Ralph Aldis Looks Back at 2020, Ahead to 2021

Portfolio manager Ralph Aldis shared his insights on the best performing resource stocks in 2020 with Patrice Fusillo at Streetwise Reports. Ralph, a 30-year veteran of mining and natural resource stocks, also looks ahead to 2021 and names companies he expects to outperform.

Read an excerpt from the interview below.

Streetwise Reports: Ralph, thanks for joining us today. 2020 has been a year that no one predicted. What lessons have you learned from the last year?

Ralph Aldis: Remain calm is what I would tell investors. We’ve gone through probably some of the most unusual political situations, and of course that has affected the markets and the Federal Reserve. I think investors just generally need to settle back down because I think we’re going to be coming into a more focused, less fractious environment. Hopefully that means we may get some infrastructure builds done. That could be good for natural resources. We also have things that could be good for gold: interest rates remaining low and potential inflation that could be in the works. So remain calm. I think there are good opportunities that we’re going to be faced with in the coming 2021.

SWR: Over the last year, what companies have been some of your best performers?

RA: Well, there’s been a number of them, and they come from some different themes. Two of the best performers that probably the whole natural resource space has seen this year have been De Grey Mining Ltd. and Chalice Gold Mines Ltd. They’re companies that have been around, but they’ve made great exploration discoveries and ended up with the right metals. De Grey Mining is up more than 20-fold this year. Chalice is up like 16-fold. Now, we didn’t capture all of those gains ourselves in the funds, but we did do actually pretty well on De Grey and Chalice.

K92 Mining Inc. is another great name. That’s been up about 158% this year. That’s been one of our biggest exposures and has done very well.

A name that’s been around, a management team from the past that found some interesting things in Mexico, is GoGold Resources Inc. It’s had a very good year, up 213%.

The group Calibre Mining Corp. has done very well. That’s been a real good winner. These things are up around 150 and some odd percent for the year.

Metalla Royalty & Streaming Ltd. has had a real nice finish for this year. It’s getting close to like a 112% gain for the year with several indexes adding the name to their portfolio.

SWR: Looking ahead, what do you feel investors need to keep in mind as we move into 2021?

RA: I think in the gold space, consolidation may become a little bit more visible or a little bit more of a topic. Two years ago, we had the seniors consolidate and shed assets. Then last year we did see some of the seniors and some of the mid-tiers make some investment stakes, like Barrick Gold Corp. made an investment in Reunion Gold Corp. It also made an investment in Japan Gold Corp.

SWR: What kind of precious metal companies do you feel will do well in the next year?

RA: The silver and gold companies will do very well. There are very few silver plays you can get in, but there are some out there, more so in the junior-tiered miners. Even on the platinum-palladium side, it’s very difficult to find a single company that just has exposure to one single metal or something like that. But if you’re looking for platinum-palladium, you certainly have the South Africans, Impala, that whole suite over there, but you may not want that political risk. In that case, maybe you’re trying to play some of these other names, and there are various ways to get after this, such as Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. for its platinum, palladium, copper, zinc and nickel exposure.

For the full interview, visit streetwisereports.com!

All opinions expressed and data provided are subject to change without notice.

Holdings may change daily. Holdings are reported as of the most recent quarter-end. The following securities mentioned in the article were held by one or more accounts managed by U.S. Global Investors as of (09/30/2020): Chalice Gold Mines, K92 Mining, GoGold Resources, Calibre Mining Corp, Metalla Royalty & Streaming, Barrick Gold Corp, Reunion Gold, Impala Platinum Holdings, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.