Joe Mazumdar breaks down what he thinks is really driving silver’s move (and what could break it), then zooms out into how he evaluates silver and copper equities beyond headline ounces/drill results. That includes looking at the cost-curve survivability, metallurgy and payability, jurisdictional and permitting risk, financing terms, liquidity, and whether an asset is genuinely “takeout-able” in an M&A-driven market.
TLDR;
Joe Mazumdar views silver as a higher-beta cousin of gold, but with a more meaningful industrial-demand and deficit component. He thinks the sharp compression in the gold-silver ratio points to why silver has outperformed recently, while warning that substitution, scrap response, and cyclical volatility are the obvious buzzkill risks. On silver stock selection, Joe says that simplistic valuation methods such as (spot price – cash cost) * ounces = value, don’t work as that misses the real failure modes, which include project position on the cost curve, capital intensity, metallurgy and concentrate penalties/payability, logistics and offtake options, and the ability to fund and build in a real-world jurisdiction. Portfolio-wise, he prioritizes liquidity and durability, and reads financings as signals (warrants/discounts/serial raises). We also talked about jurisdictions, and Joe told me he sees improving momentum in Argentina and Chile (politics and policy), while flagging rising uncertainty in British Columbia around Indigenous consent dynamics and process risk.
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- Silver’s move is not just “gold tag-along,” but it can still mean-revert hard.
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Mazumdar frames silver as part precious-metal beta (influenced by gold) and part industrial commodity (notably solar and other “carbon-free” tech demand), where persistent market deficits matter more than they do in gold. He highlights the year’s sharp drop in the gold-to-silver ratio (from roughly ~105 earlier in the year to roughly mid-60s later) as consistent with silver’s late-year acceleration, and he allows that a squeeze-like dynamic may be contributing. He is keeping an eye out on profit-taking/herd exits, weaker industrial demand, higher scrap supply at elevated prices, and the longer-run risk that high prices incentivize substitution or technology change that reduces silver intensity as a bear-market trigger.
– - Valuation discipline is about survivability, not back-of-the-napkin margins.
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When asked what silver price to plug into models, he points out different contexts force different assumptions, but his own focus is whether an asset sits low enough on the cost curve to survive volatility. He repeatedly returns to the practical due diligence that gets ignored in retail narratives: what the mine actually sells (often not “pure silver,” but concentrates with penalties), payability, metallurgical complexity, where material can be processed (and who has leverage in toll milling/smelting), and whether costs inflate alongside commodity prices (energy, labor, reagents, supply chains). He’s also explicit that highly leveraged/marginal stories can rip in a bull market, but they can become liquidity traps on the way out, and he treats “management buying its own propaganda” (talking like something should be built when it shouldn’t) as a warning to take gains and leave early.
– - His portfolio process is built around liquidity, financing signal-reading, and jurisdiction selection.
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Mazumdar says his benchmark is consistently beating the GDXJ rather than swinging for constant 10-baggers, noting his biggest outlier win came from a long-held royalty position that ultimately got an M&A liquidity event, while more recent strong contributors were developers and exposure in silver (including outside Mexico/Peru), copper (including Kazakhstan), PGEs (Brazil), and rare earths (Brazil/Chile). He emphasizes that market health is uneven and that the best teams raise meaningful money on better terms (and sometimes twice in a year), while most laggards cannot, and he treats financing structure as a tell (warrants and big discounts in a strong tape imply weak demand for the story; tight pricing/no warrants implies stronger sponsorship). On jurisdictions, he’s constructive on Argentina (policy changes enabling repatriation of funds and improved economics for smaller/intermediate builders), constructive on Chile if permitting/investment climate improves with political change and infrastructure (desalination/solar), and sees some improvement at the US federal level on permitting and critical-minerals funding, while warning local opposition can still stop projects. By contrast, he flags British Columbia as more complicated for explorers due to growing uncertainty around consultation/consent expectations and longer, less certain front-end processes, making First Nations agreements and durable relationships a core diligence item rather than a box-check.
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