Investor Intelligence

Junior Mining Investor Tools

19 purpose-built analytics tools for junior mining investors — screening, valuation, capital structure, and the two risks conventional screeners leave out: whether you could sell, and whether the company is doing anything.

Every figure is computed from filed NI 43-101 technical reports, company financing announcements, and exchange market data across the companies we track. The methodology is published below.

All 19 tools free during the open beta

Which tool answers which question

Most analysis starts with a specific worry rather than a metric. These are the questions investors actually bring to a junior, and where each one gets answered.

Am I about to be diluted?

Check the warrants outstanding, the strike price that makes them exercisable, and how much the share count has already grown across previous raises.

Could I actually sell this position?

Enter your position size and see the days-to-exit at a realistic share of daily volume. On thin listings the answer is often measured in weeks.

Is this company exploring, or just promoting?

Compare the share of announcements that report drill results, resource updates or studies against the sector norm.

Is it cheap compared with its peers?

Benchmark market capitalisation per contained ounce, price to NPV, grade and AISC against automatically detected comparables.

Do I get real leverage to the metal price?

Measure correlation, beta and R² against the underlying commodity. A beta above 1 means the stock has historically amplified the metal's moves.

Has the resource actually grown, or just been restated?

Track contained ounces, grade and tonnage across successive NI 43-101 reports to separate genuine additions from reclassification.

Why did this stock move today?

Find volume spikes above the recent average and cross-reference news, then see how that category of announcement has historically moved the price.

What does the technical report actually say?

Ask a plain-language question and get the specific report passages that answer it, with citations, alongside a structured summary.

The toolkit, in the order you would use it

Evaluating a junior moves through five stages: narrowing the field, valuing what is left, reading how it is financed, testing whether it is tradeable and genuinely active, and finally reading the technical documents. The tools are grouped the same way.

Screen and discover

Start by narrowing the field. There are hundreds of listed juniors and most will never build a mine, so the first job is finding the handful worth an afternoon of reading. Rank by resource grade and size, search drill results across every company at once, follow where financing capital is actually moving, and read the sector's temperature before you commit to a thesis.

Value and compare

A junior is only cheap or expensive relative to something. These tools supply the comparison: contained ounces against market capitalisation, market capitalisation against a technical report's NPV, a share price against its peers, and a stock's moves against the metal underneath it. Resource growth over successive technical reports shows whether management is actually adding ounces or restating the same ones.

Read the capital structure

Exploration is funded by issuing shares, so the capital structure is where junior mining returns are quietly made and lost. A discovery can be entirely offset by the dilution that paid for it. These tools show the shares already issued, the warrants still outstanding, the price at which that overhang becomes exercisable, and when it expires.

Judge quality and risk

Two risks dominate junior mining and neither appears on a conventional screener: you may not be able to sell, and the company may not be doing anything. These tools measure both directly — how many days it would take to exit a position at realistic volume, and what share of a company's announcements report an actual result rather than corporate housekeeping.

Diligence and portfolio

Once a name survives screening, the work turns to reading technical reports and understanding what you already own. Ask a question and get the exact NI 43-101 passages that answer it, benchmark a property against dollar-per-hectare comparables, and check a whole portfolio for the concentration risk that builds up when every position is the same commodity in the same jurisdiction.

In development

Listed here so you know what is coming rather than what already works. These are not available yet.

How the numbers are calculated

Published in full, including the assumptions. A screener that will not tell you its formula is asking for trust it has not earned, and these metrics carry real caveats worth knowing before you act on them.

Market cap per contained ounce

Market capitalisation divided by total contained gold ounces across a company's reported resource categories. It is commonly called EV/oz, but note the caveat: we use market capitalisation, not true enterprise valuecash and debt are not netted out. For a junior holding a large treasury after a raise, that understates how cheap the ounces are.

Only meaningful against comparables at a similar stage and jurisdiction. An inferred ounce is not a reserve ounce.

Price to NAV (P/NAV)

Market capitalisation divided by the after-tax NPV at a 5% discount rate, as reported in the company's own technical study. Below 1.0 means the market values the company at less than the study's modelled project value.

The NPV is the company's figure, at its own metal price assumptions — not an independent estimate. Treat a low P/NAV as a question to investigate, not an answer. How to read an NI 43-101 report.

Days to exit

We take the median daily dollar volume over the last 60 trading sessions, assume you can be 20% of a day's volume without moving the price — the conventional planning figure for thin listings — and divide your position size by the result.

A 60-session median is long enough to survive a quiet fortnight but short enough to reflect a stock that has recently woken up. Listings are banded: under $1,000 a day is treated as untradeable, under $5,000 as very thin.

Signal-to-noise ratio

Every press release is classified by type. The ratio is the share reporting an actual result — drill results, resource updates, or study results — against total releases over the window. Everything else counts as noise: grants, appointments, conference attendance.

Companies with fewer than 10 releases are excluded, because the ratio is meaningless on a small sample.

Metal correlation, beta and R²

Computed on overlapping daily returns for the stock and the chosen metal. Correlation measures whether they move together; beta measures by how much. R² is the square of the correlation: the share of the stock's movement explained by the metal.

A beta above 1 means the stock has historically amplified the metal's moves — in both directions. High beta with low R² means the amplification is unreliable.

Resource growth

Contained ounces, average grade and tonnage compared across successive NI 43-101 reports from the same company, so an increase driven by genuine drilling can be separated from one driven by reclassifying existing material or lowering the cut-off grade.

See inferred vs indicated vs measured for why the category matters as much as the number.

Two things the data says about junior mining

Both of these come straight out of the tools above, recomputed against current data. Neither is visible on a conventional stock screener, and both should change how you size a position.

71%

of tracked companies are effectively untradeable

255 of 360 companies have a median daily dollar volume under $5,000, and the median across the whole universe is just $3,468.38 a day. At a 20% participation rate, a $25,000 position in a typical listing takes weeks to unwind.

Check any position size →

25.4%

of junior mining news reports an actual result

Across 17,983 press releases, only about a quarter report drill results, a resource update, or a study. The rest is corporate housekeeping — which is exactly why release volume alone is a poor proxy for activity.

Compare any company →

How to evaluate a junior in about ten minutes

A repeatable order of operations. It is deliberately front-loaded with the checks most likely to disqualify a company, so you spend reading time only on names that survive.

  1. 1

    Check you could get out before you look at anything else

    Run the position size you would actually take through Liquidity & Days to Exit. If the answer is weeks, nothing else on this list matters — size down or move on. Open tool →

  2. 2

    Check the company is actually doing something

    Run the Signal-to-Noise Ratio. A company well below the sector norm is generating announcements without generating results. Open tool →

  3. 3

    Read the capital structure before the geology

    Warrant Overhang Radar and Dilution Tracker. Find out how many shares already exist, how many more are coming, and at what price. A discovery you pay for twice is not a discovery. Open tool →

  4. 4

    Put a price on the ounces

    Peer Comparison for market cap per ounce and P/NAV against automatically detected comparables. You are looking for a gap you can explain, not just a low number. Open tool →

  5. 5

    Confirm the resource is growing for the right reason

    Resource Growth Tracker across successive technical reports. Rising ounces at falling grade often means a lower cut-off, not better drilling. Open tool →

  6. 6

    Only now, read the technical report

    Ask the Due-Diligence Assistant your specific questions and get the exact NI 43-101 passages that answer them, with citations. Open tool →

New to the sector? Start with our guide to junior gold mining companies and how juniors raise money, or look up any unfamiliar term in the mining glossary.

Frequently asked questions

Which investor tools are free?

2 of the 19 tools are open to anyone without an account: the Resource Grade Ranker and the Sector Pulse Dashboard. A Prospector subscription unlocks all 19, including the Warrant Overhang Radar.

What is a good EV per ounce for a junior mining company?

It depends almost entirely on stage and jurisdiction, which is why the figure is only useful against comparables rather than as an absolute. An explorer with an inferred resource in a difficult jurisdiction trades at a small fraction of a permitted developer in a stable one. The Peer Comparison Engine benchmarks a company against automatically detected peers so the number has a reference point.

What does warrant overhang mean?

Warrants issued in past financings give holders the right to buy new shares at a fixed strike price. While the share price sits below that strike they are largely dormant; once it rises above, exercise becomes likely, which issues new shares and dilutes existing holders — often capping the rally that triggered it. The Warrant Overhang Radar shows the strike prices, the resulting share count, and the expiry dates.

How do you measure whether a mining company is actually exploring?

By classifying every press release and measuring what share of them report a genuine result — drill intercepts, resource updates, or study results — as opposed to corporate housekeeping such as grants, appointments and conference attendance. The Signal-to-Noise Ratio tool reports that share per company against the sector norm.

Why does liquidity matter so much for junior mining stocks?

Because the exit is the part most retail investors never model. A great many junior listings trade so little value per day that an ordinary position cannot be sold in any reasonable time without moving the price against you. That risk does not appear on a conventional screener, so the Liquidity & Days to Exit tool measures it directly from trading history.

Where does the underlying data come from?

Resource figures, grades and economic studies are taken from filed NI 43-101 technical reports. Financing and warrant terms come from company announcements. Prices and volumes come from exchange market data, and company news is re-scraped from company websites every morning.