Joe Mazumdar is the publisher of Exploration Insights, a former analyst and economic geologist who focuses on valuation, jurisdictional risk, and capital flows in mining. In this conversation we talked about gold, silver, PGM’s, lithium, and more. More specifically, we talked about the difference between bullion pricing and mining equity performance, financing conditions for juniors, buybacks/dividends at producers, the evolving M&A cycle, US permitting dynamics including federal vs state/local factors, concentrate vs cathode supply chains, jurisdictional themes in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, the US, Canada, West Africa, Colombia, and Finland/Kazakhstan, silver exposure constraints and land consolidation, PGMs market structure, lithium supply/demand, DLE scalability, and chemistry substitution, the role of royalties/streamers, private equity, and Silicon Valley/AI capital, portfolio construction by stage/commodity, and the overarching risk of capital access for explorers and developers, including when to stay private.
TLTW
- Gold
Gold’s move is broad-based and durable (multi-currency strength; Asian physical bid when policy risk spikes), but equity performance is rationed. North American ETF flows lift producers first, then only the best juniors. Central-bank buying supports price but doesn’t fund drills; equity sentiment follows domestic ETF liquidity, not vault flows. - Juniors
Money is returning, but only for credible teams in good jurisdictions with executable plans and realistic capex. Oversubscribed raises, royalty/streamer activity, and M&A are back, yet warrants and “marketing units” are penalised. The right playbook is to extend runway 12–24 months at progressively higher prices, minimise long-dated warrants, and let drill results (not desperation) do the talking. - Permitting
Washington is less likely to reverse late-stage federal permits, as state/local vetoes still bite. Projects producing cathode on site and built largely on private land have cleaner paths than concentrate exporters that need scarce US smelting. Arizona/Minnesota illustrate the split. Re-shoring success hinges as much on processing IP and power/reagents as on ore quality. - Silver
Price strength contrasts with investable geology-plus-permitting. Underground incumbents can add ounces in Mexico, but new open-pit silver there is politically/security-challenged. Capital is rotating to Argentina and southern Chile where roads/power exist and financing/profit repatriation is improving, hence silver-dominant developers in those provinces attract M&A and rerate. - Others
PGMs benefit from platinum deficits/substitution, but equity risk is concentrated (South Africa/Russia); small, infrastructure-served Brazil PGE-Ni systems are the cleaner optionality. Lithium’s bounce meets two-sided tech risk: DLE is brine-specific and scaling; cathode chemistry can shift demand. Best expression is indirect (prospect generators/multi-commodity explorers) or private vehicles for flowsheet risk, not single-asset public science projects.
Joe Mazumdar Exploration Insights Interview
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