Work out how long it would actually take to sell a position in any junior mining stock, using median daily volume and a realistic share of it — the risk that never appears on a conventional screener.
Almost every piece of junior mining analysis concerns the entry: the grade, the jurisdiction, the valuation. Very little concerns the exit, and for a sector this thinly traded that is the wrong way round. A position you cannot sell at a price you would accept is not really an investment; it is a donation with a lottery ticket attached.
This tool answers one question directly. Given the size of position you are considering, and given how much of this stock actually changes hands on a normal day, how many trading days would it take to get out?
The answer is frequently uncomfortable. Across the companies we track, the median listing turns over only a few thousand dollars a day. At that level, a position most retail investors would consider modest takes weeks to unwind — and that is assuming the price holds while you do it, which selling pressure of that duration tends to prevent.
Median daily dollar volume is the middle value of the last 60 trading sessions, measured in dollars rather than shares so that companies at different share prices can be compared. The median is used deliberately: a single frenzied day following a drill result would drag an average upwards and flatter a stock that is otherwise dormant.
Sellable per day is the share of that volume you could realistically take without pushing the price against yourself. It is not the whole day's volume, because you are not the only seller and a bid that absorbs everything does not exist at these sizes.
Days to exit is your position size divided by the sellable-per-day figure. Read it as an optimistic floor rather than a forecast: it assumes liquidity stays at its recent median, which is exactly what fails during the bad news that makes you want to sell.
The liquidity band is a plain-language summary. Under $1,000 of daily turnover a listing is treated as untradeable, under $5,000 as very thin, under $25,000 as thin, under $100,000 as moderate, and above that as liquid. Most junior listings sit in the first two bands.
There is no universal threshold, because the answer depends entirely on your position size and your patience. The useful discipline is to decide the maximum number of days you would tolerate before you look at the number, then size the position to fit — rather than choosing a position size first and discovering the exit afterwards.
As a rough guide, a days-to-exit figure in low single digits is comfortable. Anything approaching two weeks means you are the market in that stock, and your own selling will set the price you receive. Beyond that, treat the position as illiquid by nature: size it as money you are prepared to have locked up indefinitely, not as a trade you can reverse.
One consequence worth internalising: illiquidity is not a permanent property of a company, it is a property of its current attention. A stock can be untradeable for a year and turn over its entire float in the week after a discovery. That cuts both ways — the liquidity that lets you in during excitement is usually gone by the time you want out.
Median daily dollar volume is computed over the trailing 60 trading sessions — long enough to survive a quiet fortnight, short enough to reflect a stock that has recently woken up. Sellable-per-day assumes you can be 20% of a session's volume, the conventional planning figure for thin listings. Days to exit is simply your position divided by that figure, and the participation rate is adjustable if your own assumption differs.
The limits worth knowing:
It depends on your position size and how long you are willing to be stuck. Low single-digit days is comfortable. Approaching two weeks means your own selling would set the price you receive. Beyond that the position should be sized as capital you can afford to have locked up indefinitely rather than as a reversible trade.
Because share counts are not comparable across companies. A stock trading at three cents and one trading at four dollars can show wildly different share volumes while the same amount of money changes hands. Dollar volume puts every listing on the same scale, and it is the figure that matters when you are trying to convert a position back into cash.
A single exceptional day — the release of a strong drill result, say — would pull an average upwards and make a normally dormant stock look tradeable. The median describes the typical session, which is the condition you will actually be selling into.
No. It tells you how many days, not at what price. Selling into a thin order book pushes the price down as you go, so realised proceeds are usually worse than the current quote suggests. Treat the days figure as an optimistic floor.
Because most are small exploration companies with narrow shareholder bases and no institutional following. Trading tends to be concentrated around news, so a listing can go weeks with almost no turnover and then trade heavily for a few days after a result. The long quiet stretches are the normal state, and they are what the median captures.