Venture continues downward slide Sept. 26-30

Vancouver – The S&P TSX Venture Composite Index had another tough week, dropping 78.91 points in the September 26 to 30 period to end at 1,467.17 points. Volume remained elevated with an average of 98.5 million shares traded daily.

Some companies still managed to make gains, with Lumina Copper the most successful value-wise as it went up 53¢ to $6.44. The company has been fluctuating between roughly $5.50 and $7.50 since March as it has worked to advance the Taca Taca copper project in Argentina while spinning out its royalty division. During the period, Lumina announced optimized metallurgical recoveries from Taca Taca of 92.8% in the primary mineralization and 89.9% in the supergene mineralization. Meanwhile, Franco-Nevada has offered to pay $66 million in shares and warrants for Lumina Royalty, which Lumina Copper finished spinning out in June.

Trade Winds Ventures was the most heavily traded stock with 36.3 million shares traded after Detour Gold made an $84-million takeover offer for the company. Trade Winds is no stranger to Detour as the two are partners in a 50-50 joint venture of the block A property, adjacent to Detour’s massive Detour Lake project. The takeover offer is largely share-based, consisting of 0.0142 of a Detour share plus 0.01¢ for each Trade Wind share held, which translated to roughly 45¢ for each Trade Winds share on Sept. 23. Trade Winds’ share price jumped 12.5¢ on the day of the offer, but dropped 3¢ to end the period at 38¢ as Detour’s share price dropped $4.72 to $27.30 in the same period.

Exploration Orbite was also heavily active with 12.8 million shares traded, though the activity saw the company’s share price drop 45¢to $1.46. The company recently announced it had been granted a permit to extract a bulk sample of 3,000 tonnes of aluminous clay from its Grande-Vallee site in Quebec with the aim of testing its patented process on the material. The company has also applied for a new patent in the US protecting several aspects of its refinement process, and is looking to have a feasibility study complete in the first half of 2012.

FDG Mining was one of the biggest percentage gainers of the week after announcing it had identified new veins at its Topacio gold-silver project in Nicaragua. The company’s share price jumped 10¢ in the period to 32¢, while FDG’s share price has ranged from 14¢to 39¢ since it started trading on the Venture in May. The latest grab sample results from the new veins included values as high as 32.1 grams gold per tonne and 842.6 grams silver per tonne, discovered while constructing a 16-km road to the property.

Yukon explorers continue to get hit hard by a combination of inflated expectations and a looming period of little news until the spring. Pacific Ridge Exploration had the biggest percentage drop in the period for the Index, dropping 18¢ or 54% to 15¢ after releasing drill results from several targets at its Mariposa property. At the Skookum Main target, 9 of 10 holes hit gold mineralization, with grades as high as 9.24 grams gold, but generally short intercepts of modest grades. Three holes at the Gertie target came back with no significant results.