Sold 900 Tullow at 284p reducing my holding to £7,400 or 4.4% of portfolio. The stock is up 26% since I bought it and usually I would be looking for more but oil stocks had crept up to 19% of Contrarian’s holdings (Maurel et Prom, Ophir, Tullow and Wentworth) an this is supposed to be a mining fund! So with Tullow up 31% in the last month it seemed a sensible point to trim.

The value of Contrarian stands at £167,690 – it has not been keeping pace with the index in the last month which is frustrating. I may need to do a cleanup and work out whether all the underperformers really are stars waiting to shine (or just dogs). Could do with a few realised tax losses while I’m at it.

Portfolio below. Rather long cash, not entirely by accident.

So much for that gut feel I had about something being not quite right at Firestone – they announced this morning that they have produced their first diamonds including a fancy yellow with recoveries as expected.

And the price is, hang on, unchanged? In fact they are 54.5p bid which is marginally below the 55p I sold them for before this momentous news. How odd.

Sold another 4,500 Firestone Diamonds (FDI) at 55p leaving me still holding 13,000 shares.

The shares are up 185% since I bought them but arguably could still double from here based on the potential value of the mine once in production.

However (as I noted on the day) the company’s rather vague announcement on 6th October did little to reassure me that all is 100% on track with the commissioning. They promised a further update week beginning 17th October. Perhaps I was wrong to expect the announcement early in the week but I did so I keep wondering where it is. The fact is, having promised it they will have to put something out tomorrow good or bad, and right now I can’t shake the worry it’s the latter. I have no rational evidence – just a funny feeling that something in the tone of the last announcement wasn’t quite right. In any event I’ve made good money on this stock and I still hold plenty, but I am letting fear rule over greed for now.

Will probably regret it tomorrow.

Sold 750 shares in Maurel et Prom today (Paris, MAU) at €4.13. The shares are up 35% since I bought them in euro terms but 53% in GBP and as a result Maurel et Prom had become the largest holding at £11,1622 or 6.6% of the Contrarian portfolio.

The shares are trading at close to the potential Pertimina bid price of €4.20 (admittedly ignoring the potential €0.50 kicker if the oil price exceeds $65/bbl for more than 90 days next year). With the Chairman and CEO already having sold his 24.5% stake and the board recommending the (potential) offer, there seems limited prospect of flushing out a higher bid. It seems to me this is increasingly becoming a merger-arb play with a “free” option on brent exceeding $65/bbl. And there may be value in that. But not as Contrarian’s biggest holding, so I am selling down a quarter today and may sell further.

Post the sale, Contrarian stands at £168,553 with £10,404 in cash.  Given how overbought parts of the sector are, it is not burning a hole in my pocket either.

Tricky business finding contrarian buying opportunities in the mining sector currently.

Possibly some of the gold stocks might be worth a look.That said the chart below suggests otherwise at least in the London market. It maps the gold price against the share prices of Randgold, Acacia and Centamin. The gold price today is US$1,254/oz. On 21 October 2014 it was US$1,251/oz i.e. its flat. But Centamin is up 105%, Acacia is up 60% and Randgold is up 40% over the same period. Hmmm.

So instead I bought PHPT (ETFS Physical Platinum ETF) – 50 shares at $92.30. The platinum price has fallen by 19% in the past two months as wage negotiations in South Africa appear to be reaching an amicable conclusion and so the threat of strikes recedes. But the market is nevertheless in deficit (by c7% of world demand) and has been for a years. Yes, rock bottom prices in a deficit market. Odd but true. Plenty of stocks means that the market doesn’t feel like its short of the metal and the ETFS have been net sellers rather than buyers (they tend to be momentum buyers on the up and sellers on the way down,  exacerbating the moves)

Could the platinum price go lower – sure, it’s been down to $818/oz in the past year and very briefly traded just below US$800/oz at the height of the financial crisis. But even assuming it did revisit those levels that’s only 17% downside. On the other hand in 2008 it hit US$2,196/oz in in 2011 it touched US$1,855/oz – 93% above current levels. And to me that is an asymmetrical risk opportunity. I’d like more, but with the broader mining sector so overbought I feel like I’m quite happy having £7,408 in cash so it might have to wait until I find something to sell. I also own Lonmin, Sylvania and a palladium ETF as well, so on a portfolio level I am pretty long PGMS already.

Hang on, here’s a chart of my commodity exposure for you….14% PGMS, only 9% gold (hmmm – may need to go shopping), 13% diamonds and gemstones, 28% base metals (and very happy with that), 20% oils, 16% mining equipment and services

Contrarian stands at  £168,667 today, close to its all time high. Full portfolio below.

Following today’s announcement from Firestone Diamonds, I have sold 5,500 shares  (just under a quarter of my holding) at 51.5p. The announcement was no doubt intended to reassure, but for me it raised more questions than it answered.

In their last trading update on 20th July the company said initial production was now expected in “early Q4” and in the analyst site visit presentation from 5th September the company said it would be  testing and optimising the plant during September with a “forecast production start date” of “late September / early October”. In anticipation of first production the share price ran up over the past few weeks only to fall back as September ticked into early October with no news.

And then today, the shares are up on the back of what is, to my mind a holding statement from the company (probably forced on them by their NOMAD), effectively reassuring the market that nothing has gone horribly wrong.

Firestone says today that “commissioning of the plant is now in its final stages”, the historic stockpile is being processed in “wet commissioning” (i.e the first half of the diamond recovery process) and “the Company expects to complete the commissioning of the recovery plant and sort house in anticipation of first diamond recoveries later this month”. All “major construction activities” are now complete.

All well and good, but it does not tell me:

1. Why expected first diamond production has moved back almost a month to  “in October” from late September / early October (or am I wrong to interpret previous statements about the expected date of first production as meaning the actual recovery of the first diamonds?)
2. If all major construction activities are complete, what is not?
3. Specifically, what still needs to be done to get the (dry) recovery plant and sorthouse up and running.

A further update is expected week of 17th October, and no doubt I am just being too impatient. It will probably say first diamonds have been recovered and the shares will rocket.

However I cannot shake a vague worry that something is not absolutely 100%. The shares are up today on an announcement that doesn’t reassure me enough and that seems a sensible opportunity to reduce my holding which was nearly 7% of the Contrarian portfolio (and up 168% since I bought the shares at an average of 19p).

Chicken.

Contrarian stands today at £166,470 with £11,178 of that in cash.