Venture limits losses in March 14-18 period

Vancouver – The S&P TSX Venture Exchange partially recovered from early losses in the March 14 to 18 period, but still ended down 22.87 points at 2,243.87 points for a second downward week as the Japanese disaster compounded middle east unrest to keep markets unstable.

For the first time in months more Venture-listed companies hit 52-week lows than highs, at 87 to 30 respectively, while volume was down somewhat at an average of 167 million shares traded daily.

Uranium stocks took a beating under heavy trading following an escalation of the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan. Hathor Exploration lead the way in volume with 27.6 million shares traded as the company dropped as much as $1.32 before ending the period down 78¢ at $2.08.  Tournigan Energy saw 18.8 million shares traded as the company ended down 6¢ at 22¢ and Uracan Resources had 11.9 million shares traded as the company dropped 9¢ to end at 18¢.

A rare bright spot in the week, Gold Canyon Resources was up a dollar to $3.36 to lead value gains after releasing higher-grade gold hits from its Springpole project in Northern Ontario. The company hit 100.5 metres grading 7.23 grams gold per tonne from 51 metres in hole 11-040, a vertical infill hole on the Portage zone. The hole, which included a 28.5 metre section grading 19.73 grams gold and ended in mineralization, hit what the company believes is a previously unrecognized high-grade shallow zone within Portage.

Richfield Ventures was also up on long gold hits, climbing 64¢ to end at $6.64 after releasing the first four drill holes from its 30,000-metre drill program at its Blackwater gold project in British Columbia. Hole 120 cut 145 metres grading 2.7 grams gold from 158 metres, hole 119 hit 256 metres averaging 0.76 gram gold from 81 metres and hole 118 cut 99 metres carrying 1.52 grams gold from 12 metres.

Recently listed Atacama Pacific Gold jumped 65¢ in the period to $4.65 after releasing drill results from its Cerro Maricunga gold project in Chile. Highlights from the Lynx zone include hole 40 that hit 240 metres grading 0.72 gram gold from 114 metres depth, hole 42 that cut 134 metres averaging 0.57 grams gold from surface and hole 36 that, despite the company abandoning it at 23 metres depth due to poor ground conditions, cut 23 metres averaging 0.83 gram gold. The company had an initial public offering in November at $2.75 per share.

Encanto Potash regained much of the share price it lost the week before after releasing a resource estimate for its Muskowekwan potash project on the Muskowekwan First Nation home reserve in Saskatchewan. Upon releasing resource estimates based on conventional mining and in-situ mining, the company’s share price climbed 10¢ to 48¢ on 18.2 million shares traded. The solution-mining resource came in at 1.14 billion indicated tonnes of in-place sylvinite grading 29.4% potassium chloride or 18.6% potassium oxide, plus 868.4 million inferred tonnes of in-place sylvinite grading 29.2% KCl or 18.5% K₂O. The conventional-mining resource was 461.5 million indicated tonnes grading 36.2% KCl or 22.9% K₂O and 327.4 million inferred tonnes grading 36.4% KCl or 23% K₂O.