Our resolve can wear down a lot after a couple of months of being hammered in the market. Choppy action for months can be harder than a steady grind down. You get your hopes up that the sector is decoupling from the general market just to get the rug pulled out from under you.
It is hard to see that equity prices go towards, or below, prices the equities were at a year ago. Getting closer, or below, your entry price is even worse. When you are up by a lot you are playing with the house money. It does not give that much consolation that commodity stocks are performing a lot better than the overvalued tech stocks or the other overvalued sectors. The only thing that matters is that we do not lose money. If you give it all back, you get angry at yourself that you did not take some of it off the table.
Still, keeping things in perspective is very important. Yes, a recession, or a several year long depression is a possibility. In that case a lot of wealth will be wiped out in the world, but we will still need food and energy to survive. I do not believe that uranium and other essential commodities will fall as much as many of the speculative options out there. (We do however see the uranium sector has outsized beta to the up- and downside again and again). If they do, I believe they will bounce quicker. Why? Because they are essential for our way of living. Most of the speculative cryptocurrencies and tech companies (with unproven business models) can not proclaim the same place in the Maslow hierarchy. Well funded companies with great management in a sector essential for the world energy supply will survive. Compared to other investments many commodities have few to no substitutes, and many of them also have very inelastic price demand. Demand can go down a certain amount during a recession, but if the commodity already is in a major supply deficit, there is a bigger margin of safety compared to other investments. You still have to pick the right companies. (Picking the wrong one, who has to do a capital raise at the worst possible time, can be the difference between bad and spectacular returns).
With hindsight on the last couple of years, I would maybe have been a little less aggressive and been more patient with putting on my positions. Lobo Tiggre, the Independent Speculator, is someone I want to emulate more. The markets have time and again given us great buying opportunities. I am however not changing my overall strategy. As with diets or fitness programs, the best strategy is the one you are able to follow. What helps a lot for me is having a job with a cash flow coming in every month. I have diversified some of my new funds into the oil sector, but I am still buying uranium. If we continue lower, I will have some money ready to take advantage of it.
Getting on the offensive
One of my older posts “The Big Commodity Short” has been shared this week. I think that most of it is still on point. If I could have made one change for my own part, I might have invested more in the oil and gas sector that has been on a tear the last year. Still, I think that I also may have dodged a bullet. The cheapest and most undervalued oil and gas equities were in Russia. When I wrote this piece we knew that rising commodity prices would lead to higher prices on other products. That this again would put pressure on the central bank banks to curb runaway prices was a given.The question is still if the central banks will continue to increase rates and cause a major recession.
One should not be in the situation where you doubt the thesis every time the market is going down. The markets do not move up or down in a straight line. I see proof almost every week that the thesis is unfolding:
On Thursday June 16th Borja (@piterloskot82) reported that CGN (China General Nuclear) and CGNPC (China General Nuclear Power Corporation) have entered into a new sales framework agreement for three years between 2023 and 2025 for 3.12 million pounds per year. The interesting part was that 40% of the contract was fixed at $61.78/lb multiplied by an inflation multiplier, but the majority (60%) of the contract was linked to the spot price:
I have two takeaways from this contract: The first one is that the fixed part of the contract is way higher than the spot price at the moment ($61.78/lb versus $46.98/lb). The second part is that CGN has the majority of the contract linked to the spot price at the future delivery date. CGN would not have 60% linked to the spot price if they did not think it would be a lot higher than $61.78 during the contract period 2023-2025.
We also got the news that Global Atomic has received a Letter of Intent from a major North American utility to produce 2.1 million pounds of uranium from 2025 to 2030. Utilities are looking for pounds outside the major producers with developers to diversify supply. (Previously we have seen companies like Encore Energy contracting pounds for delivery in 2023). We did not see a lot of this before 2021. Focusing on just the general markets and the spot price of uranium going down (while SPUT is getting stink bids filled) becomes very myopic with this backdrop.
The challenge now is to get on the offensive. When looking back at the time we are now five years in the future, what do you think will be the best decision you can make today? Do you believe this is a buying opportunity or should we abandon ship and wait for better times? I am looking for more cash to deploy more steadily, but I will try to be a bit patient the next couple of months.
