Junior mining for finance professionals

Six steps for people who understand valuation, risk and portfolios but not geology. Five short articles take you from how a junior explorer works to how a mine is paid for. The last step is the stage guide, where it all comes together.

About 17 minutes of reading, plus the stage guide

1. Step 1: 1Junior mining explained in finance termsExploration as an option on a discovery: binary outcomes, power-law returns, dilution and where royalties sit between bonds and equity.5 min read
2. Step 2: 2Why most projects fail: odds and the Lassonde curveOnly about 1 in 1,000 prospects becomes a mine. Where projects drop out, why, and how a project's value tends to rise, slump and rise again on the way to production.4 min read
3. Step 3: 3How to read drill results and interceptsA drill result such as 42.0 m at 2.31 g/t gold is a length, a grade and a position. This article shows what each part means, what the headline leaves out, and which questions to ask.4 min read
4. Step 4: 4Resources and reservesResources measure what is in the ground and how confidently. Reserves are the part that a study shows can be mined at a profit.2 min read
5. Step 5: 5The capital stack: how a mine's build is fundedBuilding a mine usually takes several kinds of financing at once. The capital stack shows the typical mix, and who gets paid first.2 min read
6. Step 6: 6The stage guideAll six project stages on one page: the chance of becoming a mine, the cost of each step and how each stage is usually financed. Every project on the platform is classified against it.

After the path, go deeper in the six Learn tracks or look at the example projects to see how a listing is read.