Venture sees straight losses in April 11-15 period

Vancouver – The April 11 to 15 period was a rough one for the S&P TSX Venture Exchange as the board’s straight gains the period before were wiped out by straight loses, with the Venture dropping 97.88 points to end at 2,290.91 points. Activity edged up, averaging 174 million shares traded daily. The bulls and bears were in balance again, after a surge in the bulls last period, with 65 Venture-listed companies hitting new 52-week highs and 63 hit 52-week lows.  

Creston Moly was by far the most traded stock with a remarkable 95.2 million shares traded after Mercator Minerals offered to buy it for $195 million. Mercator offered 0.15 of a Mercator share plus 8¢ cash for each Creston share, a 40% premium. The two base metal players will combine Mercator’s producing Mineral Park moly-copper mine in Arizona and El Pilar copper mine in Mexico with Creston’s advanced El Creston moly-copper project, also in Mexico. Creston’s share price was up 14¢ to 56¢, while Mercator’s share price dropped 13¢ to $3.39 on the TSX main board.

Rare earth stocks continue to drive the top end of the Venture board, with Quest Rare Minerals, Rare Element Resources and Tasman Metals topping the value gains. Quest was up $1.43 to $7.95 after releasing a revised resource estimate for the B-Zone deposit at its Strange Lake project in Quebec. The new resource puts 36.4 million indicated tonnes in the ground grading 1.16% total rare earth oxides, plus 14.4 million inferred tonnes grading 1.11% TREO. Tasman was up 91¢ to $5.52 after announcing it had started drilling 1 km program at its Otanmaki rare earth project in Finland. Rare Element had no news out in the period but still climbed $1.26 to $14.97.

Also rising on no news, Pro-Or Mining Resources managed to climb 28¢ or 186.7% for no obvious reason. Company management stated there was no material change that would account for the increase. Pro-Or, which has roughly 44 million shares outstanding, saw 9.5 million shares traded in the period. On April 1 the company announced it had hired a new engineer to lead operations at its St-Augustin pilot plant where it is trying to use its patented extraction process to recover platinum group metals from salvaged catalytic converters.

Prodigy Gold continued upwards on new drill results from its Magino gold mine in Ontario. Hole 11-06 hit 143 metres carrying 1.54 grams gold per tonne from 123 metres depth and hole 11-04 cut 261 metres averaging 1.32 grams gold from 134 metres. The company recently released a positive economic assessment on Magino that established a net present value of $351 million and an internal rate of return of 49%. The company climbed 3¢ in the period to end at 69¢, having climbed from roughly 30¢ in mid-March.

NSGold gained 18¢ to close at 72¢ on 2.8 million shares traded after announcing it had signed a definitive agreement for the historic Dios Padre silver mine and surrounding property in Mexico’s Sonora State. NSGold sees the potential to expand the resource by following the plunge potential of the breccia body and exploring other altered and mineralized areas on the concessions.