Lumina Copper looks much more optimistic these days. Argentina was the place to go for mining 5 short years ago and the last two years it was crashed into the ground with the mining stocks operating there. Now we see a glimpse of hope and few deals are showing that the better future is to come for the proud people and the great country.
Companies to watch: McEwen Mining, TNR Gold, Lumina Copper, International Lithium, Rodinia Lithium.
Los Azules Copper, McEwen Mining and TNR Gold: Lumina Copper Surged 63% From August Low MUX, TNR.v, LCC.v, GDX
"Lumina Copper has become one of our main success stories this summer which we have shared with our fellow travelers. As you know, we are not giving any investment advice here and our observations of the markets and trends will stay only observations until Mr Market will make up his mind. Please read our full legal disclaimer.
With Lumina Copper we have noticed the catalyst when Ross Beaty has increased his 22% in the company and bought 1 million worth of shares this summer. For us it is our "Dream Team" with Tenke Mining all over again: one of the best mining leaders at the helm with his personal wealth at stake, goods are there - safely in the ground - and the valuation is extremely distorted by the political risk perception.
The dive in commodity prices did not help the valuation in the first half of the year either. The fear of dramatic slowdown in China was hanging over the market. Then we have news start to flow from Clencore:"
McEwen Mining & TNR Gold: CIBC Reiterates “Outperform” Rating for Lumina Copper MUX, TNR.v, LCC.v
"Rob McEwen is taking Taca Taca Copper deposit as the proxy for valuation of Los Azules Copper deposit. After recently released by McEwen Mining updated PEA on Los Azules we found it interesting that CIBC has reaffirmed its stock rating for Lumina Copper with CAD15.00 target price. Lumina Copper is trading now at CAD5.00 and this target price will put the valuation of Taca Taca Copper deposit at $650 million. Now you can slice it and dice it with the Mr Market mood.
Any analyst valuation will be the the pie in the sky until Mr Market will confirm it, that is why for us is very important when Insiders are voting with their own money on the valuations. Ross Beaty bought 1 million worth of stock in Lumina Copper this summer.
Any analyst valuation will be the the pie in the sky until Mr Market will confirm it, that is why for us is very important when Insiders are voting with their own money on the valuations. Ross Beaty bought 1 million worth of stock in Lumina Copper this summer.
We are expecting now that analysts will start to put valuations in their research notes on Los Azules Copper after the updated PEA."
Rob McEwen - Argentina may lift mining currency restrictions MUX, TNR.v
The Telegraph:
'Queen Cristina' facing the end of her reign
Politically weakened and physically frail, Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez Kirchner is facing the end of a decade of a family rule as she recovers from brain clot surgery ahead of key elections
Doctors for Cristina Fernandez Kirchner have instructed the Argentinepresident to avoid stress and not follow the news as she recovers from recent surgery for a blood clot on the brain. It is probably just as well.
For her ruling Victory Front coalition is set to lose its congressional majority in mid-term elections next Sunday. Defeat would remove end her leeway to rule without constraint from a rubber-stamp legislature and leave Queen Cristina, as her critics derisively call her, facing the prospect of a lame duck final two years in office.
Mrs Kirchner, 60, left hospital last week after undergoing emergency surgery to drain a clot caused by a previously unreported blow to the head two months earlier.
But the scant medical updates, and the secrecy surrounding the cause of her original injury, are only fuelling speculation about the true state of health of the autocratic president, who also underwent thyroid surgery last year and is prone to frequent migraines.
What is not in doubt is the political frailty of the once-all powerful leader as her popularity sinks with the country's economic woes.
She was told by her doctors to rest for 30 days. But by the time she picks up the reins of power again in the Casa Rosada (Pink House) presidential palace, she will encounter a very different - and much more stressful - political landscape.
"This all proves that the time of Kirchnerismo is coming to an end," Hermes Binner, her presidential rival in the last election, noted with a micture or relief and delight. Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires with whom she has clashed, twisted the knife, saying: "The days of the Kirchner government are drawing to a close".
As her support dwindles at home, her diplomatic isolation is increasing abroad. At the United Nations last month, the only bilateral meetings she secured were with her Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, and the head of the Inter-American Development Bank.
During that General Assembly session, her government announced that Argentina and Spain were teaming up against Britain on sovereignty claims over the Falklands and Gibraltar - only for embarrassed Spanish officials to clarify that London was a friend, and no such union was on the cards.
Mrs Kirchner compounded her isolation at the G20 summit in Russia, where she irritated President Barack Obama with her critique of what she labels "vulture funds" - creditors from the 2001 economic collapse - and some delegates unplugged their headphones in exasperation at her tirade.
It is not only an international audience that is switching off. Before she was rushed to hospital, the president had been lecturing Argentines on the gains of the "victorious decade" – her description for 10 years of Kirchner presidential rule, first under her late husband Nestor and since 2007 under her.
The populist oratory echoed a domineering female figure of an earlier era - Eva "Evita" Peron, the wife of former dictator Gen Juan Peron and founder of the Peronist movement that Mrs Kirchner now leads.
But her boasts of impressive progress were based on Alice in Wonderland economic data that warp the reality of life on the streets of Argentina.
And that economic smoke and mirrors is fooling few now.
In recent days, bakeries announced the end of the 10 peso loaf (about US$1 at the black market rate), more than doubling the price because the subsidised flour promised by the government had failed to arrive.
And independent economists on Friday estimated the true monthly rate of inflation for September as 2.11 per cent, the highest figure since 1991, and contributing to an annual rise in prices of more than 25 per cent.
That is more than double the official rate released the government statistics agency, which is stacked with political appointees.
The government rejects criticism of its data collection, saying its goal is social justice, not economic orthodoxy, as it subsidises major industries, imposes price controls and restricts currency flows to the point that it now near impossible legally to buy dollars with pesos.
The Kirchner government was once able to fund the extravagant spending programmes that bought her popularity with the poor on the back of a boom in prices for the country's farm exports. That windfall has now ended.
As the world markets turned unfriendly, the nationalisation of the Argentine interests of Spanish oil giant Repsol scared away foreign investors and sapped business confidence. And the international legal battle over non-payment of debts from the 2001 economic collapse has blocked access to global financial markets and left the country exposed to another default.
Against this troubled backdrop, the president has been haemorrhaging support from the likes of Romina Farisello, 33, a Buenos Aires lawyer who "repents with all my heart" that she once voted for Mrs Kirchner.
"The economic system is collapsing," said Miss Farisello. "They have restricted the purchase of foreign currency, creating an enormous black market.
"There is a lack of infrastructure in the banks, so to pay in a cheque can take three hours queuing around the street corner. It's a disaster. The measures they have taken have been arbitrary and above all totalitarian."
The true economic numbers are already grim. And Mrs Kirchner and her inner circle will soon be struggling with a very different political arithmetic after Sunday's elections.
Her coalition received less than 30 per cent of the vote in August in a first round of voting - a collapse in support since she was returned for a second term with 54 per cent of the vote in 2011. Her personal approval ratings have dived over the same period from 70 per cent to barely half that.
That popularity at the polls two years ago was bolstered by a sympathy vote after her husband Nestor died of a heart attack in 2010, but analysts are sceptical that her current health woes will have the same impact this month.
Mrs Kirchner had hoped to maintain her majority in the Congress, enabling her to push through her policies unchallenged. Indeed, her foes once feared that she would try to alter the constitution to enable her to remain in power after 2015.
That now seems all but impossible, but until recently, however, there has been no opposition figurehead to rattle Mrs Kirchner. One has now emerged - Sergio Massa, the youthful mayor of Tigre, who is expected to defeat a Kirchner protégé in the campaign for the powerful post of running Buenos Aires province.
That will be a deeply personal rebuff for Mrs Kirchner, who has campaigned closely for her chosen candidate, and it will be all the more painful for her as Mr Massa, 41, was her chief of cabinet before breaking with the Victory Front.
What is not clear is how Mrs Kirchner will handle her weakened status when she returns to office, though Britain can doubtless prepare for fresh verbal onslaughts as she resorts to her old and now failed attempt to divert attention from domestic woes by demanding the handover of the Falkland islands.
"Cristina is a deeply secretive political operator who only discusses strategy with her ever-dwindling inner circle," said another former ally. "Will she want to go out in a blaze of glory and pick even more fights? Or will she ease up as her mind turns to her legacy?"
There may now be no chance of securing a third term for herself, but she nurtures hope that another president will emerge from the dynasty: her son Maximo, 36, who leads a Peronist youth movement and is being groomed for high office.
The young Kirchner is already part of his mother's all-powerful kitchen cabinet, together with her sister-in-law Alicia, the minister of social development; the intelligence chief Hector Iscazuriage; and, perhaps most powerful of all, Carlos Zanini, a long-time lieutenant to both Kirchners.
Nicknamed El Chino (the Chinese) because of his strong Maoist tendencies when a law student, he is her most trusted aide and gatekeeper. His title is legal and technical secretary of the Argentine Executive, but the sign of his true importance is the daily stream of candidates, governors, mayors and top officials visiting his office at Casa Rosada.
It is this cabal - who all hail from the Kirchner power-base in Patagonia in southern Argentina - who are running the country while Mrs Kirchner recuperates, rather than the scandal-plagued vice president Amado Boudou, the man nominally holding the reins in her absence.
They know that the reign of Queen Cristina may be coming to an end. But for her inner circle, there is the still the dream that the court of Kirchner could live on with the young prince Maximo."
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