Junior board drifts yet lower

Gold’s slide to a 3-month low precipitated a further drop in the heavily-junior-mining-weighted S&P-TSX Venture Composite Index. The index fell 99.66 points to close at nearly an 8-month low of 1597.81 for the period May 10-16. Average daily volume was just 33.5 million during the period.

Only 10 companies managed to rise to new 52-week highs compared with a soaring 156 Venture-Exchange-listed explorers tumbling to new annual lows.

South American explorer Goldmarca was the top trader, with more than 5.5 million shares changing hands. The stock gained 7, or 58%, to close at 19. Goldmarca’s 44%-owned Australian-based Atomaer Holdings reached an agreement to sell its subsidiary Western Consolidated Nickel (WCN) to AIM-listed Braemore Resources. WCN, which holds a proprietary technology that extracts nickel from sulphide tailings, has an agreement with WMC Resources to test the process on the Leinster nickel tailings in Australia.

Entre Gold was second highest in volume, trading 3.6 million shares. The stock closed up 9 at $1.34. Drilling by partner Ivanhoe Mines on the Copper Flats portion of the Shivee Tolgoi joint venture in Mongolia extended the high-grade Hugo North copper-gold zone north in a 450-metre stepout hole. Ivanhoe, which can earn up to an 80% interest, has six deep-drill rigs active on Entree’s ground.

Shares of Sullivan Deeps lead-zinc hunter Stikine Gold plummeted 75%, or 30, to close the week a dime lower on volume of 3.6 million shares. Its second deep drill hole in search of the hypothetical Sullivan Deeps mineralization turned up only a sniff of uneconomic semi-massive sulphides across a thin intercept of 0.8 metre at a depth of almost 2,400 metres.

Tres-Or Resources gained more than 48%, up 7, to 20 per share on a volume of almost 900,000. The northeastern Ontario diamond hunter recently granted Arctic Star Diamond an option to earn a half-stake in its Temagami North Extension property. A drill program is scheduled to test several geophysical and geochemical anomalies on the project.

Chuck Fipke’s Metalex Ventures grabbed 12, or 15%, to close at 90 per share on volume of 191,000 following the recovery of 26 diamonds from its Kyle Lake project. The kimberlite core sample yielded six macrodiamonds and 20 micros. An aeromagnetic survey over the pipe has outlined a 180-by-200-metre modeled kimberlite body. The company also recently completed a $2.3-million private placement for continued exploration of its projects.

Prospective Mongolian uranium developer Western Prospector Group gave up 70 per share to close the trading session at $2.60 on a volume of 1.2 million shares. The company received its technical report on the Saddle Hills uranium project, which includes an update of historic Russian resource calculations. An inferred resource of 4.3 million tonnes grading 0.25% U3O8 is now estimated.

Silver-focused IMA Exploration saw its stock drop 60, to $2.62, on a volume of 300,000 shares. The company continues to drill and expand silver mineralization on its Navidad project in the northern Patagonia region of Argentina. The project remains clouded by a lawsuit launched by Aquiline Resources alleging IMA used confidential information to acquire the Navidad property and surrounding claims.