Latin American Minerals (LAT.v): Play them at their own game

Attractive and successful Sheldon, attractive and successful

wife, attractive and successful necktie

This post is about Latin American Minerals (LAT.v), a tiny and normally very unlikeable junior exploration play with a real mixed bunch of assets in South America. It's a bit of a departure from my normal way of searching for a possible investment, but as it's been itching at me for some time and today brought a possible news catalyst let's write up the general line of thinking.

Firstly, and by way of a preamble, let's look some of the recent issues around Colossus Minerals (CSI.to). We can sum up what we need to consider in the following way:

• CSI.to has a gold project in South America (Brazil)
• It's a well-known artisanal mine in the area
  
• The project has rich gold-bearing mineral and drilling in the right place is all but guaranteed to return excellent grades
• The area has serious political issues, especially with the local artisanal miners, that the company either ignores or claims are not important
• Sheldon Inwentash of Pinetree is on board with a sizeable investment
• The recent upmove in the stock price has come on the back of press releases containing those excellent drill returns and a concerted PR campaign (that has totally ignored the political risk) from people like....Sheldon Inwentash. I particularly loved the way he said that CSI.to was "almost too good to be true"....a real hoot! Here's the three month chart of CSI.to

Here's the three month chart of CSI.to to show that the pump worked a treat.

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So let's imagine, for our purposes at least, that CSI.to is some kind of blueprint for what might be about to happen at Latin Amerian Minerals (LAT.v). The basic idea here is that LAT.v is doing a Mini-Me on CSI.to. Consider the following:

• CSI.to has a gold project in South America (Paraguay)
• It's a well-known artisanal mine in the area
  
• The project has rich gold-bearing mineral and drilling in the right place is all but guaranteed to return excellent grades
• The area has serious political issues, especially with the local artisanal miners, that the company either ignores or claims are not important
• Sheldon Inwentash of Pinetree is on board with a sizeable investment.

Now the LAT.v stock price hasn't really moved yet........

....especially considering LAT.v went way above a loonie once upon a time when the company got pumped by the normally astute Coffin Brothers (hey...nobody's perfect), but that's the point of considering it as a possible splash'n'dash investment right now. Better to be chased than to chase in this game. Also, LAT.v isn't an exact apples-to-apples with CSI.to as it has its own baggage (including diamond-hunting and that very silly lithium potash thing in Argentina that they might use to throw stardust into the eyes of the unsuspecting), but what is true is that our Sheldon has been picking up chunks of LAT.v in the last couple of months:

Mar 27/09	Mar 20/09	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	100,000	$0.180
Feb 26/09	Feb 17/09	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	434,500	$0.204
Feb 13/09	Feb 04/09	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	100,000	$0.145
Feb 11/09	Feb 02/09	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	200,000	$0.134
Feb 04/09	Jan 26/09	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	50,000	$0.080
Feb 02/09	Jan 23/09	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	51,000	$0.080
Jan 30/09	Jan 22/09	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	150,000	$0.080
Jan 23/09	Sep 19/08	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Warrants	00 - Opening Balance-Initial SEDI Report
Jan 23/09	Dec 23/08	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	74,000	$0.075
Jan 23/09	Dec 19/08	Pinetree Capital Ltd.	Indirect Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Acquisition in the public market	400,000	$0.063

That's a chunky 1.5m shares to add to the bunch previously held at Pinetree. So with this press release today to tell the world that LAT.v is drilling once again at its Paraguay gold prospect and that visual returns have been good, the chances are that the next press release(s) contain(s) drill returns that everyone at the company knew would be good....much like the recent Colossus tactics, to put it bluntly. Give 'em the old razzle dazzle, boyz.....

The bottom line is that although LAT.v is more than a bit suspect as a long term investment (errr...that's putting it as diplomatically as possible...I've been trying hard to avoid the S word while writing about both CSI.to and LAT.v today) it may be about to get the full-court Canadian pumperooney treatment. I personally have this whole BS integrity baggage that stops me from buying into these things normally, but there are times when I tell myself to "lighten up dude...just buy a few...it ain't illegal" and I might just do that this time. This kind of attempt to second-guess the market is a high risk activity, get that straight in your head and crystalline in its clarity, but LAT.v does have the hallmarks of being set up for the mark right now. We shall see.

Über-important to DYODD on this one, dudettes and dudes; check out that latest press release and if you speak Spanish I'd recommend that you Google "Paso Yobai Paraguay" and find out more about the local issues involved with the project.