Trading Summary (March 08, 2002)

After a strong opening, the Toronto Stock Exchange fell 47.81 points to 7,910.3 points to end the week. Just three of the exchange’s fourteen subindices ended in the black. The golds slid 69.59 points to 5,540.54 points and the base metal issues fell 31.44 points to 4,741.64.

Placer Dome just outpaced TVX Gold to place as the nation’s busiest miner gaining 40 to $17 on more than 4 million shares. TVX continued to slide falling 3 to 92 on permitting and protest problems at its plagued Greek operations. Barrick Gold shed 53 to $27.04 with 2.8 million shares traded to round out the TSE’s top ten volume leaders.

Goldcorp dropped $1.33 or nearly 6% to $22.55. On Friday the company, powered by its high grade Red Lake gold mine in Northwestern Ontario, declared its first quarterly dividend payment for 2002 of US5 per share payable to shareholders of record on Mar. 15, 2002. Payday is Mar. 21. The company plans on paying a total dividend of US20 in four quarterly payments in 2002.

Inco was the most traded base metal miner with about 1.3 million shares crossing the floor to gain 56 to $30.61. Most of the other majors saw similar gains.

Canada’s junior exchange ended the week by giving back some of the weeks’ strong gains. The S&P-CDNX Composite Index lost 6.92 points, or 0.6% to close at 1162.87.

Eurozinc Mining topped the most actively traded chart among junior explorers losing 1 to close at 13 on just over 1 million shares. The company has been trying to advance the past producing Aljustrel zinc project in Portugal.

Getting a modest boost after announcing that it has acquired 100% of the Copperstone gold property in Arizona, American Bonanza Gold Mining added 1 to close at 10 on 795,000 shares. Under the terms of the deal, the property remains subject to a 1% royalty payable to the underlying landowner at a cost of US$1 million.

A falling gold price is taking some of the shine off of the Glamis Gold Francisco Gold merger as shares in Francisco fell 35 to close at $12.10 on a volume of 94,390. Stock in the junior soared on news that Toronto-listed Glamis Gold has offered to take over the company in an all share deal valued at about $205 million.

Quaterra Resources ended the week flat at 14 on 565,950 shares. The junior plans on running additional surface and airborne geophysical surveys over the Duke Island nickel-copper-platinum-palladium property in Alaska.

Despite announcing that no material change is taking place, shares in Kensington Resources continued to move higher. Diamond recovery results form ten large diameter boreholes at the Fort la Corne diamond project in Saskatchewan are expected to be in hand sometime in the first quarter. Kensington ended the day at $1.18, up 13 on the session with 561,615 shares changing hands.