Why natural resources?

I've been involved with the precious metals mining subgroup for awhile at my school's investment group (3 years). I have done an interview like this before, and this is how I went about it. I'm no expert, but here are some reasons I would stick with:

1) High Risk/High Reward: I would say a large amount of the industry are small-cap players, with the exception of some mid-cap and large-cap players. I am personally interested in "finding a winner" out of a group of small-cap mining companies. I usually stick with American and Canadian based companies because political issues can complicate things with international companies, but many mining operations are outside of North America. Different business structures, margins on their company, and investor-backed projects are just some reasons how I find winners. I like doing the research, and I like finding "the perfect one."

2) Business Models: This is where you can mention that some mines have different business models, as a way to transition from different business structures. Some mines give out all of their production to a specific company, while some mines like to keep a diversity of clients. This is where I mentioned a specific stock that backs up the reasoning.

3) Different Metals: Silver, gold, platinum, and palladium are examples of what metals companies mine. Some metals do better than others due to emotional investing in the market, supply and demand, global performance, etc. For example, platinum had a brief spike in price because of the strikes in South Africa. Worldwide events affect metal prices. I like how I have to keep up-to-date on the world news to find a key investing strategy.

There are a variety of other reasons, but these are some examples of what I used. It was successful in that I got an internship offer afterwards, so I must have done something right. Good luck!