What Mining’s “Legendary” Investors Do Differently
At first glance, “legendary” resource investors don’t look that different from everyone else. They still miss trades, sit through drawdowns and argue about macro. What separates them is less about stock picking and more about how they think, structure their portfolios and behave when markets are ugly.
At this year’s Rule Symposium, the “Living Legends” panel, as well as a fireside chat featuring Peter Grosskopf, chair of SCP Resource Finance, pulled back the curtain on some of those habits.
The core messages that emerged across both discussions: know yourself, narrow your circle of competence, treat volatility as the cost of big wins and resist the temptation to sell your best ideas too early.
Knowing your circle of competence
The “Living Legends” panel, which featured an array of market masters, began not with stock tips, but with self‑knowledge.
Adrian Day, president of Adrian Day Asset Management, framed his edge not as a hot model, but as a disciplined way of thinking about where he does, and doesn’t, have an advantage.
“There’s also an advantage in being a generalist because you can compare one thing with another … You can see where value is at any given time,” he said, explaining how moving across sectors lets him spot mispricings that specialists might miss.
At the same time, history serves as his guide: “Human nature doesn’t change … (History) allows you to see how things unfolded in the past … and ideally avoid repeating past mistakes.”
Jonathan Goodman, a geological engineer and portfolio manager, took that a step further. For him, the critical investing skill is not what you know, but how honest you are about the rest.
“Personally, I feel the most important skill in investing … is knowing what you don’t know … and (knowing) how to get the answers to the things that you don’t know,” he said.
During a fireside chat with Rick Rule, proprietor of Rule Investment Media, Grosskopf, coming from the investment banking side, translated that humility into team structure.
Mining is too complex, he argued, for one person, no matter how smart, to cover every dimension.
“You need a team to understand all the components of a mine … unless you have access to that team, you don’t stand a chance,” he said, describing his dependence on technical specialists even as a financially focused banker.
Patience, persistence and the price of a 10‑bagger
If there was a single theme that united the panel, it was patience — paired with a willingness to sit through pain when the thesis is right.
Mining is “an absolutely tough, tough industry,” said Dr. Quinton Hennigh, geologist and CEO of San Cristobal Mining. “For every one or two good years, there’s eight or nine pretty nasty (years) … You must be perseverant.”
That asymmetry of good to bad years is part of why outsized returns…
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