Bloomberg

Bloomberg

The Sprott Stansberry Natural Resources Symposium is underway at the Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver.

This is an excellent gathering for 50-60 junior resource companies that do business with Sprott, a world leader in natural resources investing, as well as roughly 750 retail and professional investors from around the Globe who follow the Sprott and Stansberry publications.

At the opening day yesterday, mining legend Robert Friedland did an hourlong question and answer session with Sprott USA Chairman Rick Rule that was packed.

A few CEO.CA Chat members were in the conference hall for the Q&A, and shared some memorable one liners from Friedland, including, "mining is a miserable business and it's not for intelligent people,” and “The footsteps of a farmer are his best fertilizer."

Mr. Friedland is confident Ivanhoe’s deal to sell 49.5% of the Kamoa project to Zijin Mining will go through in the near term. He revealed his average cost for his 25% stake in Ivanhoe cost about 62 cents per share over 18 years, close to the current market price.

Anyone interested in Ivanhoe or commodities should read the discussion on Mr. Friedland’s speech that begins here.

Scroll around in CEO.CA Chat for a real-time diary of what’s going on at the conference.