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Lab Report | Aug 13 Daily Market Overview & Deep Dive on AMEX, Pan American, Arizona, WRLG

CEO.CA Aug 13, 2026 49:23

Summary

Laboucan argues algorithmic trading keys off the day's headline narrative, not longer-term reality, which creates an opening for investors who look past daily swings.

Turning a discovery into a mine takes 20 to 30 years, so gold, silver and copper supply cannot respond quickly to rising prices.

Free cash flow - the cash that actually reaches the bank - is Laboucan's preferred measure, ahead of accounting earnings, at producers large and small.

Mapping each name on the Lassonde Curve, he finds all four priced earlier than their actual development stage, a gap he frames as the opportunity.

His gold case leans on debt stress: the yen carry trade - cheap Japanese borrowing funding US debt - keeps needing intervention that never lasts.

Key points on Agnico Eagle Mines

  • The speaker says he put Agnico Eagle on his radar screen in early 2024 and discussed it often, and that by the Aug 13, 2026 session the shares had moved from about C$60 to about C$249 in a little over two years.
  • He uses Agnico as his example of a producer that adds torque to a gold or silver holding without much downside risk, because good producers tend to outperform the metal itself.

Key points on First Majestic Silver

  • He groups First Majestic with Pan American Silver, Agnico Eagle and Newmont as majors he believes are still priced closer to development-stage valuations on his Lassonde curve, even though they are established operators.
  • He cites First Majestic as the precedent behind his interest in Arizona Gold & Silver: drilling down to the boiling zone there is what created one of its best-producing mines.

Key points on Pan American Silver

  • Top point: the speaker highlights Pan American Silver's Q2 results, in which CEO Michael Steinmann reports $344 million in attributable free cash flow, the metric he says he watches more closely than earnings at any large producer.
  • Silver output was 6.5 million ounces, at the upper end of quarterly guidance on strong performance at two assets, and gold output was 166,000 ounces, which he annualizes to about 700,000 ounces of gold for 2026 on top of close to 30 million ounces of silver.
  • He points to the cost-to-price gap: gold produced at roughly $1,984 per ounce all-in and sold above $4,000, and silver produced at about $1,780 per ounce all-in and sold north of $65, which he says is where the free cash flow comes from.
  • He added the stock to his radar screen when it was 25% to 30% cheaper than at the Aug 13, 2026 session, because he views Pan American as a very efficient silver producer, and says the company reminds him of Agnico Eagle on the silver side in the first quarter of 2024.
  • His thesis is valuation: on his Lassonde curve Pan American still plots closer to a development-stage company than to an operator, so he thinks the gap between that and its actual position is the opportunity.

Key points on West Red Lake Gold Mines

  • Top point: West Red Lake Gold is refurbishing a mine shaft so underground material can be hoisted to the surface and moved straight to the mill, which the speaker says removes the repeated truck haulage that is required today.
  • He frames the shaft as the route into ground that past producers left unmined or sterilized, and notes that Q2 activity in the Red Lake complex is staying close to the shaft.
  • He acknowledges growing pains at a new mine with a troubled past, but argues the gold price has helped, now trading at about twice the level it did when the company went bankrupt four years ago.
  • His thesis is a valuation gap: WRLG is already producing from a high-grade orogenic system at Red Lake, yet on his Lassonde curve he would still plot it back inside the development window, so proving the mine can be run successfully is what would move the valuation up the curve.

Key points on Amex Exploration

  • Top point: Amex Exploration filed the project notice for its proposed Peron gold mine, which CEO Victor Cantore calls another important step toward developing one of Canada's premier high-grade gold projects, and the speaker makes it the first of his four deep dives on Aug 13, 2026.
  • He says Peron grades are expected to exceed 10 grams per tonne of gold, and notes the project sits in Quebec about five minutes from a town that was built around nearby mines, which he frames as a rare mix of grade, existing infrastructure and a mining-friendly jurisdiction.
  • Peron would be Amex's first mine, starting with the Champagne zone: a near-vertical gold system that starts close to surface, runs more than 1,000 metres down and is still open at depth, which he argues would translate into straightforward open-pit or underground mining floor by floor.
  • Amex holds a permit for a 40,000-tonne bulk sample averaging about 14 grams per tonne near the top of the system, and he notes bulk samples normally only buy data, so this grade plus nearby mills should let the company earn money from the sample itself; the decline being built for it is production-sized, so he says the roughly $200 million phase-one cost is not spent twice and the staged $60 million from a $198 million program could be largely covered by gold in the sample.
  • He thinks the market still prices Amex as an explorer or feasibility-stage company, roughly halfway up the left side of his Lassonde curve rather than as a developer, with the bulk sample potentially finished in 2027 if permitting goes well and exploration still to come on both sides of the curve.

Michael Steinmann's takeaways

  • Top takeaway The speaker quotes Pan American Silver CEO Michael Steinmann reporting $344 million in attributable free cash flow for the quarter discussed on Aug 13, 2026, and treats that as the standout result of the company's release.
  • Steinmann's quarter combined 6.5 million ounces of silver at the top of guidance with 166,000 ounces of gold, which the speaker presents as evidence of an efficient silver producer with a very low all-in sustaining cost.

Allan Barry Laboucan's takeaways

  • Top takeaway His core argument is that markets trade on the day's narrative rather than on reality: a CPI print of 3.4% against 3.5% expected was read as cooling, which he links to the NASDAQ being up 1.12% and bond yields falling on Aug 13, 2026.
  • He says investors can beat the algorithms by looking beyond the day-to-day, and warns that AI-related moves rest on circular financing between large companies, their suppliers and the debt markets rather than on the durability of the earnings behind them.
  • He is structurally bullish on gold, silver and copper because 20 to 30 years of under-exploration has left supply chains unable to respond to higher prices, which he argues runs against the standard economic response that rising prices lift output.
  • He reads gold and silver as having formed triple bottoms and breaking above their moving averages, and expects gold to reach $4,800 or better within four weeks, even after gold fell about 1% and silver 1.42% on the day of the report.
  • His bullish gold case is a debt argument: he believes the cost of servicing debt shows the fiat currency and debt system is unsustainable, with the US and Japan linked through the yen carry trade, and he argues the dollar needs to soften because intervention to support the yen never lasts.