Michael Astone

Michael Astone is the Chief Executive Officer of ArcStone Securities and Investments Corp., a New York-based, FINRA-registered investment bank whose stated sectors include metals and mining, life sciences, technology, and digital assets. His relevance to resource investors is structural: small-cap mining companies rarely self-fund a project, and the terms on which they raise capital often decide whether a deposit advances or stalls. Astone runs one of the boutiques that arranges that money.

A Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CA), he started at KPMG in audit and buy-side due diligence before more than 15 years in investment banking. At BMO Capital Markets he co-founded the bank's cannabis investment banking practice in 2017, which the firm describes as the first time a Canadian Schedule 1 bank (a federally regulated Canadian bank) backed the global cannabis sector. He then built the Diversified and Special Situations group at Cantor Fitzgerald Canada, where his deals included Hexo's $150 million global financing, Cybin's uplisting from the NEO Exchange to the NYSE, and Bitzero's private placement. His publicly documented transactions sit in cannabis, psychedelics, and digital assets rather than mining — a limit readers should weigh directly.

His angle on resources is the financing window, not the drill hole. ArcStone's capital markets work spans IPOs, follow-ons, registered directs, PIPEs (Private Investment in Public Equity — shares sold privately into a listed company), private placements, reverse mergers, and M&A advisory, with both US and Canadian listing routes such as the TSX Venture Exchange (Toronto's market for early-stage companies). His Pixys appearance, "How Small-Caps Can Win In Volatile Markets," addresses how small-cap issuers can navigate volatile markets.

Today he leads ArcStone from New York, with offices in Miami and Toronto and a partnership with Kingswood US that the firm says provides access to more than 300 registered persons overseeing roughly $18 billion in assets. The firm also publishes equity research through ArcStone Financial Pulse and hosts a flagship Growth Conference for growth companies. For investors, following him is less about stock calls on specific deposits and more about reading financing conditions: when banks like his are raising capital for junior issuers, risk appetite is improving; when those mandates dry up, it is not.