A few changes to the Contrarian Portfolio this week:

• I sold my last 450 shares in Semafo (Toronto: SMF) and am now out of this stock . Given my tendency to sell winners too soon (and hang on to dogs), I thought I’d try a trailing stop loss on Semafo. And so I was stopped out at C$6.19/share and left wondering why on earth I thought that was a good idea. In future I’m going to stick to selling the peaks – even if there do turn out to be higher peaks later it feels better than selling the troughs now doesn’t it. Still I made a 100% profit on this last tranche of shares so I can’t be too gloomy.
• Sold 7,000 Firestone Diamonds (London: FDI) today leaving me 23,000 shares. The company announced a positive update on Liqhobong this week with expectations for first production brought forward by a few months to “early” Q4. Firestone believes it will end the year with $9m of funding headroom as well as the $15m standby facility.  In short, it all looks very much on track. But it has been said the worst time to buy a mining company is just before they start production – there will almost inevitably be hiccoughs of some sort in the ramp up, no matter how well executed. And the diamond market still looks very uncertain. Neither of those are reasons not to own this still undervalued and well run diamond play – but a 100% share price appreciation had taken my holding in FDI to over £11,600 or 7.7% of Contrarian and I thought that a bit punchy for a pre-production smallcap.
• Bought 40,000 Sylvania Platinum (London: SLP) at 7.24p. Took the opportunity of price weakness earlier this week to add to my position. Good cash flow yield and relatively low risk exposure to PGM price upside, as they make money even at current prices. Seem to be some sellers in the market, however.

Gold – the trend is your friend. Or so analysts seem to think….

I’ve noticed a number of questions on recent analyst calls asking gold companies how they would adjust mine plans if the gold price continues to rise. Funny how a gold price of $1,320/oz was doom and gloom back in 2013 but hitting the same price from the other direction is boom time! Makes me wonder how much further gold price increases are already baked in to sector valuations. Chart below showing a few gold stocks plotted against the gold price….The orange line at the bottom is the gold price – up 21% in the past year. AngloGold Ashanti is up 261%, Centamin 204% and Barrick 178%. And there I was thinking Randgold was a looking a bit overbought (up a modest 126%) . Draw you own conclusions, but personally I’m already starting to think long/short strategies.

The value of Contrarian is £151,262. Up just over 1% since I last posted on 13th July despite a fairly volatile performance of the sector over that period. Helped significantly by the 31% increase the Firestone share price. Cash balance stands at £9,398.