Venture board follows TSX down to start April

VANCOUVER – The S&P TSX Venture Exchange was not spared in the storm that tore through world markets in the first week of April. The Venture board managed only one positive day and it was not enough to repair the damage: the index ended the week down 57.2 points, or 5%, at 1,041.85. The only aspect of the board to stay the course was trading volumes, which averaged a normal 64.5 million.

The week’s volume leaders were Orko Silver and Fission Energy. Almost 10 million Orko shares changed hands over the week, despite the company not releasing any news. Fission did release news: first the Saskatchewan uranium explorer and its partner Alpha Minerals announced the discovery of a third zone of mineralization at their Patterson Lake South project and then Fission released results from the 68-hole winter drilling program at its Waterbury Lake project. Fission ended the week down 10¢ at $1.08.

One of the week’s biggest gainers was Kennady Diamonds. The Toronto-based junior is focused on the Kennady Diamond project in the Northwest Territories, home to three known kimberlites. Drills working through a winter program at the site recently hit into a fourth kimberlite, news that added 17¢ to Kennady’s share price in three days. The company ended the week at $1.32.

In mid-March Zenyatta Ventures kicked off a drilling program aimed at defining a resource around its Albany graphite discovery in Ontario and the start of April brought the first result from that program. Hole 4F10 returned 363 metres of graphite mineralization, representing the widest zone intersected at Albany to date. Zenyatta’s share price gained 18¢ on the day the news was released, a gain that helped offset a wider weekly slide that left ZEN shares worth $1.83.

Santacruz Silver similarly released drilling news that helped mitigate a share price slide. The company recently completed an initial drill program at its Gavilanes project in Durango, Mexico, which is home to a low-sulphidation epithermal system of silver in veins and stockworks. Drills testing one of those veins, known as Guadelupe-Soledad-Aranzazu, returned best intercepts of 7.4 metres of 256 grams silver per tonne, 1.92% zinc, 1.5% lead, and 0.34 gram gold per tonne and 3.8 metres of 156 grams silver, 0.5% zinc, 1% lead, and 0.16 gram gold. SCZ shares gained a few cents in the latter part of the week to end the week down 14¢ at $1.78.

High-grade gold results from the brand new Shafter mine in Texas also couldn’t save Aurcana from the market’s downward drag. Aurcana kicked off commercial operations at Shafter in December with ten years of silver resource on the books. To add to that resource count, the company continues to drill, with its latest program returning several high-grade intercepts, including 5.5 metres of 212.6 grams silver and 3 metres of 490 grams silver. Aurcana ended the week down 4¢ at 64¢.