with reverence, hold them accountable and concentrate on the parts of life you can still control. Despite the dysfunction, America continues to offer upward mobility to people willing to take responsibility for their own outcomes.
Premium Portfolio Picks — AU Gold drills, Gladiator reloads and Geomorphic AI accelerates the hunt.
Gerardo’s highest-conviction takeaway from Beaver Creek was Au Gold (TSX-V: AUGC)(OTC: AUGCF).
The company controls a district-scale, past-producing gold-antimony project in Australia and is preparing to begin its maiden drill program within weeks. AU Gold’s reconstructed cross-sections draw on historical mine records containing references to visible gold over approximately four meters, additional visible gold deeper in the system and antimony mineralization that earlier operators treated as an unwanted complication.
Today, antimony adds strategic and potentially economic value. Sunday Creek and the Costerfield Mine provide useful geological analogues — not promises of what AU Gold will become, but examples of what this style of high-grade gold-antimony system can produce.
Au Gold’s market capitalization is approximately $17 million, even after the shares roughly doubled over the preceding month and a half. The company announced a $2 million financing that Nick and Gerardo understand is heavily oversubscribed and could be increased to approximately $3 million–$3.5 million.
Both are participating. Gerardo has not sold any shares from the previous financing despite being up nearly 100%, retains all his warrants and is writing what he considers a significant second check. Nick is also increasing his position. They believe the combination of management, scale, historical production, high grades, gold-antimony exposure and imminent drilling offers exceptional speculative upside — but the drill bit still has to demonstrate how much mineralization is actually present.
Private Placement Intel members who want to participate must submit their expressions of interest immediately because the allocation is closing and demand already exceeds the announced financing.
Nick also completed Private Placement Intel’s third-quarter portfolio review. The update exceeds 30 pages and covers every position, its quarterly developments and the portfolio’s current performance. The average gain is approximately 215%, even though private companies that do not yet have market prices are carried at zero and the calculation excludes the value of the portfolio’s warrants.
The service is now exercising Kingsmen Resources (TSX-V: KNG)(OTC: KNGRF) warrants at $0.40 while the shares trade above $1, as well as Revival Gold (TSX-V: RVG)(OTC: RVLGF) warrants at $0.45 while the shares trade around $0.75–$0.76. Additional warrants coming due in January are already more than 100% in the money.
Nick continues to caution that the service is approaching its self-imposed membership limit. Early-stage companies raise relatively small amounts of capital, and heavily oversubscribed financings cannot accommodate hundreds of investors seeking meaningful allocations.
Nick also came away from Beaver Creek more confident in Gladiator Metals (TSX-V: GLADS)(OTC: GDTRF).
Gladiator recently raised approximately $35 million in a financing led by BlackRock at roughly $2.75 per share. The stock subsequently traded as high as $3 before falling to $2.17 amid broader market weakness, putting it below the financing price.
The company plans to drill approximately 30,000 additional meters at its Whitehorse Copper Project by Christmas and continue drilling into 2027. Management has publicly discussed an exploration target of approximately 100 million tonnes grading better than 1% copper. That is a target — not an established mineral resource — but continued drilling is producing high-grade, near-surface mineralization with potentially favorable strip ratios.
Gladiator’s market capitalization is approximately $253 million. For comparison, Meridian Mining has a roughly 70-million-tonne resource at comparable grades, a definitive feasibility study and a valuation above $1 billion. Gladiator still has substantial work ahead of it, but that comparison illustrates the potential rerating if drilling establishes the scale and continuity management is targeting.
Finally, Gerardo and Nick discussed Geomorphic AI, a private company in which both are shareholders.
Gerardo still resists using most consumer AI products, but Geomorphic has become the exception. Its platform can compile enormous quantities of geological, geochemical, geophysical, permitting and historical exploration data into detailed, auditable reports far faster than a conventional team could do manually.
Gerardo uses those reports to cross-check his own analysis rather than replace it. Nick used AI similarly at Beaver Creek, feeding company filings, management discussions and news releases into the system before meetings and asking it to identify the questions management should be required to answer. The process frequently surfaced issues that did not appear in the companies’ standard presentations — including unanswered financing questions and overlooked results from previous drill campaigns.
Geomorphic has secured engagements with companies including Headwater Gold (CSE: HWG)(OTC: HWAUF) and Empress Royalty (TSX-V: EMPR)(OTC: EMPYF), attracted strategic support from Endeavour Financial and generated or staked a portfolio of projects across gold, copper, nickel, cobalt and rare earths. It has also helped identify royalty opportunities and provided technical support to companies across different commodities and business models.
Gerardo believes Geomorphic could eventually become a public company and suspects its future valuation could be many times higher than where he and Nick originally invested. No public transaction or timetable has been announced, but both see AI-assisted geological analysis and project generation becoming a permanent part of the resource sector.
October 01, 2026
Here’s what was covered in episode 382:
Macro Musings — Gold’s short-term bear market tests the long-term bull.
Gold, silver and the mining equities remain under short-term pressure, but the long-term bull market is intact.
Gold’s correction from roughly $4,600 has now reached about 10%. The metal broke below support at $4,375, $4,240 and $4,175 before holding the critical $4,000 level. To regain its bullish momentum, gold must reclaim those former support levels in reverse order before challenging the highs near $4,660.
Silver looks weaker and could trade down to $54 or $55 before its correction ends. Copper has held up better than either precious metal and remains constructive despite pulling back toward $6.
The macro headwinds are clear. The Federal Reserve raised rates by a quarter point, sovereign bond yields have climbed globally and the U.S. Dollar Index moved back above 100. That combination has punished the precious-metals complex, with the GDXJ falling roughly 17% over the past month.
Yet the same debt and spending problems driving bond yields higher also support the long-term case for gold. Central banks and large funds remain buyers, and Nick continues to view $4,000 as the level that keeps the secular bull market intact.
Uranium remains pinned near $89–$90 per pound while many uranium equities trade well below their 52-week highs. Lithium has fallen more than 20% from its recent highs but remains roughly flat to modestly positive year over year. Recent lithium acquisitions carrying premiums of approximately 50% and 75%, combined with unusually low Chinese inventories, suggest larger players are preparing for potential supply deficits and disruptions in 2027 and 2028.
Gerardo emphasized the importance of matching positions to your risk tolerance and time horizon. He and Nick are writing substantial checks into companies they intend to hold through exploration programs and potential discoveries — not simply until their four-month legends come off. The objective is long-term value creation, with the additional benefit of qualifying successful positions for long-term capital-gains treatment.
Market Takes — Institutional money crowds Beaver Creek while Wall Street’s breadth collapses.
Beaver Creek was exceptionally busy, with approximately 220–240 companies in attendance and noticeably more institutional capital in the room. Major mining companies and banks conducted meetings throughout the event, while large financings and project-development facilities continued to get funded.
The industry does not appear concerned about short-term volatility at $4,100 gold. Instead of launching a wave of outright acquisitions, major producers have increasingly taken strategic 9% or 19% positions in junior companies and funded exploration directly.
Companies are also unlocking value through spinouts. Aldebaran is spinning out Centauri, Riverside has already spun out Blue Jay Gold and is working toward another transaction, and Latin Metals spun out Latin Explore. Meanwhile, drill rigs and assay capacity remain tight — evidence that substantial exploration activity is underway despite weak public-market sentiment.
The broader equity market is losing breadth. An equal-weighted S&P 500 portfolio has fallen approximately 6% over the past month and a half, while the capitalization-weighted index has been supported primarily by technology, AI and energy stocks.
Oil has quietly retreated from approximately $106 per barrel in mid-September to as low as $92, which may already be helping bond yields ease. Nick expects third-quarter GDP growth near 4%, possibly higher, while inflation could climb toward 3.7%–3.9%. He expects both growth and inflation to slow as the economy moves through the fourth quarter and into early 2027.
That combination would be challenging for the broad market, but it could force the Fed to turn dovish. Lower yields and a weaker dollar would provide a much more favorable environment for gold, silver and mining equities late in the fourth quarter or early in the first quarter.
Crypto has been one of the few speculative sectors showing strength, with Ethereum rising approximately 70% over three months. Marijuana stocks are also beginning to stir after years in the wilderness. The MSOS ETF fell from roughly $50 to below $4 before recovering toward $5.
The federal marijuana-rescheduling case was delayed again following a Government Accountability Office report, but Nick does not believe the delay necessarily derails the process. With the midterms approaching and Republicans searching for politically popular accomplishments, he believes marijuana reform could become an attempted olive branch to voters.
Bizarro Banter — Government can’t execute, regulate or represent.
Gerardo opened with the ultimate sign of institutional incompetence: reports of another botched execution in Tennessee. The state allegedly failed to execute a death-row inmate properly, left her with brain damage and then transported her to a hospital — while she remained under a death sentence. He cited estimates that approximately 7% of state executions are botched in some fashion.
That led into a broader discussion about a country increasingly unable to perform basic functions competently. Nick pointed to planned obsolescence in consumer products: modern appliances can fail after only a few years and cost more to repair than replace, while refrigerators built decades ago continue running in basements across America.
Both hosts remain deeply dissatisfied with the political choices heading into the midterms. Campaigns increasingly amount to warnings not to vote for the other party rather than coherent explanations of what candidates intend to accomplish. Republicans label Democrats communists; Democrats focus on Trump’s corruption; neither side offers credible solutions to debt, spending, education, public safety or declining institutional competence.
Nick brought the argument down to the local level. Spokane officials resisted voters’ demand to prohibit homeless encampments, later claimed credit for limited enforcement and are now seeking another sales-tax increase in the name of community safety. Washington voters also supported freedom of energy choice, only to have the measure overturned by the state Supreme Court on technical grounds.
His conclusion was blunt: politicians from both parties routinely say what voters want to hear, then ignore those voters once elected. Stop treating them with reverence, hold them accountable and concentrate on the parts of life you can still control. Despite the dysfunction, America continues to offer upward mobility to people willing to take responsibility for their own outcomes.
Premium Portfolio Picks — AU Gold drills, Gladiator reloads and Geomorphic AI accelerates the hunt.
Gerardo’s highest-conviction takeaway from Beaver Creek was Au Gold (TSX-V: AUGC)(OTC: AUGCF).
The company controls a district-scale, past-producing gold-antimony project in Australia and is preparing to begin its maiden drill program within weeks. AU Gold’s reconstructed cross-sections draw on historical mine records containing references to visible gold over approximately four meters, additional visible gold deeper in the system and antimony mineralization that earlier operators treated as an unwanted complication.
Today, antimony adds strategic and potentially economic value. Sunday Creek and the Costerfield Mine provide useful geological analogues — not promises of what AU Gold will become, but examples of what this style of high-grade gold-antimony system can produce.
Au Gold’s market capitalization is approximately $17 million, even after the shares roughly doubled over the preceding month and a half. The company announced a $2 million financing that Nick and Gerardo understand is heavily oversubscribed and could be increased to approximately $3 million–$3.5 million.
Both are participating. Gerardo has not sold any shares from the previous financing despite being up nearly 100%, retains all his warrants and is writing what he considers a significant second check. Nick is also increasing his position. They believe the combination of management, scale, historical production, high grades, gold-antimony exposure and imminent drilling offers exceptional speculative upside — but the drill bit still has to demonstrate how much mineralization is actually present.
Private Placement Intel members who want to participate must submit their expressions of interest immediately because the allocation is closing and demand already exceeds the announced financing.
Nick also completed Private Placement Intel’s third-quarter portfolio review. The update exceeds 30 pages and covers every position, its quarterly developments and the portfolio’s current performance. The average gain is approximately 215%, even though private companies that do not yet have market prices are carried at zero and the calculation excludes the value of the portfolio’s warrants.
The service is now exercising Kingsmen Resources (TSX-V: KNG)(OTC: KNGRF) warrants at $0.40 while the shares trade above $1, as well as Revival Gold (TSX-V: RVG)(OTC: RVLGF) warrants at $0.45 while the shares trade around $0.75–$0.76. Additional warrants coming due in January are already more than 100% in the money.
Nick continues to caution that the service is approaching its self-imposed membership limit. Early-stage companies raise relatively small amounts of capital, and heavily oversubscribed financings cannot accommodate hundreds of investors seeking meaningful allocations.
Nick also came away from Beaver Creek more confident in Gladiator Metals (TSX-V: GLADS)(OTC: GDTRF).
Gladiator recently raised approximately $35 million in a financing led by BlackRock at roughly $2.75 per share. The stock subsequently traded as high as $3 before falling to $2.17 amid broader market weakness, putting it below the financing price.
The company plans to drill approximately 30,000 additional meters at its Whitehorse Copper Project by Christmas and continue drilling into 2027. Management has publicly discussed an exploration target of approximately 100 million tonnes grading better than 1% copper. That is a target — not an established mineral resource — but continued drilling is producing high-grade, near-surface mineralization with potentially favorable strip ratios.
Gladiator’s market capitalization is approximately $253 million. For comparison, Meridian Mining has a roughly 70-million-tonne resource at comparable grades, a definitive feasibility study and a valuation above $1 billion. Gladiator still has substantial work ahead of it, but that comparison illustrates the potential rerating if drilling establishes the scale and continuity management is targeting.
Finally, Gerardo and Nick discussed Geomorphic AI, a private company in which both are shareholders.
Gerardo still resists using most consumer AI products, but Geomorphic has become the exception. Its platform can compile enormous quantities of geological, geochemical, geophysical, permitting and historical exploration data into detailed, auditable reports far faster than a conventional team could do manually.
Gerardo uses those reports to cross-check his own analysis rather than replace it. Nick used AI similarly at Beaver Creek, feeding company filings, management discussions and news releases into the system before meetings and asking it to identify the questions management should be required to answer. The process frequently surfaced issues that did not appear in the companies’ standard presentations — including unanswered financing questions and overlooked results from previous drill campaigns.
Geomorphic has secured engagements with companies including Headwater Gold (CSE: HWG)(OTC: HWAUF) and Empress Royalty (TSX-V: EMPR)(OTC: EMPYF), attracted strategic support from Endeavour Financial and generated or staked a portfolio of projects across gold, copper, nickel, cobalt and rare earths. It has also helped identify royalty opportunities and provided technical support to companies across different commodities and business models.
Gerardo believes Geomorphic could eventually become a public company and suspects its future valuation could be many times higher than where he and Nick originally invested. No public transaction or timetable has been announced, but both see AI-assisted geological analysis and project generation becoming a permanent part of the resource sector.
October 01, 2026
Here’s what was covered in episode 382:
Macro Musings — Gold’s short-term bear market tests the long-term bull.
Gold, silver and the mining equities remain under short-term pressure, but the long-term bull market is intact.
Gold’s correction from roughly $4,600 has now reached about 10%. The metal broke below support at $4,375, $4,240 and $4,175 before holding the critical $4,000 level. To regain its bullish momentum, gold must reclaim those former support levels in reverse order before challenging the highs near $4,660.
Silver looks weaker and could trade down to $54 or $55 before its correction ends. Copper has held up better than either precious metal and remains constructive despite pulling back toward $6.
The macro headwinds are clear. The Federal Reserve raised rates by a quarter point, sovereign bond yields have climbed globally and the U.S. Dollar Index moved back above 100. That combination has punished the precious-metals complex, with the GDXJ falling roughly 17% over the past month.
Yet the same debt and spending problems driving bond yields higher also support the long-term case for gold. Central banks and large funds remain buyers, and Nick continues to view $4,000 as the level that keeps the secular bull market intact.
Uranium remains pinned near $89–$90 per pound while many uranium equities trade well below their 52-week highs. Lithium has fallen more than 20% from its recent highs but remains roughly flat to modestly positive year over year. Recent lithium acquisitions carrying premiums of approximately 50% and 75%, combined with unusually low Chinese inventories, suggest larger players are preparing for potential supply deficits and disruptions in 2027 and 2028.
Gerardo emphasized the importance of matching positions to your risk tolerance and time horizon. He and Nick are writing substantial checks into companies they intend to hold through exploration programs and potential discoveries — not simply until their four-month legends come off. The objective is long-term value creation, with the additional benefit of qualifying successful positions for long-term capital-gains treatment.
Market Takes — Institutional money crowds Beaver Creek while Wall Street’s breadth collapses.
Beaver Creek was exceptionally busy, with approximately 220–240 companies in attendance and noticeably more institutional capital in the room. Major mining companies and banks conducted meetings throughout the event, while large financings and project-development facilities continued to get funded.
The industry does not appear concerned about short-term volatility at $4,100 gold. Instead of launching a wave of outright acquisitions, major producers have increasingly taken strategic 9% or 19% positions in junior companies and funded exploration directly.
Companies are also unlocking value through spinouts. Aldebaran is spinning out Centauri, Riverside has already spun out Blue Jay Gold and is working toward another transaction, and Latin Metals spun out Latin Explore. Meanwhile, drill rigs and assay capacity remain tight — evidence that substantial exploration activity is underway despite weak public-market sentiment.
The broader equity market is losing breadth. An equal-weighted S&P 500 portfolio has fallen approximately 6% over the past month and a half, while the capitalization-weighted index has been supported primarily by technology, AI and energy stocks.
Oil has quietly retreated from approximately $106 per barrel in mid-September to as low as $92, which may already be helping bond yields ease. Nick expects third-quarter GDP growth near 4%, possibly higher, while inflation could climb toward 3.7%–3.9%. He expects both growth and inflation to slow as the economy moves through the fourth quarter and into early 2027.
That combination would be challenging for the broad market, but it could force the Fed to turn dovish. Lower yields and a weaker dollar would provide a much more favorable environment for gold, silver and mining equities late in the fourth quarter or early in the first quarter.
Crypto has been one of the few speculative sectors showing strength, with Ethereum rising approximately 70% over three months. Marijuana stocks are also beginning to stir after years in the wilderness. The MSOS ETF fell from roughly $50 to below $4 before recovering toward $5.
The federal marijuana-rescheduling case was delayed again following a Government Accountability Office report, but Nick does not believe the delay necessarily derails the process. With the midterms approaching and Republicans searching for politically popular accomplishments, he believes marijuana reform could become an attempted olive branch to voters.
Bizarro Banter — Government can’t execute, regulate or represent.
Gerardo opened with the ultimate sign of institutional incompetence: reports of another botched execution in Tennessee. The state allegedly failed to execute a death-row inmate properly, left her with brain damage and then transported her to a hospital — while she remained under a death sentence. He cited estimates that approximately 7% of state executions are botched in some fashion.
That led into a broader discussion about a country increasingly unable to perform basic functions competently. Nick pointed to planned obsolescence in consumer products: modern appliances can fail after only a few years and cost more to repair than replace, while refrigerators built decades ago continue running in basements across America.
Both hosts remain deeply dissatisfied with the political choices heading into the midterms. Campaigns increasingly amount to warnings not to vote for the other party rather than coherent explanations of what candidates intend to accomplish. Republicans label Democrats communists; Democrats focus on Trump’s corruption; neither side offers credible solutions to debt, spending, education, public safety or declining institutional competence.
Nick brought the argument down to the local level. Spokane officials resisted voters’ demand to prohibit homeless encampments, later claimed credit for limited enforcement and are now seeking another sales-tax increase in the name of community safety. Washington voters also supported freedom of energy choice, only to have the measure overturned by the state Supreme Court on technical grounds.
His conclusion was blunt: politicians from both parties routinely say what voters want to hear, then ignore those voters once elected. Stop treating them with reverence, hold them accountable and concentrate on the parts of life you can still control. Despite the dysfunction, America continues to offer upward mobility to people willing to take responsibility for their own outcomes.
Premium Portfolio Picks — AU Gold drills, Gladiator reloads and Geomorphic AI accelerates the hunt.
Gerardo’s highest-conviction takeaway from Beaver Creek was Au Gold (TSX-V: AUGC)(OTC: AUGCF).
The company controls a district-scale, past-producing gold-antimony project in Australia and is preparing to begin its maiden drill program within weeks. AU Gold’s reconstructed cross-sections draw on historical mine records containing references to visible gold over approximately four meters, additional visible gold deeper in the system and antimony mineralization that earlier operators treated as an unwanted complication.
Today, antimony adds strategic and potentially economic value. Sunday Creek and the Costerfield Mine provide useful geological analogues — not promises of what AU Gold will become, but examples of what this style of high-grade gold-antimony system can produce.
Au Gold’s market capitalization is approximately $17 million, even after the shares roughly doubled over the preceding month and a half. The company announced a $2 million financing that Nick and Gerardo understand is heavily oversubscribed and could be increased to approximately $3 million–$3.5 million.
Both are participating. Gerardo has not sold any shares from the previous financing despite being up nearly 100%, retains all his warrants and is writing what he considers a significant second check. Nick is also increasing his position. They believe the combination of management, scale, historical production, high grades, gold-antimony exposure and imminent drilling offers exceptional speculative upside — but the drill bit still has to demonstrate how much mineralization is actually present.
Private Placement Intel members who want to participate must submit their expressions of interest immediately because the allocation is closing and demand already exceeds the announced financing.
Nick also completed Private Placement Intel’s third-quarter portfolio review. The update exceeds 30 pages and covers every position, its quarterly developments and the portfolio’s current performance. The average gain is approximately 215%, even though private companies that do not yet have market prices are carried at zero and the calculation excludes the value of the portfolio’s warrants.
The service is now exercising Kingsmen Resources (TSX-V: KNG)(OTC: KNGRF) warrants at $0.40 while the shares trade above $1, as well as Revival Gold (TSX-V: RVG)(OTC: RVLGF) warrants at $0.45 while the shares trade around $0.75–$0.76. Additional warrants coming due in January are already more than 100% in the money.
Nick continues to caution that the service is approaching its self-imposed membership limit. Early-stage companies raise relatively small amounts of capital, and heavily oversubscribed financings cannot accommodate hundreds of investors seeking meaningful allocations.
Nick also came away from Beaver Creek more confident in Gladiator Metals (TSX-V: GLADS)(OTC: GDTRF).
Gladiator recently raised approximately $35 million in a financing led by BlackRock at roughly $2.75 per share. The stock subsequently traded as high as $3 before falling to $2.17 amid broader market weakness, putting it below the financing price.
The company plans to drill approximately 30,000 additional meters at its Whitehorse Copper Project by Christmas and continue drilling into 2027. Management has publicly discussed an exploration target of approximately 100 million tonnes grading better than 1% copper. That is a target — not an established mineral resource — but continued drilling is producing high-grade, near-surface mineralization with potentially favorable strip ratios.
Gladiator’s market capitalization is approximately $253 million. For comparison, Meridian Mining has a roughly 70-million-tonne resource at comparable grades, a definitive feasibility study and a valuation above $1 billion. Gladiator still has substantial work ahead of it, but that comparison illustrates the potential rerating if drilling establishes the scale and continuity management is targeting.
Finally, Gerardo and Nick discussed Geomorphic AI, a private company in which both are shareholders.
Gerardo still resists using most consumer AI products, but Geomorphic has become the exception. Its platform can compile enormous quantities of geological, geochemical, geophysical, permitting and historical exploration data into detailed, auditable reports far faster than a conventional team could do manually.
Gerardo uses those reports to cross-check his own analysis rather than replace it. Nick used AI similarly at Beaver Creek, feeding company filings, management discussions and news releases into the system before meetings and asking it to identify the questions management should be required to answer. The process frequently surfaced issues that did not appear in the companies’ standard presentations — including unanswered financing questions and overlooked results from previous drill campaigns.
Geomorphic has secured engagements with companies including Headwater Gold (CSE: HWG)(OTC: HWAUF) and Empress Royalty (TSX-V: EMPR)(OTC: EMPYF), attracted strategic support from Endeavour Financial and generated or staked a portfolio of projects across gold, copper, nickel, cobalt and rare earths. It has also helped identify royalty opportunities and provided technical support to companies across different commodities and business models.
Gerardo believes Geomorphic could eventually become a public company and suspects its future valuation could be many times higher than where he and Nick originally invested. No public transaction or timetable has been announced, but both see AI-assisted geological analysis and project generation becoming a permanent part of the resource sector.