Gains outweigh losses for Venture during Jan. 10-14 period

Vancouver – The S&P TSX Venture Exchange climbed 45.57 points over the January 10 to 14 period, ending at 2275.45 points after three days of gains and two days of losses.

The board was humming with activity, with a daily trading average of just over 200 million shares including a single day with 309 million shares traded. For a second week the bears were few and far between, as only 19 Venture-listed companies hit 52-week lows while 143 hit 52-week highs.

Positive metallurgical results helped push up Lumina Copper a dollar to $6 on a total of 650,000 shares traded. Initial testing on the company’s Taca Taca copper-gold-molybdenum project in northern Argentina showed recoveries of copper at 85.1%, of molybdenum at 52.5%, and gold at 38.4% in the Primary mineralized zone, while slightly lower in the Supergene zone. The testing also showed low levels of arsenic. The company is now planning a larger phase of testing. Lumina followed up the test results by announced a $15.5 million financing.

Just edging past Lumina to lead the value-gain category, Amazon Mining was up $1.02 to $7.84. The gains were in part a recovery from a significant dip in the latter-half of the week before, but the potash company has still climbed from around $5.60 in early January, and roughly $1.50 in late July of last year. The company completed a $10 million private placement, issuing 2.4 million shares at $4.17 in the period, which follows by roughly two weeks a $4.5 million financing that Amazon closed at the same price.

Axmin was lively with 20 million shares traded as the company gained 5¢ to close at 20¢. The company announced it had sold 9.6 million shares of Copper Development Corporation for net proceeds of roughly $4.3 million, the latest in a push to liquidate non-core assets. Axmin is focusing its resources on its Passendro gold project in the Central African Republic, with the new funds going to cover, among other things, a soon-to-be-completed feasibility study.

Uranium North Resources had a healthy percentage gain on its stock price, climbing 13¢ or 68.4% to close at 31¢ after releasing sample results from its Nowyak property in Nunavut. Grab samples returned values as high as 32.9 grams gold per tonne, 1,350 grams silver per tonne, and 4.2% copper, while the company reported that gold mineralization occurs along a 200- to 300-metre-wide altered shear zone. Of 56 grab samples, 20 yielded gold values above 1 gram gold and 10 yielded above 10 grams gold.

With almost 32 million shares traded, Currie Rose Resources led the Venture in trading volume. The attention, however, led to a 15¢ or 44% drop with the company’s shares ending at 19¢. The company released initial drill results from its Mabale Hills gold project in northwest Tanzania, with the vast majority of the 26 holes hitting low or no mineralization. Exceptions included hole 1 that hit 3 metres grading 9.89 grams gold and hole 13 that cut 3 metres grading 11 grams gold. The company plans further exploration.