Home / Showcase / Who is John Kaiser? Who is John Kaiser? John Kaiser's Background John Kaiser was born in Vancouver, Canada where he graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1982 with a BA in philosophy and German. He began work in January 1983 as a research assistant with Continental Carlisle Douglas, a Vancouver brokerage firm that specialized in Vancouver Stock Exchange listed securities. In 1989 he moved to Pacific International Securities Inc where he was research director until April 1994 when he moved to the United States with his family. From 1989 until 1994 he was also a registered investment advisor. He worked six months as a researcher for Bob Bishop's Gold Mining Stock Report before branching out on his own with the publication of the first issue of the Kaiser Bottom-Fishing Report in October 1994. Initially a print newsletter, the Kaiser Bottom-Fishing Report evolved into Kaiser Bottom-Fish Online which, with the addition of a powerful category based search engine in 2012, evolved into Kaiser Research Online whose mandate is to cover the Canadian listed resource sector. In 2017 the coverage was expanded to include Australian listed resource companies. Interests John Kaiser is married with four children. His favorite recreational activities are playing squash and figuring out new ways to convert information into knowledge. He is fluent in German. His reading interests include philosophy, history, geology, and science. Evolution of Kaiser Research Online When John Kaiser started working in the brokerage industry in 1983 information about speculative ventures existed only in paper files stored at the stock exchange and in the heads of experienced industry people. This created an environment which placed newcomers and investors at a distinct disadvantage with regard to speculating in high risk ventures. Recognizing the implications of the personal computer and relational databases, Mr. Kaiser spearheaded a program to digitize the key elements of a speculative market, namely the people involved and the paper created to finance ventures. His database became the foundation of the "Longshot List", a popular compilation of cheap Vancouver Stock Exchange listings that were still in the early stages of their life cycles. John Kaiser moved to Pacific International Securities Inc in 1989 where he worked as research director until 1994. During this period he fine-tuned the "Longshot List" into the Annual 100 Bottom-Fishing Guide, which placed a greater emphasis on story fundamentals and was published to coincide with the seasonal price low at year-end. At the same time he immersed himself in the study of geology, a field that had fascinated him since childhood. He was among the first to recognize the broad implications of Chuck Fipke's diamond discovery at Lac de Gras in 1992, and has developed considerable knowledge about the diamond exploration process. The availability of the Sheahan Diamond Literature Compilation on KRO reflects his continuing interest in the diamond sector. In April 1994 John Kaiser moved to the United States with his family, worked six months with Bob Bishop of the Gold Mining Stock Report as a researcher, and in October 1994 published the first issue of the Kaiser Bottom-Fishing Report. The timing was fortuitous and the bi-monthly newsletter became widely popular during the resource sector bull market of 1995-1997. This period also marked the rise of the Internet, which had profound implications for the information monopoly industry professionals enjoyed over investors. By 1997 Mr Kaiser had commissioned a web site called www.canspecresearch.com which was intended to act as an archive for newsletter commentaries and serve as a gateway to the online information resources being made available by stock exchanges and securities commissions. The period from 1997-2002 was characterized by structural changes in the securities industry that undermined the basis for the bottom-fishing strategy. The worst resource sector bear market in decades resulted in company speculation cycles that were not only few and far between, but short-lived and shallow. At the same time the role of resource juniors as high risk speculation vehicles was eclipsed by the hi-tech/dot-com boom which swept aside traditional concepts about the relationship between risk and reward. When the biggest market bubble in history collapsed in 2000, John Kaiser surmised that a long general bear market would follow during which rational valuation concepts would gradually come back into play. He also recognized that this would prolong the resource sector bear market and continue the drought in worldwide exploration and mine development, with the long term consequence that severe raw material shortages would emerge once the global economy got back on track. In anticipation of a exploration boom involving junior companies, Mr. Kaiser began work in 2001 developing a framework which would allow investors to make rational speculative bets on the outcome of mineral exploration plays. This involved adapting the programming skills he learned in university to the Windows environment, which he finally accomplished at the cost of numerous expletives over the opacity of technical how-to books. Through a collaboration with David Lau, the chief technical officer of Adnet Communications, he developed Kaiser Bottom-Fish Online as a new type of investor resource which combines information with analysis. 2012 saw the launch of a powerful search engine which allows one to craft complex queries combining corporate and project level criteria. Kaiser Bottom-Fish Online was rebranded in 2013 as Kaiser Research Online to reflect the shift to a comprehensive online portal covering the Canadian listed resource sector. In 2017 the coverage was expanded to include ASX listed resource companies. Following the 2008 financial crisis John Kaiser realized that structural changes were destroying the resource junior eco-system. He began work in 2015 on an "outcome visualization" system which uses the discounted cash flow model to generate a net present value for a plausible outcome imagined for an exploration project. His idea is that if you enable the crowd to assemble the basic inputs for a deposit and mining scenario, crunch them so as to generate NPV, IRR and a discount rate, and share the result in a public space so that others can critique or modify the assumptions, a consensus expectation for a project's potential will emerge that is responsive to new information generated by the company. He outlined the concept in his PDAC 2015 Technical Talk: The Future of the Retail Investor and the Resource Juniors which caught the attention of Chris Dunks. He introduced the idea to Andy Greig who became the initial backer of The Share Collective, which, when fully operational, will take the concept behind Kaiser Research Online to an entirely new level for the junior resource sector. |
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