Nick Hodge,
Publisher
June 9, 2026
Most investors want the ticker.
They want the “next one.”
The next ten-bagger. The next discovery hole. The next stock that goes from 12 cents to $1.20 before anyone else figures it out.
I understand the impulse.
I’ve made my living in and around those kinds of opportunities for almost 20 years now. I’ve written about them. I’ve invested in them. I’ve made money in them. I’ve lost money in them. I’ve watched them create fortunes, destroy capital, and humble people who thought they had the whole game figured out.
But before I write a check — especially in the junior resource space — the ticker is usually one of the last things I care about.
First, I want to know who is behind the company.
Then I want to know how the company is structured.
Who owns the paper? Who paid what?
How much cheap stock is out there?
How many warrants are overhanging the market?
Has management made money for outside shareholders before? Or are they just professional promoters recycling the same story with a new property, a new deck, and a new bull market?
That’s the part of the business most investors ignore.
They fall in love with the rocks.
The rocks matter, of course. In natural resources, you need geology. You need grade. You need scale. You need jurisdiction. You need capital. You need timing.
But the rocks are only one part of the speculation.
Because a great project with a terrible share structure can still be a lousy investment.
And an average-looking project with the right people, the right structure, the right backers, and the right timing can become a life-changing speculation.
That’s the message I’ll be taking to the 2026 Rule Natural Resources Investment Symposium, hosted by Rick Rule and his team July 6–10 in Boca Raton, Florida.
Rick recently interviewed me ahead of the conference and asked what I planned to teach the attendees.
My answer was simple.
I’m not a geologist. I’m not pretending to be one.
And I’m not a traditional sell-side analyst with a spreadsheet full of assumptions carried out to the second decimal place.
I’m an investor.
And as an investor, the two things I’ve learned to focus on — over and over again — are people and structure.
That’s where the money is often made or lost before the first drill hole ever gets reported.
It’s also where the most avoidable mistakes happen.
I’ve seen investors buy a junior resource stock because they liked the commodity… liked the map… liked the story… liked the CEO on a podcast… or liked the fact that some big-name investor was somewhere near the deal.
Then six months later, they’re wondering why the stock can’t move.
Sometimes the answer is simple: the paper is bad.
Too much cheap stock. Too many warrants. Too many hands waiting to sell. Too many insiders with incentives that don’t line up with yours.
That’s why structure matters.
It matters in public deals.
It matters even more in private placements.
That’s one reason we created Private Placement Intel.
It’s not a weekly newsletter.
It’s not a monthly newsletter.
It’s a deal letter.
When we find a private placement we like… when we’ve looked at the management, the structure, the financing terms, and the risk/reward… and when we’re willing to put our own money into it… that’s when we alert members.
Not before.
Not because we need to fill a publishing calendar.
Not because we need something to say on a Tuesday.
Only when there is a deal we believe deserves attention from accredited investors who understand the risks and rewards of private resource speculation.
That approach came directly from years of doing this with my own capital.
And it came from learning — sometimes the hard way — that being early is not enough.
You can be early and still be wrong.
You can be right on the commodity and wrong on the company.
You can even be right on the story and still get buried by a bad structure.
That’s why I’m looking forward to the Rule Symposium.
Rick has built one of the few resource conferences where investors can actually learn how to think better — not just collect stock symbols.
This year’s physical seats are already sold out.
But you can still attend virtually.
And if you’re serious about natural resources, private placements, junior miners, speculation, and learning how experienced investors sort real opportunities from promotional noise, I think the virtual pass is worth your attention.
You’ll be able to watch the presentations live, review the recordings afterward, and hear directly from many of the people shaping this market.
I’ll be there.
Digest Publishing is a sponsor.
And I’ll be talking about the part of resource investing that rarely gets enough attention:
The people. The paper. The structure.
Because in this business, the rocks may tell you what’s possible.
But the structure often tells you who actually gets paid.
Register to virtually attend the Rule Symposium here.
And if you’re an accredited investor interested in the private placement side of the resource market, you can learn more about Private Placement Intel here.
Below, I’ve included a lightly edited transcript of my recent conversation with Rick Rule.
Rick Rule: This is Rick Rule for Rule Investment Media and the Rule Classroom, co-sponsors of the 2026 Rule Natural Resources Investment Symposium, held this year July 6 through 10 in Boca Raton, Florida, or via livestream from the comfort and convenience of your own home.
However you attend the conference, know three things.
First, we’re going to give you more information at the conference than you can absorb at the conference. To that end, we interview every exhibitor and every speaker before the conference so you have the opportunity to preview their work and allocate your time and capital at the conference more efficiently.
Second, recordings of the conference will be available to you whether you attend live or via livestream. You will absolutely need to review the recordings after the conference because we’re going to give you more information in four days than you can absorb in the 46 hours we have available to teach you.
Finally, know this: whether you attend live or via livestream, if you think for any reason that you didn’t get your money’s worth at the conference, we’ll give you your money back. No other investment conference on the planet comes with an unconditional money-back guarantee.
So let’s get on with the process.
In today’s pre-conference interview, I have the good fortune of interviewing a young friend, but a friend of long acquaintance, Nick Hodge of Digest Publishing.
First of all, Nick, thank you for your efforts on behalf of individual investors for a long time. And thank you, too, for your sponsorship and support of the Natural Resources Investment Symposium.
Nick Hodge: It’s my pleasure, Rick. I’m very much looking forward to seeing you in Boca.
Rick Rule: Nick, despite the fact that, at least relative to me, you’re a fairly young man, you’ve been involved in the information publishing and teaching business for quite some time.
Give us a bit of background on Nick Hodge so we can care how you answer the next questions I’m going to ask.
Nick Hodge: Yeah. And I get older every day, as we all do, Rick.
I’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years now. And I remember a time some 12 or 13 years ago when you were in the audience at a conference where I gave a talk. This was back in the Edward Snowden days.
You came up to a young lady who was with me there and said, “Hey, do you work for Nick Hodge? I’d like to speak to that gentleman.”
That lady was actually my wife. And she said, “Oh, yeah. You can go talk to him. He’s right over there.”
And you did come up and speak to me. You gave me praise for my talk, which you’ve done ever since then. So I’m not sure what it was that drew you to me, but I appreciate those kind words and the support over the years.
I came into the newsletter space almost serendipitously. I wanted to write coming out of university, and I had the good fortune of being in Baltimore, which is the headquarters of one of the largest financial publishers in the world.
So I got my foot in the door just by answering a classified ad, and I learned the ropes of the business writing about energy stocks back in 2007 and early 2008.
This was the Al Gore, Inconvenient Truth era. I learned a lot about solar stocks, wind stocks, geothermal stocks — the whole gamut. I ended up writing a couple of books about that, including a book called Energy Investing for Dummies.
Then, of course, the bottom fell out of the market in 2008. I was young and dumb and didn’t know how the world worked, and I was determined to figure at least some of it out.
I saw the government response to the global financial crisis, learned about the Federal Reserve and money printing and precious metals, and from there gravitated naturally into the natural resource space — precious metals and other commodities.
I’ve carved that out as one of my niches, even though I’m a generalist.
I’ve been investing in the natural resource space for well over a decade now. I’ve been writing checks and participating in private placements for just as long.
During the COVID times, I went out on my own and formed Digest Publishing, which is my financial publishing company. I’ve been doing that with my partner, Gerardo Del Real, for the past six years, serving our subscribers, readers, and clients as well as we can.
And they seem to enjoy the cooking as well as we do, because we eat what we cook. They like to read about that and invest alongside us.
Rick Rule: Now, Nick, I would suggest — you may agree or disagree — that having a generalist background is actually useful in the sense that you don’t need to compare within silos in natural resources. Rather, you can compare and contrast natural resource investing with other facets of investing.
Would you agree that’s true? If so, why? If not, why?
Nick Hodge: Yes, I agree.
For me, it’s been a good experience to be a generalist and to know a little bit about everything. Some say being a jack of all trades isn’t the best approach, but for me, it’s worked out in spades and paid significant dividends.
I’ve learned a lot about different cycles of the market. I’ve learned a lot about how the macro affects different aspects of the market in terms of growth, inflation, and monetary policy.
It also allows me not to be married to any one sector.
I see a lot of mistakes made by those who are committed, especially in the precious metals space — gold bugs and silver bugs who refuse to sell or get married to a position.
I like to think I’m not that way. I very easily change my mind, and I very easily take profits when I believe it’s time.
I think that has a lot to do with my generalist background.
Rick Rule: Tell us something that will enable our listeners to get to know you before the conference.
Tell us about a couple of the services — as many as you like, frankly — at Digest Publishing that might be of interest.
As I understand it, you have a couple of free publications so people can get to know you. But I suspect that within the product portfolio of Digest Publishing, you have one or more products that might be of particular interest to the really informed investors and speculators around natural resources who attend the conference.
Nick Hodge: Sure.
I think the easiest way to get to know me is to check out Investing in Bizarro World. That’s a free weekly podcast we do, and we’ve been doing it for free since before podcasting was cool.
We’ve been doing it for over five years, every single week, every Thursday. You can listen to it either on our site or on YouTube.
We talk about things happening in the world of finance and beyond — politics, being a contrarian, managing your own money.
There’s also a paid version of that podcast you can subscribe to. At the end of every episode, my partner Gerardo and I talk about one or two recommendations from some of our newsletters and the recent happenings with those companies.
So that’s a good way to dip your toe into the Digest Publishing pool, for free or otherwise.
Beyond that, the publication we’ve had a lot of success with, and have served a lot of high-net-worth clients with, is called Private Placement Intel.
I was in attendance at your conference last year, and I met some readers of that newsletter there. In fact, I gained some new ones.
Private Placement Intel is not published on a consistent schedule. It’s not a weekly. It’s not a monthly. It’s a deal letter.
We only contact you when there’s a deal open that we are participating in with our own capital. We’ve vetted the structure of the company. We’ve vetted the management. And we believe it’s a good place for high-net-worth or accredited investors to put their capital.
That’s Private Placement Intel. I think it will be of very much interest to the clientele at the Rule Symposium.
Rick Rule: Tell us, if you’ve thought about it, what in particular you’re going to teach the assembled crowd July 6 through 10 in Boca Raton.
What’s going to be your message? What will be different? Why will your talk be of particular benefit to attendees so they can allocate their time at the conference more efficiently?
Nick Hodge: As it relates to natural resource stocks specifically, the way I was educated and mentored in the space has a lot to do with share structure and people.
I’m not a geologist. I’m not an analyst.
But I am an investor.
And I’ve done pretty well for myself vetting share structures and people.
So I think my talk will probably revolve around that: past examples of success based on people, what to look for, how and why a company is structured a certain way, and the benefits and pitfalls of structuring companies in certain ways.
I think that will be of great interest to your viewers and to the live attendees there, so they can apply that to all the wonderful companies that will be out in the exhibit hall.
Rick Rule: Nick, I want to again thank you for your sponsorship and support of the conference, and for your efforts on behalf of investor education.
To the extent people want to learn more about the products and services at Digest Publishing or get to know you better, who in particular should they contact, and how can they contact that person?
Nick Hodge: We have one member services representative. His name is Jimmy Mengel.
You can reach him at customerservice@digestpublishing.com, or you can call 844-334-4700.
If it’s a good hour of the day, and not when the sun is down, he’ll pick up the phone and speak with you directly. If not, you can leave him a message and he’ll call you right back.
Rick Rule: Thank you, Nick. Thank you once again for your sponsorship and support. I look forward to seeing you in Boca Raton.
Nick Hodge: Same, Rick. Thank you.
Call it like you see it,
Nick Hodge
Publisher, Bizarro World