Simon Catt turned five thousand dollars into a hundred thousand on a tip, then lost the lot, and his parents’ retirement money with it. Forty years later his rule is short. Write down why you bought. Sell half when it works. Most mining shares are for rent.
This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any share he names. A story is not a target. A guest’s favourite stock is not your trade. Nothing here is personal advice. He says the same thing. Do your own work.
The one idea is simple. You can get lucky in a mining share. Keeping the money is the job. Catt got in on luck. He stayed poor on pride. The fix he uses now is a letter to himself, a sale of half, and a hard look at the metal price and the stock market before he looks at the rocks.
Five thousand dollars, then nothing
Catt grew up in Western Australia. His mother taught school. His father made furniture from local timber and sold it to local families. He watched them work. He watched the money fail to stick. As he was finishing school, the furniture business went broke. Someone asked if he wanted to run it. He said no. It was too hard.
He did a commerce degree. A friend offered him a job selling West Australian wine in Asia. Then a family friend stopped him in a Perth cafe and told him to get into the stock market. He already knew that world, and he had already been burned by it.
His grandfather had given him five thousand Australian dollars and taught him the market. Catt took work experience at a local broker so he could be near it. He read the research. Almost every note said buy. The worst word on the page was hold. He spread the gift across about ten companies. The notes said a fifty-cent share was worth a dollar. He bought more of the risky ones. He thought it was easy. Then came 1987.
Black Monday did not start in New York. It started in this part of the world and rolled west. The Dow fell 22.6 percent in one session, still the worst percentage day on that index. The Australian market fell about a quarter on the day that followed, October 20. Catt remembers it as closer to 30 percent, and as the day his stake went to zero. The pain was large enough that he pushed the whole idea out of his head. No broking. No mining shares. Done.
He came back the hard way. On holidays he polished furniture and did the dirty jobs in the factory. He made about five thousand dollars. In his mind it replaced the gift he had lost. In 1993 he put it, on a tip, into options on a junior diamond explorer he calls Striker. Options, because the leverage was larger. The options went from five cents to about twenty times that. Five thousand became about a hundred thousand. His brain, he says, exploded. That is how he entered mining shares. Luck, leverage, and a tip.
Bill Powers asked the only question that matters. Did he keep it?
In a word, no.
The market does not care that you were clever
He harassed broking firms for a job. They ignored him. A man he sailed with at the yacht club had a father on the board of a Perth firm. There was no seat in Perth. There was a man in Sydney who had sacked his last three assistants. Catt said he would take it. He left home. The boss sacked him a few times in the first months. He was learning in public, and he was not good yet.
The hundred thousand went. Worse, his parents handed him some of their retirement money, to show they believed in him. He lost that too.
The lesson he states without decoration: the market is bigger than you are. If it is going down, being clever will not save a junior. If it is going up, that is when the money is made. He is 55. He counts about forty years at this, starting with his grandfather. He says he is only now becoming less impulsive. Temperament, not a spreadsheet, is what changed.
He learned the trade as an assistant. He did the research. He sat in the meetings. He watched what the broker bought after the company finished talking. Then they gave him a phone book and told him to call people. One of the first men he reached was a geologist, and a polite one. Catt mixed up two words. Resource and reserve. The geologist stopped him. Last time you said a million ounces of reserve. Now you said a million ounces of resource. It is one or the other. It cannot be both.
That correction is the whole craft in one phone call. A resource is rock that might be mined, on paper, at a price, with a drill spacing that is often still wide. A reserve is the smaller part a study says can be mined, with costs, a mine plan, and a price assumption you can read. Promoters slide between the two because the bigger number sells. If you cannot say which number you bought, you did not buy a mine. You bought a word.
Under those two words he puts a larger rule. You make a lot of money in this trade if you get the stock market right and you get the commodity price right. Then you pick the company. If the metal is falling, or the market is falling, a good geologist will not save you. He tries not to put money in unless he thinks the metal, or the market, or both, are going up. One out of two can be enough. Zero out of two is how you donate the hundred thousand.
He was wrong in the room, then he looked again
Powers asked for a win that was knowledge, not a tip. Catt picked a lunch in London in the middle of 2025, and he was honest about how it started. He did not go to buy.
A colleague, another Perth man, Pete Ruse, was seeing Diane R. Garrett. Catt went because he had not sat with her in a long time. Garrett earned a Ph.D. in engineering and a master’s in mineral economics at the University of Texas at Austin. She ran Romarco and took the Haile gold mine in South Carolina from discovery through a build. OceanaGold bought Romarco in 2015. She became president and chief executive of Hycroft Mining on September 8, 2020, and she is also executive chairman. Hycroft holds a large, low-grade, refractory gold and silver deposit in Nevada. On the tape he remembers her arrival as 2022. The year is the small error. The prejudice is the point.
He walked in thinking Hycroft was not a buy. Too low grade. Needs a much higher gold and silver price. Over lunch he learned the balance sheet was also heavy. He remembers about two hundred million dollars of debt against a market value around three hundred million. The debt the company later paid off was about 136 million dollars. By the third quarter of 2025 it was debt-free, with roughly 175 million dollars in cash, and the market value was no longer three hundred million. His lunch snapshot is a memory. It is not the later balance sheet. He left the lunch thinking it was too hard.
Then he did the thing amateurs skip. He sat with it. A friend, John Ellis at APAC in Hong Kong, had bought some and told him to look at the drill core, not the old pit model. The hole he means was released on January 14, 2025. Hole H24D-6018 cut 21.2 metres grading 2,359.68 grams per tonne silver and 0.38 grams per tonne gold, or 30.81 grams per tonne gold-equivalent. On the tape he remembered it as about twenty metres at about twenty grams gold-equivalent. The length is right. The grade he recalled is low, and the metal in the interval is mostly silver. His own geologist told him it was too early, that there were not enough holes to call it a discovery. Catt decided the holes were enough, and that the bigger issue was the debt and the metal price. If those two were fixed, the share could work. He says he helped raise money, the balance sheet got cleaner, and the shares went up a lot.
Hold the story at the right size. The lunch, the decision, and the raise are his account. The interval above is the company’s release. Neither one is a forecast. The useful part is the sequence. He arrived with a closed mind. A person he trusts pointed at a fact he had not weighed. He checked it. He overrode his own technical adviser. He was explicit that the metal price had to cooperate. Knowledge, in his telling, was not a secret. It was a second look, taken while the bull market in gold was already underway, but before he thought the crowd had fully arrived.
He will buy a cheap asset at the bottom, when prices and the market are against him. He says you have to. That is what cheap means. You will not know if the wait is months or years. The company will probably come back for another cheque, because it does not pour cash yet. Bring the second cheque in the plan, or do not bring the first.
Write the letter before the dream
The tool he wishes he used more is not a model. It is a letter.
He heard it again at breakfast in Perth, from a mining chief executive whose family has been in the business. A few years ago that man had a battery-recycling story. In 2022 those stories were fashionable. Old batteries, black mass, cobalt and nickel pulled back out. Catt remembers a market value around eight hundred million dollars, and telling him to raise a hundred million while strangers were eager. An American buyer had him tied up, so the raise did not happen the way Catt wanted. Today, Catt says, the same idea is scratching along under twenty million.
The father’s advice, which Catt repeated on the show, is this. When you buy, write yourself a letter. Dear me. Here is why I own this. Here is the price I am willing to be right at. Here is what has to happen. Read it again in three months, in six, in a year. If the thesis broke, the letter will say so before your pride does.
The harder line is for when you are right. The share rises. You start to believe the next double is owed to you. Jets get mentioned, or whatever your version of a jet is. You do not sell. Then a mining share, as he put it, often goes right back where it came from. The letter was supposed to be the adult in that moment. He admits he does not follow it most of the time. He says he is getting better.
His mother’s line sits behind it. You never go broke taking a profit. Sell half.
That is the theme in one instruction. Most mining shares are for rent, not for keeps. You rent them while the metal and the market agree with the letter. You hand them back when the rent has been paid, or when the letter no longer matches the facts. Owning them as a belief is how bag holders are made. He does not dump that label only on retail. He spent his career calling institutions. He says they tend to arrive once the study is done, the mine is pouring, and the balance sheet looks safe. They were not in copper five years ago, when it was dull. Retail was. Copper then rose on the electrical build and on data centres, and the early buyers could sell to the late ones. Common sense, early, is not a defect. Refusing to leave is.
Sell when the risk has been removed
Powers asked how you exit a small miner that starts to look like a big one. Some people say let winners run, because they must pay for the mistakes. Some people sell at a double, or a triple. Catt’s answer is personal before it is mathematical. If a position gets so large that he cannot think, he sells some. He used “more than half my wealth” as the kind of size that ruins judgment. The emotion is the signal. The spreadsheet will lie to keep the position.
He also wants a few of his ten positions to be liquid, so he can get out if he changes his mind on the market or the metal tomorrow. A bullish view that flips is useless if every share is a million-dollar block in a twenty-cent name.
Then he pointed at John Dorward, and the tape mangled the names. Cleaned up, the public record is this. Dorward is executive chairman of Ausgold, which owns the Katanning gold project in Western Australia. In August 2026 OceanaGold signed a binding deal to buy Ausgold for about 776 million Australian dollars, about 549 million U.S. dollars, mostly in OceanaGold shares, with a capped cash choice. Dundee, a holder, backed it. Catt was a shareholder and says he was part of why Dorward took the job. He says the shares were cheap because the market thought the farmers could not be dealt with. Dorward’s job, in Catt’s telling, was to fix that, get it permitted, move it toward a build, and not stay for the last dollar. Catt prices that exit near 170 U.S. dollars an ounce. The scheme still had to close. Agreed is not cashed. The point he wants is the decision to sell once the ugly problem was smaller.
The second deal is Roxmore. In October 2026 Roxmore agreed to sell to SSR Mining. The cash piece is 6.75 Canadian dollars a share, about 663 million Canadian dollars, plus shares in a new explorer that the companies valued near 49 million, for a package reported around 712 million Canadian dollars. One write-up put the value near 464 million U.S. dollars. Roxmore’s Converse project in Nevada is about 5.2 million ounces, a short drive from SSR’s Marigold mine. Catt’s version is that the group was in for about a year and paid about 15 million dollars. That entry price is his telling, not a line in the release. He also said the sale was about 75 dollars an ounce. The published package, near 464 million U.S. dollars, divided by about 5.2 million ounces, is closer to 89 dollars an ounce. His three figures do not multiply. Use the release, not the gloss. He says a critic could claim money was left on the table. His reply is that a cash buyer, a short hold, and a large gain, weighed for risk, was the win. The arrangement still has to close. A press release is not a wire to your account.
Put the two next to each other and his rule is visible. Scale. A jurisdiction he will live with. A reason the market is wrong, which is why the price is low enough. Then, once that reason has been fixed, sell to someone who wants to carry the build. Do not confuse a good sale with a failed dream.
He is living a third version of the same choice, and he was careful. He advises First Tin, listed in London, which owns the Taronga tin project in New South Wales and assets in Germany. The shares, he says, were listed at 30 pence in 2022, after a private round near 15 pence, and later traded down to 4 pence. Metals X, the Australian tin miner that owns half of Renison in Tasmania, already holds 29.95 percent. In October 2026 Metals X put in a preliminary, non-binding cash idea at 15 pence. It is not a firm offer. Under the takeover code it had until 5 p.m. London time on November 6 to make one, or to walk away. Some holders have already said 15 pence is too low, with a permit still pending and a feasibility study on the table. Catt would not say which way the vote should go. He stated the choice cleanly. Take the risk and the dilution of building, or sell to the miner and let them carry both the upside and the financing. A majority of holders will decide. One adviser with a microphone does not.
Powers added the failure mode Catt left implied. Sometimes a board will not sell because the price feels rude, or because a salary ends, or because ego is involved. Then the bid is gone, and it may not return for four or five years. Catt agreed. This week’s insult can be next month’s best exit, if the metal turns or a risk you skipped shows up. His test is blunt. Imagine you did not own it. If someone pitched you a share that might go broke, might get a permit, and might double if everything works, would you buy it today? If the answer is no, ask why you still own it. You own it because you want it to rise. Your own pitch just told you the paths down are more numerous than the path up.
He will not fight a falling market with a good story
Asked for the macro view that sits on top of all of this, he split it in two. The stock market matters as much as the commodity. If the S&P 500 were down 30 percent in the next year, he would not want a drawer full of miners. He would want cash, and the school run. He has finally, at 55, stopped using margin. You do not need extra risk on top of a mining share. Be content with what is already on the table.
His positive case is a supercycle, and he dates it. For precious metals, which led, he thinks the move is about halfway done. He thinks gold and silver make new highs before the end of 2027. He thinks the larger engine is not a repeat of China’s build from the early 2000s to about 2011. It is spending on data centres and on weapons, in more than one country. He had just read a Bank of America note: technology flows near 200 billion dollars for the year to date, through October, the largest on record by a wide margin. Copper, tin, silver, lithium, and tungsten sit in that list for him. Tungsten, he says, is up about tenfold and is further through its own move than copper, but he thinks it can stay high because it is dense, hard, and used where armies are buying. He thinks most materials are no more than halfway, that this cycle can outlast the Chinese one, and that a pullback in shares is still due. He noted an 11 percent dip in the Nasdaq and a 4 or 5 percent dip in the S&P, with technology earnings still growing around 30 percent in his reading. If bond yields fall, he expects the rally to widen, and metals shares to make highs with the commodities.
That is a view, not a calendar the market signed. Use it the way he says he uses any thesis. Write it down. If the S&P is the thing that breaks, the letter says get smaller, even if the drill core is beautiful. A supercycle that cannot survive a 30 percent equity decline is not a reason to ignore the decline. He was ruined once by a market that did not care about his research notes. He is not volunteering for the sequel.
His current favourite is still a rental
He likes Nevada more than he needs to. Western Australia, he says, has more gold, more iron ore, and more lithium than any other region, so he could stay home. He still calls Nevada the better jurisdiction, and he put its share of U.S. gold output at about 70 percent. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2025 estimate is about 64 percent. In 2021 the state share was about 74 percent. Seventy is his round number. Hycroft, in his forward look, becomes a large U.S. silver producer, on the order of ten million ounces a year, in a few years. That is his hope, not a company guidance line you should treat as booked.
The name he wanted to talk about was Blue Moon Metals. The ticker on the TSX Venture Exchange is MOON. On Nasdaq it is BMM. He said “the Toronto Stock Exchange” on the tape. It is the Venture board. Small difference. Same habit as resource and reserve. Get the label right before you get attached.
The asset he likes is Springer, a tungsten complex at Imlay, Nevada. General Electric mined it in the 1970s for light-bulb filament and, he says, did not assay for much else. There is molybdenum in the system. In September 2026 the U.S. Department of War put 450 million dollars into Elmet, a tungsten and molybdenum products company, as redeemable preferred equity, not as a gift of common stock. Elmet also has a large defense-logistics arrangement tied to a tungsten stockpile. Of the 450 million, about 150 million was pointed at Springer. The public structure is tighter than “the government funded the mine.” Elmet, Blue Moon, and Australia’s EQ Resources signed a plan to restart the site. Elmet’s money splits across Blue Moon equity, a tungsten prepay, and a stake in the plant that would make ammonium paratungstate, the traded tungsten product. Blue Moon has said it is aiming to restart the mine and mill in the fourth quarter of 2027, and the processing plant in the second half of 2028. Those are targets. They move.
Catt’s pitch on top of that is his own. He says Springer is the best domestic U.S. tungsten asset, with a buyer already in the defense chain, and with processing, which he thinks will be the bottleneck as new mines chase the price. He says you are paying about two or three times his estimate of 2028 cash flow. He also treats the other assets as free. They are not one blob. The project the company is named for is a zinc, copper, gold, and silver deposit in Mariposa County, California. Germanium and gallium sit at the Apex mine in Utah, bought from a Teck subsidiary in a deal that closed on March 16, 2026. He also mentioned a copper asset in Norway. That is Nussir, separate again. None of those is Springer, and none of them is cash until it is built. He says he started buying around five U.S. dollars, or about seven Canadian dollars, and that he expects to make three times his money. In October the company closed a placement with Elmet at ten Canadian dollars a unit. A unit is not a plain share. Late in October the Nasdaq stock was trading near 4.30 U.S. dollars, so his “about five U.S. dollars” sits near the market, not near the unit price. A tripling from his cost is not a tripling from the last raise. And a cash-flow multiple on a mine that is not pouring is a spreadsheet. It is not cash.
Apply his letter to his favourite. Why own it: domestic tungsten, a funded restart, a defense buyer, a plant. What has to happen: the mine restarts on something like the 2027 date, the plant follows, the tungsten price does not give back the whole tenfold move, and the other assets do not eat the treasury. The equity cheque from Elmet has already closed. The mine has not. What would make the letter false: a slipped restart, a price that mean-reverts, a process bottleneck he is early on, or a market drop large enough that he said he would rather hold cash. He told you to sell half if it works, and to ask whether you would buy it again if you heard the risks cold. A guest who hopes to triple is not exempt from his own mother.
Do the work he says he still skips
Catt is a director of Arlington Group Asset Management in London. The firm’s bio says he founded GMP Securities Europe in 2007. He writes and talks at cattcalls.com, which he spelled three ways on the air. The site is entertainment, by his own disclaimer, and his son tells him not to take anyone’s advice, including his. That is the correct last line of a stock-picking interview. It is also the correct first line.
If you want the theme without the biography, it fits on a card.
Get the market right, or get the metal right, or do not bother. Know whether you bought a resource or a reserve. Write the thesis and the price before you buy. If the position gets so big you cannot sleep, sell some, even if the story improved. If it hits the price in the letter, sell half. Leave a stub if the team is still the team you underwrote. If a cash bid arrives after the hard risk is gone, price the years you will spend if you say no. If you would not buy it today from a standing start, you do not own an investment. You own a habit.
He learned the card by violating it. A gift became a wipeout in 1987 because every research note said the share was worth twice the price. A furniture-factory stake became a hundred thousand dollars because an option moved twentyfold. Hubris hired him, moved him, and handed him his parents’ savings to lose. The market did not grade his effort. It graded his exposure.
Mining shares will keep offering that sequence. A tip. A lunch. A hole. A government cheque. A bid that feels small until the metal falls. The people who stay solvent are not the ones who never get lucky. They are the ones who treat the share as a rental. The lease is the letter. The exit is half, and then the rest, when the reason for the lease is gone. Catt is 55 and still says he fails the test more often than he passes it. That is not a reason to ignore the test. It is the reason it exists. The market is bigger than the story. Sell half.