Mining is a harsh school. Get it wrong and the tape keeps the receipt. On Money of Mine, JD and Travis wrote nine rules so they would stop paying the same invoice. They said this is not their full method. It is the scar tissue. For anyone who speculates in resource stocks, that is the useful part.
1. Underweight other people’s work. Overweight yours
A podcast tip is not a position. Neither is a thread. If you do not own the idea, you sell the first red day. That is weak hands, not bad luck. Ideas can start anywhere. The work cannot. The best tickets they described came from a filing that hit the screen the same day, a price that was wrong, and a decision made before the Street wrote it up. Borrowed ideas, including names outside their circle, torched money. AI makes the problem worse. More borrowed certainty. Same empty hands.
2. Buy what is hated for a reason that no longer exists. Then size it
Those setups are rare. When you can name the old sin and show it is dead, the market still needs time to catch up. Their exhibit was Gascoyne Resources. The name itself was the discount. Two administrations. A mine that did not pay. Investors would not say the word on a site tour. The company became Spartan. Never Never was a real discovery. You did not even have to take the recap. Post-recap stock around 12 cents was a funded mill and a deposit people still would not touch because the letterhead used to say Gascoyne. They wished they had held longer.
Mineral Resources was the same pattern in a bigger jacket. Noise everywhere. What mattered was whether Onslow would print free cash. Mining contractors were despised when the pair started the show. The capex cycle was turning. The industry was consolidating. McMahon and NRW multi-bagged while the room was still sneering. When the hatred is stale and you are right, size it. Opportunities like that do not queue.
3. Write why you are right. Hunt why you are wrong
Jupiter Mines was the manganese squeeze of 2024. Groote Eylandt weather took a slab of seaborne supply offline. The stock ran from the high teens toward 40 cents. One host still likes the first double. The other says the real error was the second half. He assumed supply was inelastic. Manganese is not. Stockpiles sit beside roads. The price faded. The thesis should have been retired when the tape changed. Write the assumption in a sentence. When the sentence dies, the position should too.
4. Watch what insiders do. Not what they say
Nobody prints “the mine is stuffed.” They print hope while they need capital. Strandline looked fine on broker targets — three times the price — after a hard build through inflation. Ramp-up failed. The managing director lost titles in steps, then left the board, then could sell. A raise followed in days. One of them sold on the first ugly operational print and still did not win. He just lost less than a total wipeout.
The flip side is delivery. Northern Star in the early 2010s said X and did X, then X plus one. That is how credibility compounds. Sunstone, in their telling, was a reminder that a long fade after a reconsolidation is also data. Actions include selling, leaving, and also doing the thing on the slide. Trust the calendar of deeds.
5. FOMO is not a thesis
If you cannot wait for a limit, you are already late. Every market buy they made in a rush lost money. Lithium mania was the cartoon. They had skipped the whole run. A fund manager at a pub called a name “the next Wildcat.” Rock chips looked loud. A raise had just printed. Next morning the stock gapped, then died. The hole had no lithium. Texting mates to buy on the way home is the tell.
January melt-ups feel the same. So does “I missed EQR, so Largo is vanadium’s turn.” That is not research. That is itch. A good idea does not need a stampede. If it does, wait for the stampede to finish.
6. Rerates take time
Darren McLean talking Filo is the clean version. Company-changing copper holes in the Andes do not turn a few hundred million into five billion before lunch. Flows have to show up. Havila, in their example, announced a Sandfire deal and barely ran. You could still buy the next day in the mid-30s after a 27-cent close. The deal was the story. The price had not finished reading.
The largest rerates in this industry are not a tidy Gordon-curve bump. They are discoveries that keep growing. If you are early and the system is getting bigger, a four-bagger can still be cheap versus the new ounces. Anchoring to your entry is how you sell Gus Williams-type winners too soon.
7. There is no floor. There is no ceiling
Capricorn Metals at Karlawinda rerated, felt “done,” and then bought Mt Gibson, derisked it, and kept compounding with a gold tailwind. Selling like a winner left a 10-bag path on the table. Medallion got smaller than they thought possible — under $20 million — then became a half-billion-dollar story. Chalice and Deterra taught the same stretch in both directions. Indonesian nickel tech flipped a whole commodity book while holders were still using last decade’s cost curve.
Commodity tailwinds do the violent work. When Money of Mine started, fat quarterly cash prints belonged to lithium and coal. Then gold producers started dropping numbers that would have looked absurd two cycles ago. Mid-tier is a costume. It comes off.
8. More upside on the slide is not a better return
Juniors pay a brutal cost of capital. Developers feel like cleaner torque to a theme. Explorers feel like genius. Dilution is the silent partner. Since the podcast began they noted Genesis up about eight times, Sandfire about four, Cameco about four. Beating those with a junior in the same metal took real skill. Large producers fund growth from cash and cheap debt. A $5 million name can stay a $5 million name after a 99 percent drop because the share count exploded. Dart Mining was the exhibit.
The dream is the opposite machine. A former dilution factory that suddenly prints cash and funds 50 to 60 percent returns on capital internally. Think a Kanowna-type cash engine, or the pillar assets inside BHP and Rio Tinto. Passive flows make the big bigger and the cheap capital cheaper. That is why a developer cannot be a forever hold. The clock is the raise. Be right on time or pay the warrant.
9. Fight your own inertia
This was the rule they have not finished learning. The PGM book looked clean: the industry trading into the cost curve, no new mines funded. Getting from idea to ticket still took too long. Thin ASX menus. Reluctance to buy South Africa. ETFs existed. Laziness cost the move. Worse: pitching a top-five idea you do not own. If it is truly top five, it belongs in the book. Caution is a filter. Inertia is a tax.
Asked which rule cost the most, one said insider tells on the downside. The other said size on the winners they already had, and FOMO on the losses. That pair is the whole game. Do the work. Size the rare misprice. Leave when the facts change. Do not market-buy a pub story. Let a discovery get bigger than your anchor. Fear the raise more than you fear a boring producer. Then stand up and click the ticket you already believe.
Tuition is compulsory. Repeating the same class is optional.
Disclaimer
Based on a Money of Mine discussion of nine speculation rules. Company examples are as told on the program and are historical illustrations, not recommendations. Past moves in Spartan (formerly Gascoyne), Mineral Resources, Jupiter Mines, Strandline, Northern Star, Filo, Capricorn Metals, Genesis, Sandfire, Cameco, and others do not predict future returns. This is education, not investment advice.