Trading Summary (July 07, 2004)

A 4.61-point gain to 203.2 by the golds stocks wasn’t enough to keep the Toronto Stock Exchange out of the red on Wednesday. The diversified miners chipped in with a 1.88-point rise to make 224.37, but in the end, the S&P-TSX Composite Index finished 2.8 points lower at 8,481.94.

Wheaton Rivers Minerals outpaced market heavyweight Nortel Networks to grab top spot on the most traded list, falling 7 to $3.68 with nearly 22.5 million shares traded. Iamgold went the other way to the tune of 76, or 10%, to reach $8.31. On Tuesday, Iamgold shareholders voted down a friendly merger with Wheaton in the face of a competing bid from Denver-based Golden Star Resources. For their part, shares in Golden Star ended 20 better at $6.70. Also on Tuesday, Wheaton’s Idaho-based suitor Coeur d’Alene Mines said it again asked Wheaton’s board to begin talks aimed at a friendly merger between the two. Wheaton plans to take its offer for Wheaton directly to shareholders as soon as practicable.

Nice percentage gainers on the day were, Gitennes Explorations, up a dime, or 33.3%, to 40, Cross Lake Minerals, plus 2, or 18.2%, to 13, Anatolia Minerals Development, 14, or 13.2%, better at $1.20, and Afcan Mining, which added 3, or 12.5%, to make 27.

Gitennes recently inked an option deal to pick up Inmet Mining‘s 23-sq.-km Tucumachay property 160 km east of Lima, Peru. To do so, Gitennes must issue 1 million shares, spend US$600,000 on the property within a year, and at its option, total exploration expenditures of US$1.6 million by the end of 2006. Inmet can retain a sliding-scale net smelter return royalty ranging from 0.75-1.25%, or back-in to a 60% interest by spending three times what Gitennes spends.

Cross Lake recently arranged a brokered private placement of up to 3 million flow-through units at 15 apiece for proceeds of up to $450,000. The money will used to explore its gold and base metal properties in British Columbia. For their part, Inmet shares finished 26 higher at $18.85.

On the minus side were Opawica Explorations, off 2.5, or 24%, at 8, Zaruma Resources, down 3.5, or 14.6%, to 20.5, and Tiomin Resources, which fell a nickel to 42. On Tuesday, Tiomin said that it had signed a 21-year lease with Kenya’s government finally allowing the mining of its long-delayed Kwale titanium sands project.