When a leading Swiss bank recommended its clients sell all their gold, AgaNola Asset Manager Florian Siegfried knew the precious metal was preparing for an upswing. In this interview with The Gold Report, he shares five junior mining names that have made smart moves during the down time and are well positioned for an upswing.
The Gold Report: The year started off with quite a lot of volatility. From your perspective in Switzerland, what was the root cause of the stock decline? China, the Middle East, the United States?
Florian Siegfried: In our November 2014 interview, we outlined the notion that the cycling credit markets were undergoing a profound change where typically we see spreads going into widening. That climaxed in December of last year when we experienced a dramatic spike in spreads.
China and the Middle East are more of a catalyst than a cause for the volatility. The root cause is, in my opinion, from the credit side. This is why probably people are nervous. They see yields going up in the high-yield market. It’s still a very leveraged market with a lot of marching yields that have to be served now with lower prices, which creates a downside momentum. I think we have been answering the cyclical bear in equities. This should be good for gold on the other side, which is probably forming a bottom here. We are most likely at the late stages.
“Falco Resources Ltd. released some metallurgy results that are looking quite robust.”
TGR: What are the indicators you watch to understand these cycles?
FS: In addition to the high-yield bond markets, the other indicator is action in the reverse repo market whereby the Federal Reserve is somehow sucking up liquidity by selling treasury bonds to the …read more