Trading Summary (December 22, 2003)

The healthcare sector stood out with a 1.05% gain on Monday amid thin, mostly sideways trade in Toronto on Monday. The golds managed to scrape together 0.16 of appoint to reach 218.88, while the diversified miners edged 0.55 of a point higher to another new year-high of 224.18 points. Overall, the S&P/TSX composite index finished 21.61 to the good at 8,135.43.

Placer Dome was the most traded mining stock with about 5.6 million share trading their way 62 higher to $22.15. On Monday, Reuters reported that Placer is looking at swapping its Zaldivar open-pit heap-leach copper mine in northern Chile for a producing gold asset. Placer peers finished well of the pace, Kinross Gold grabbed two pennies to reach $10.10 with 824,271 shares traded, Barrick Gold finished unchanged at $29 even on 981,827 shares.

Other gold diggers on the plus side were Meridian Mining, plus 35 to 61.35, Cambior, 4 higher at $3.82, Southwestern Resources, up 2 to $40.20, and Rio Narcea Gold Mines, which made a penny to hit $3.97.

Noranda saw the most action among the base metal miners. The issue rose 41 to a new 52-week high of $20.10 on more than 2.1 million shares. On Monday, Noranda inked an option deal to earn up to a 70% stake in Metco Resources‘ properties in the Rouyn-Noranda region of Quebec.

Canada’s junior exchange continued to drift lower as investors elected to unload speculative gold issues. The S&P-TSX Venture Exchange composite index lost 1.81 points, or 0.11%, and closed at 1,662.13.

Oasis Diamond Exploration lost half a penny to close at 9.5 on nearly 1.4 million shares traded. The junior along with joint venture partner, Arctic Star Diamond tabled results from 217 kg of samples taken from the Enigma prospect in Oct. The sample was a composite sample taken in 10 kg portions at 5 metre intervals. Three diamonds were recovered.

Eastfield Resources added 4 to close at 37 on 2 million shares traded. The junior holds the Lorraine-Jajay project in British Columbia, which hosts a resource of 32 million tonnes grading 0.66% copper and 0.25 gram gold. Eastfield can earn up to a 75% interest by spending $4 million on exploration, paying $550,000 in cash or shares, and completing a feasibility study.

JNR Resources closed the day up 6 to 32.5 with 742,600 shares traded. The company recently optioned its Moore Lake and Lazy Edward Bay uranium properties to International Uranium. These properties occur in the Athabasca Basin of northern Saskatchewan. International Uranium stands to earn a 51% interest on Moore Lake by spending $2.2 million over a two-year period. International Uranium will have the option to earn a further 24% interest in the property by spending $2.2 million over years three and four. In addition, IUC can earn a 75% interest in JNR’s Lazy Edward Bay project through expenditures of $500,000 over two years. JNR and International Uranium are planning to initiate a 5,000 metre, 15 hole, winter diamond drilling program on the Moore Lake project within the next couple of weeks. The program will initially focus on following up the uranium mineralization intersected to date on the Maverick zone. The best intercept to date was from drill hole ML-25 which returned 0.62 per cent U308 over 9.1 meters, including a 4.8 meter interval of 1.2 percent U308 and including a high-grade interval of 12 per cent U308 over 0.4 metres.