Juniors ride out gold’s continued malaise

Exploration companies listed on the TSX Venture Exchange endured choppy gold prices during the Jan. 26-Feb. 1 report period, finishing little-changed from a week earlier. The S&P-TSX Venture Composite Index closed at 1805.09, up a slight 1.02 points, and the average daily trading volume over the period was 41.2 million shares.

On the New York spot market, gold closed at US$420.50 per oz., off US$1.40 from a week earlier. Bullion saw a modest but brief rally to the US$427-per-oz. level but weakened on market optimism for the American dollar, despite mixed figures on the state of the U.S. economy.

Silver closed at US$6.71 per oz. on the New York spot market, up 4 over the period. Platinum posted a respectable gain of US$15, closing at US$877 per oz., while palladium shed a couple of dollars, finishing the trading period at US$189 an ounce.

Base metals showed strength on the week: copper gained a couple of cents and closed at US$1.47 per lb., while nickel finished at US$6.55 per lb., up 11 from a week earlier.

The spread between new lows and highs widened, with 76 companies sinking to new 52-week lows and just 22 Venture-Exchange-listed explorers seeing new yearly highs.

Trio Gold emerged as the new volume leader. The Calgary-based explorer traded 16.3 million shares, soaring from 8.5 to a high of 27.5 before closing at 19. Trio released results from its Empire Mine project in Idaho, where a 30-metre core hole returned an intersection of 5.8 metres grading 4.23% copper, including 1.5 metres of 13.5% copper at the end of the hole, which was terminated for budgetary reasons. Hole 1, drilled in the AP pit area, was cased and will be deepened to at least 100 metres. Results from nine reverse-circulation holes in the centre of the AP pit are pending. Empire Mine is a past producer of copper, silver, gold and zinc, which operated between 1901 and 1942. Output totalled 694,000 tonnes grading 3.6% copper plus 53.8 grams silver and 1.6 grams gold per tonne, from polymetallic skarn mineralization. Trio recently closed a $420,000 private placement of 8.4 million shares priced at 5 apiece. Proceeds will be used to explore the Empire Mine deposit further.

Runner-up to Trio was Tyler Resources, which traded 8.8 million shares. The stock closed at $1.50, off 3 from a week earlier. The company is attracting interest because of drill results from the Bahuerachi project in Mexico. The copper-gold porphyry deposit has shown significantly mineralized drill intercepts in several holes.

Sargold Resource traded almost 4 million shares to close the report period at 41, up 9. The company launched a 1,500-metre drill program on its Furtei gold mine project in Sardinia, Italy. The mine produced 138,000 oz. gold between 1996 and 2002, and processing facilities remain onsite. Resources are pegged at 9.3 million tonnes grading 2.1 grams gold.

Copper and gold hunter Auterra Ventures saw a 67% gain, from 30 to 50, following its acquisition of a copper project in the Yukon.

Shares in SKN Resources gained 54 after drilling on the Ying silver project in China identified a fifth high-grade vein with bonanza grades of silver, lead and zinc.