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Vaughan: Welcome everyone to Vaughan discovers, a new series dedicated to uncovering the people behind the handles in our community. I'm your host Christopher Vaughan. I'm the community moderator at CEO.CA and I post under the handle at @Vaughan.
On the line today is a user who has been providing value to the CEO community for a number of years now: Evenprime. For those who don't know, Evenprime acted as a community moderator at CEO.CA for quite some time where he was an integral member of our team. He currently runs the Stock Picking Contest for CEO.CA users, which can be found over on his web site www.everythingeven.com
Evenprime. Welcome and thanks for joining me today.
Evenprime: Thank you for having me. How's everything going?
Vaughan: Everything is good. No complaints sir.
I'm going to launch right into the couple of questions I have for you here today, nothing too stressful. The first one would be how did you get interested in the junior resource space?
Evenprime: It's a good question and I've been pondering this for myself for the last little while. Back in 2002 I got lucky and worked for Gren Thomas's Aber Resources. Aber discovered what is known as the Diavik mine now. I started working for them as a security technician straight out of college. That kinda made me aware of the space a little bit, but I didn't actually start investing in the space and doing all the right things until probably 2012.
Vaughan: For our users who are taking part in the stock picking contest - and details can be found on your site everythingeven - refresh my memory: How did the stock picking contest come into being?
Evenprime: I joins CEO.CA back in 2015 and I remember a few users would just post their picks on the site. So one day I just decided to get all the info together and try to keep track of it. I think the first year we had twenty seven people or so. With each passing year I just kind of took it on again. It's gotten larger every year.
Vaughan: With about a month to go now in the contest for 2019, where do we stand? How good are we as a group with our picks?
Evenprime: Well, statistically speaking not so good. If we go back to the report I did last week about 70 percent of CEO.CA users are below zero. So, not too good is the best way of putting it. Only eleven percent of people are above twenty five percent and sixteen percent of people are above 10 percent.
It's a tough market and I thought last year was bad but it's gotten worse.
Vaughan: Well I can say for me personally I do NOT fall in the upper quartile of results this year. When I do the stock picking contest I generally swing for the fences. I find it more fun.
Evenprime: I think a lot of people swing for the fences too.
Vaughan: Are there any changes or updates to the stock picking contest for 2020?
Evenprime: Next year it'll be the same. 3 stock picks. Might make a couple little changes here and there. We're talking about it in CEO channels. Right now I do this on my own time and money for fun and it takes quite a bit of time to keep everything organised and everything. Maybe one day I’ll change that.
Vaughan: From your experience running the stock picking contest, do you have any insights that users may want to consider when making their picks for 2020?
Evenprime: If you look at the 2019 contest statistics the most picked companies, for example like Royal Nickel which was picked by eighty three people, haven't done well in general. These are companies that weren't pumped per se, but retail was very excited and they were hot stocks at the time we were accepting entries for the stock picking contest. So my advice would be don't follow what everyone else is picking. Do your due diligence and find a couple of quiet stocks, ones that don’t have a lot of chatter around them at the moment. It's the quiet ones that usually make the good runs, not the ones that are hot. Hot's already done you know?
Vaughan: Yeah they've already moved up.
Evenprime: This said I picked West Haven along with quite a few others, so not exactly quiet. It's a quality company but it's still down 36 percent this year. I guess that's just indicative of the exploration market. Some of the weed company picks are down 75-85% too. it's just tough out there right now.
Vaughan: Your point speaks to an obvious flaw of the stock picking contest which is that we pick the stocks on one day at the very end of the year which happens to be at the bottom of tax loss selling season. So there's a lot of distortion that can really influence the results.
I noticed on the stock picking contest channel on the CEO that someone mentioned perhaps doing a second stock picking contest but having it start say mid year, so as to offset that distortion.
Evenprime: I saw that today as well and I think it's a pretty good idea. It's just a lot more overhead keeping it all under control and documented. The contest isn’t perfect by any stretch and we can say that it's not real because people can pick anything, including things they don’t actually own, or the timing of the close of the contest distorts results, etc, but its really just for fun and we all know the rules: pick a company at the first of the year and at the end of the year whoever is the highest wins.
There are companies that in January and February I feel confident they'll make a decent run but I know they'll probably retract, statistically speaking. I may buy it as an investment but not as a stock pick for the contest.
Vaughan: Well turning to CEO.CA now for my last question. As someone who is very familiar with the tools available to users that CEO, what do you consider the best tool or functionality of the site that users should consider adopting?
Evenprime: I think there is lots of different tools on CEO.CA, but I like to send myself direct messages. If I click on someone's name, say Tommy, there is a button on his profile I can click to send him a private message. But for myself if I go to my profile I don't have that button. However, if you click on the little coloured dot beside your name - which by the way the dot colour means nothing it's just there to tell the difference between users FYI - I can actually send myself a message. I like to do this because I often send myself notes and it's a easy way of sending yourself a message to remember something for next time. Off mic, we were talking earlier about bookmarks, and bookmarks are great for taking note of what other people write but not so much for taking personal notes.
Vaughan: One tool that I think is a little bit underused is the company wikis attached to each company channel.
Evenprime: Oh absolutely. I was actually using one earlier today. I was looking at Osprey Gold's company wiki and one user - I think his handle is @Thecowsaysmoo - He's done so many of these wikis that are really helpful. Going through SEDAR can take a long time to find all the information you want. With the wikis I can quickly come in and check out things like warrant outstanding, options, past financings, etc. I think wikis are probably one of the most crucial parts of the website. It's only going to get better and everyone can help add to the wikis, so it is scalable.
Vaughan: The user @thecowsaysmoo deserves credit here. He reached out to me several months ago when he was completing a few wikis and he filled in some really good information on quite a few different channels. So @Thecowsaysmoo, I thank you for your contributions.
Evenprime: He's got a good structure for the wikis so we can try to copy that and keep them to his format.
Vaughan: I Totally agree. Well Evenprime it was great to catch up with you today. Anything else you'd like to add?
Evenprime: Well thanks it was great to be here.
Before I go though I'm gonna take a little bragging rights here. I'm now in 15th place in the contest. I noticed that Goldfinger is in second and I know you had him on here last week. I plan on catching up to him. There's a chance that I may still win [haha].
I also want to give your listeners a heads up that I’ll be writing up an article to help guide them through the stock picking process for contest purposes.
Vaughan: I get it. Again, thanks Evenprime for speaking with me and for those interested in taking part in the 2020 edition of the stock picking contest, keep your eyes open for Evenprime’s article.
To listeners I say as always, good luck out there.
