MiningMaven was founded by experienced investors Malcolm Palle and Paul Johnson to demystify the world of mining and natural resource exploration. “We invest in the sector ourselves,” Johnson said, “and we recognised that the information available to investors is often highly technical, which can be off-putting”.

“There is also a tendency to think of how natural resources companies operate as a ‘dark art’, but explaining what they do doesn’t have to be complicated”. Johnson says. “There are technical aspects to any business and what we try to do at MiningMaven is demystify the terminology”.

“Investing in exploration plays may be considered as high risk but it is not about pure luck and, when you get it right, the returns can be extremely impressive,” Palle said “though you have to be prepared to put in the hours to undertake the extensive and thorough research required.

Whist we often comment on the stocks we hold and follow, we don’t give investment advice” Palle adds. “The ultimate responsibility and decision always lies with investors”.

The mining and exploration sector is now recovering from a prolonged four year bear phase, though despite this, all commodities and especially precious metals have risen significantly over the last decade.

“Much of this rise has been fuelled by the burgeoning demand for raw materials from the world’s emerging economies”. Johnson said. “As the economic balance of power continues to shift towards these emerging markets, particularly in the East, the long term fundamentals for commodities remain robust. What more exciting way is there to participate than at the discovery and pre-production stage?”

What does MiningMaven do? 

MiningMaven produces The MiningMaven Podcast, featuring informed discussions with resource sector experts such as Gervaise Heddle, author of ‘The Money Enigma’ , and John Helmer of Dances with Bears as well as regular interviews with the Management of all the companies we follow.

As investors ourselves we don’t do ‘soft soap´ compliant promotional interviews. We give credit where credit is due but if there are important questions which need answering - we will ask them.

The show is hosted on our own dedicated AudioBoom Channel and provides a valuable resource for investors as well as for companies who appreciate the importance of intelligent and objective investor communications.

MiningMaven also hosts regular Investor Evenings, offering investors the opportunity to meet the companies, learn more about the sector and hear from industry experts. These highly popular events are free to attend for investors. For more information visit the ‘Events Section’ on the MiningMaven website.

How do we work?

MiningMaven operates on a sponsorship model with a combination of professional and company sponsors.

Does that mean MiningMaven is paid to say only good things about Companies?

Whenever we cover a company we do so on behalf of our followers and unless otherwise stated, all opinions provided are those of MiningMaven. This means that we are responsible for the content we produce and it is not commissioned to order. We do not give recommendations or investment/trading advice.

Companies featured on the MiningMaven website pay us a sponsorship fee which covers the costs of our work and operations.  However, we will not cover a company on MiningMaven just because they are prepared to pay us a sponsorship fee. There are simply too many companies out there for us to do justice to them all and we can’t be everything to everyone.

If MiningMaven is so selective regarding who you work with, how do you make a living?

MiningMaven is run by Private Investors and as Private Investors we aim to make our money principally through our investment activities and by finding what we consider to be the best opportunities where we would be happy to invest in personally. If we won't or can’t back companies we cover with our own money, how on earth can we be trusted to mean what we say?

What is MiningMaven’s Criteria?

When we meet a Company we ask them detailed questions about their:

• Board and management effectiveness and correlation with investor interests
• Vision, Strategy and how this translates into action on the ground
• Finance and funding
• Geography and geology
• Commodity exposure
• Corporate Governance in the round
• Social development programmes in the field
• Communications commitment and capability
• Shareholder awareness

Not all the companies we meet appreciate our approach. And if they don’t, we can't work with them. It’s a simple principle, hard at times, especially when some companies like to pay money for passive compliant coverage.

We need to be satisfied that all sponsoring companies clearly understand that our interests as Private Investors are firmly aligned with those of the Private Investors who follow MiningMaven and this ethos runs through all the work we undertake.

MiningMaven and Social Media   

January 2016 looks to have been the low watermark for the natural resource market and as we head into what we believe will be the next bull phase we are extremely excited about the opportunities on offer for the serious resource investor. As always, thorough research is the name of the game and fortunately, with the advent of social media, this aspect has just got a whole lot easier.

When MiningMaven first launched in 2009 very few companies engaged with social media and most investor discussions took place on archaic investor forums such as ADVFN. MiningMaven started actively using Twitter in 2011 and we have never looked back.

We are also staunch advocates of the use of social media for corporate communications and we actively encourage the companies with whom we work to embrace the more effective platforms, particularly Twitter, to complement their investor communications strategy.

With the proliferation of social media we are now witnessing a powerful ‘pooling effect’, where investors are able to share their knowledge and research, peer-to-peer, in a fast and efficient way and ‘the wisdom of the crowd’ helps people make far more informed investment decisions than ever before.

This in itself is a relative game changer and with the launch in 2015 of Twitter Private Groups we are now seeing dedicated share forums spring up which offer users a far safer and more conducive discussion environment than the legacy bulletin boards ever could.

Of particular note is the rise of a new generation of discussion community run by investors, as demonstrated by Blueshare, which offers investors and companies a trusted and secure environment for conducive investor communications and discussion.

We hope you will find the MiningMaven site useful; please let us know if you have any questions or comments and if there is a specific natural resource stock that has captured your interest, please feel free to tell us about it. You can email us at info at miningmaven.com    

MiningMaven.com is a trading division of Catalyst Information Services Limited. Registered in England no. 06537074 (Registered Office Address 3rd Floor Ivy Mill, Crown Street, Manchester, M35 9BG)