Canada’s benchmark index posts small gain, Oct. 15-19

Despite a strong U.S. dollar, the price of gold increased for the third consecutive week, finishing at US$1,226.50 per ounce, up 0.74%, while the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index rose 1.85% to 171.63. By contrast, the S&P/TSX Global Mining Index was down 1.17% to 53.03 and the S&P/TSX Global Base Metals Index lost 3.06% to finish at 95.08. The S&P/TSX Composite Index closed 0.36% higher, ending the trading week at 15,470.10.

Royal Nickel posted the largest trading volume on no corporate news, and rose 4¢ to 83¢ per share. The company recently recovered the first 90-kilogram specimen slab from the top of the Father’s Day vein it found in September at its Beta Hunt mine, 600 km from Perth in Western Australia. The large slab contains an estimated 1,000 oz. gold and will be cut into smaller specimens that highlight the coarse gold and related mineral features, the company reported on Oct. 10. Six gold specimens weighing almost 200 kilograms in total that were recovered from the Father’s Day Vein are on display at the Perth Mint, and the company says they are among the biggest of their kind ever unearthed in Australia. RNC also said its technical team has extended the sediment structures a total 540 metres from the Father’s Day Vein structure to the mine’s 1,250 level. The first mobile diamond drill arrived at the site on Oct. 22, and underground drill crews have started a gold exploration program to expand on the high-grade gold discovery. Drilling will step out along strike and dip, both above and below the discovery area, after the pyritic sediment horizon in the Lunnon Basalt. In March, the company announced it was looking for a buyer for the mine so that it could focus on its nickel-cobalt Dumont project, which it says contains the world’s largest undeveloped reserves of nickel and second-largest undeveloped reserves of cobalt.

Shares of Osisko Mining jumped 64¢ — or 25% — to $3.20, after news on Oct. 15 that the Superior Court of Quebec had approved its agreement to acquire all of the shares it didn’t already own in Beaufield Resources. The companies reached an agreement in August that Osisko would acquire Beaufield, which has properties in Ontario and Quebec. Beaufield’s Urban property is next to Osisko Mining’s high-grade Windfall property; its Éléonore-Opinaca property, beside Goldcorp’s Éléonore property; and its Hemlo property, alongisde Barrick Gold’s Hemlo gold mines. Beaufield also owns the Launay and Troilus-Tortigny properties — the latter surrounded by Perilya’s Moblan lithium deposit.

Barrick Gold’s shares were the second most actively traded of the week, rising $1.06 to $17.29. The company announced on Oct. 19 that independent proxy advisory firm, Institutional Shareholder Services, had recommended that Barrick shareholders approve the issuance of the company’s shares in connection with management’s proposed merger with Randgold Resources.