change of mood

There have been a number of times when I have thought this stock was about to take off and there have been several false starts and we have been back in the doldrums again. There have been two or three body blows this year, the regrettable demise of Frank, the on/off PFS with no explanation and the big resultant selloff. None of these however has any actual effect on the value of the gold in the ground and its potential.

The share price is now at the level it was when Frank died. The recent spurt to 55c seemed to be a lift-off but proved to be short-lived and it corrected back to 44c-45c.

My feeling this time is that the appointment of Laurence Freedman is a real game changer. I looked at Comsec this morning and thought, despite the lack of evident buyers before opening, that this has to go off today. Within a few minutes the buy/sell ratio had changed so there were more buyers than sellers. It had looked top heavy with sellers last week, people wishing to sell in parcels up to 100,000. Perhaps without the takeover by Laurence we would have been looking at 40c this week as shareholders despaired. This has suddenly reversed.

It doesn't take much to move CRK and any serious buyer or buyers could have a significant effect on the share price. We all know the minimum value that has been placed on CRK over the past three years, but that is a conservative minimum value. I very much doubt if Laurence Freedman would sell his holding at that minimum value and the Carr family would be loath to as well.

We can take real heart from this new direction. Laurence Freedman is not going to play around. He's a serious top professional

I can tell you I will not be selling a single share until the situation becomes very clear and will offer my parcel at the same time as Laurence Freedman and the Carr family, if it comes to that. I will be holding up to another 18 months according to LF's timeline or maybe much shorter.