Venture climbs on high volume Jan 23-27

Vancouver -The S&P TSX Venture Composite Index saw a healthy gain of 57.58 points in the January 23 to 27 period, ending at 1,628.92 points after four days of gains and one day of losses. Volume was up significantly with an average of 132 million shares traded daily, helped no doubt by two major resource conferences taking place in Vancouver during the period.

Hudson River Minerals saw a major burst of activity with 18.7 million shares traded after reporting gold hits from its property near Wawa Ontario. Drill results including 12.7 metres grading 3.25 grams gold per tonne, 9.1 metres averaging 1.99 grams gold, and 7.5 metres carrying 1.93 grams gold. Overall 16 of 17 holes in the 1,400-metre drill program intersected anomalous gold. The results led the stock to nearly triple, jumping 8.5¢ on the day to 13¢ before ending the period almost doubled at 8¢.

Verde Potash led the way in value gains, climbing almost $2 at one point before ending the period up $1.56 at $8.58. The company recently released an updated resource at its Cerrado Verde project that doubled the inferred resource to 2.7 billion tonnes grading 8.88% potassium oxide, while the indicated resource stands unchanged at 74.04 million tonnes grading 9.22% potassium oxide. Verde is also pushing ahead with its research into producing conventional potassium chloride from its potash resource, with an active demonstration plant in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Encouraging drill results carried Nicaragua-focused Calibre Mining forward for a second week, once again becoming the most-traded stock with 37.2 million shares traded. The heightened activity lead to an 11¢ gain to end at 49¢, adding to the 20¢ it climbed the week before. Drill results from its Primavera prospect include 261.7 metres carrying 0.78 gram gold and 0.3% copper and 276.8 metres averaging 0.5 gram gold and 0.22% copper. B2Gold is earning 51% of the project and following the results exercised its right to become operator.

Hana Mining saw 11.9 million shares traded and gained 27¢ to end at $1.62 after releasing high grade copper drill hits and announcing a $15-million financing. Results from the Ghanzi project in Botswana including 5.3 metres grading 5.11% copper and 172 grams silver per tonne and 16 metres averaging 1.14% copper and 18 grams silver. The financing is set at $1.35 per share.

Struggling St. Elias Mines released further details on the drill program at its Tesoro gold project in Peru, but after a mild recovery fell back to its recent lows. On January 10 the company released results from 11 holes that, while containing some high gold grades, showed narrow widths of well under a metre. On that news the company’s share price plunged 58¢ to 84¢, having already lost 50¢ in the days prior. In the recent update, the company announced that hole 6 did in fact hit a longer interval of 37.9 metres grading 0.74 gram gold and is doing further tests. The update led to a 9¢ gain on the day but later losses had the company end back at 86¢ for a 21¢ loss.