Keith Schaefer at the mic and butts in every chair at the 2015 Subscriber Investment Summit Thursday.

Keith Schaefer at the mic and butts in every chair at the 2015 Subscriber Investment Summit in Vancouver Thursday.

(OK, just kidding about the SIS catalyst in the headline)

Glencore gave copper a lift in early September when it announced plans to suspend production at two large African mines, citing low prices.

The commodities giant was at it again this morning with the announcement that it is cutting annual zinc production by more than a third. Glencore is the world's biggest miner and trader of zinc, and the move sent zinc prices up more than 10% today (to 82 cents/lb at time of writing).

Glencore shares have almost doubled from late-September lows - when the commodity rout had wary investors eyeing Glencore's $30B debt load - but remain down 57% year-to-date. Here's the Financial Times on Glencore's latest moves.

Gold is also getting a lift today as an interest rate hike by the U.S. Fed appears increasingly unlikely this year, last up $18 to US$1,158/oz.

Eric Coffin of the HRA Advisors newsletter touched on a few of those themes during his talk at yesterday's CEO.CA Subscriber Investment Summit in Vancouver. More than 200 people packed the room for this year's show.

For an industry that has been starved of oxygen for years now, there was good energy at the summit as well as some compelling investment ideas. Small-scale conferences like this with high-quality presenters and time to meet the CEOs and other investors - it's the path forward for the sector, I think.

Other SIS speakers were:

  • CEO.CA founder Tommy Humphreys on CEO chat and Venture opportunities and accessibility;
  • Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin editor Keith Schaefer - he was bullish oil on USD weakness; macro and technicals say buy the producers;
  • Vivian Krause of Fair Questions, who says wealthy U.S. philanthropists are targeting the Canadian energy industry, making Canada the "fossil fuel fall guy."
  • David Stanford, legal director of LNG Canada (a consortium of Shell and three Asian companies) on the group's plans for liquefied natural gas export from northern B.C. and on Canada's advantages.

It was good to meet other CEO chat folks and catch up with others I hadn't seen in a while. Shout-out to Brandon Macdonald who generously shared his WiFi so people having connection problems could participate in the chat!

CEOs and representatives from 16 vetted companies in the mining and energy sectors gave efficient 10-minute presentations, and there was lots of time for networking and meeting CEOs. Not to mention great food, tasty treats and the cocktail reception, the latter added this year.

I'm not going to attempt to recap all the presentations - was posting what I could in real-time - but have included links to each company's website at the bottom, in the order they presented.

Click here for a link to the Subscriber Summit live chat.

There were many good stories, but one of my favourites was probably Independence Gold CEO Randy Turner's account of how he staked the area neighbouring Kaminak's Yukon gold deposit following the Coffee discovery.

Turner happened to be in the Yukon at the time with his wife - she'd never been - when he heard about the Kaminak discovery on the radio, and he sent his wife to register the claims. It was quite a mystery as nobody knew who she was!

Assays from followup drilling at Boulevard are expected in the next few weeks. (I own a small position.)

Falcon Oil & Gas CEO Philip O'Quigley also generated a few laughs with an entertaining presentation. He even took a few crowd pictures for his mother back in Ireland to prove to her the oil and gas sector wasn't all doom and gloom!

A brand-new company presenting was SilverCrest Metals (SIS.v), which started trading today. It's a spinoff from SilverCrest Mines, which was recently taken over by Keith Neumeyer's First Majestic Silver.

SilverCrest Metals CEO Eric Fier says he retained some of the former company's most promising assets near Santa Elena. The spinoff started life with $5.25 million in cash and that's where the stock opened.

Stop by at chat.ceo.ca, the investment conference in your pocket, every day to chat with other investors, follow your favourite stocks, and learn. It's also a great resource for live events such as SIS or the Fission-Denison shareholder town hall meeting earlier this week.

Constantine Metals (CEM)

Granite Oil (GXO)

Nevsun Resources (NSU)

Independence Gold (IGO)

NovaCopper (NCQ)

Falcon Oil and Gas (FO)

Skeena Resources (SKE)

Tintina Resources (TAU)

Erdene Resource Development (ERD)

Sunridge Gold (SGC)

SilverCrest Metals (SIL) (don't appear to have a website yet)

Lion One Metals (LIO)

Boulder Energy (BXO)