Jordan Rusche, is the founder of Mining Stock Monkey, a research platform focused on the mining space. In this conversation, we dug into how he actually evaluates developer-stage mining companies, from the moment a preliminary economic assessment lands on his desk to the decision of whether to invest. We covered how he reads economic studies, what he looks for in the people behind them, how he thinks about jurisdiction and financeability, and what the current gold price environment means for speculators trying to find real value in a market that is anything but quiet right now.
TL;DR
Jordan is a mining analyst who runs a tight, concentrated portfolio built around buying cheap commodities and selling expensive ones. When it comes to developer-stage companies, his message is essentially “trust almost nothing you read.” PEAs and even feasibility studies are mostly fantasy. Costs are understated, discount rates are too low, metal price assumptions are too optimistic, and real-world mine builds almost always take longer and cost more than advertised. The only way to cut through that noise is to obsess over management quality, study who signed off on the technical work, look at who else owns the stock, and read the fine print in the annual reports where the real conflicts of interest hide. Jordan’s current top pick is Royal Gold for its risk-reward profile, he’s quietly trimming precious metals exposure, and he thinks nickel and potash are where the value is sitting right now while everyone else is still staring at the gold price.
1. PEAs are mostly fiction, especially from juniors.
Jordan won’t even open a PEA unless he already likes the management team, that’s his first filter. His reasoning is that a great study from a bad team is worthless paper. Even then, he’s deeply skeptical of the numbers. For example, Sabina’s feasibility study ended up being 50% of what Goose mine actually cost to build. IAMGOLD’s Côté came in at three times the estimate. These aren’t exceptions, they’re the pattern. On top of that, an NPV5 using today’s gold price tells you almost nothing about what happens when the metal drops to $3,200 after the company has already broken ground. Jordan wants to see scenarios running from roughly 50% of spot all the way up, so he can understand the downside, not just the dream.
2. He buys cheap commodities, not hot ones.
When a commodity is cheap, users consume more of it and producers build fewer new mines, so supply and demand are both quietly working in your favour. When it’s expensive, the opposite happens. Therefore, Jordan told me he is currently trimming gold and silver not because he thinks they’re necessarily overvalued by his models, but because elevated prices mean elevated risk of a sharp reversal. He’s rotating toward nickel and potash precisely because nobody at the bar is talking about them right now.
3. Management and shareholder structure matter more than the study.
Jordan wants to know who’s running the company, who signed the study, and who else has put real money in before he reads a single line of the economics. A strategic investor, for example a major miner with a 10-20% stake, is one of the strongest signals a project might viable, though it isn’t fool-proof. Institutional ownership matters too. But the part most retail investors skip entirely is reading the annual report, where the conflicts of interest live. Management owning the drill contractor is Jordan’s favourite example. Their salary is irrelevant if they’re extracting $5 million a year through a related party. And if management personally owns a royalty on the project, the speculator’s interests and management’s are already pointing in different directions before the first shovel hits the ground.
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