Venture rises in last week of July

Vancouver – The S&P-TSX Venture Composite Index gained four out of five days during the last week of July to close up 32.38 points at 1427.36. Daily trading volumes remained low, averaging just 75 million.

The rising average belied the bulls-and-bears race, however, which painted a very different picture. Over the week only 23 Venture-listed companies reached new 52-week share price highs while 186 fell to new lows.

Sidon International Resources was the week’s volume leader, moving almost 22 million shares to climb 4¢ to 16¢ and showing that at least some investors still have an appetite for early-stage exploration. The company finally received approval for its May deal to acquire an 80% interest in the Morogoro East gold property in Tanzania, a grassroots project home to established artisanal miners.

A $25-million financing by Victoria Gold also attracted considerable investor attention: Victoria traded 14 million shares to fall 4¢ to 69¢. In the private placement the company will sell 35.8 million shares at 70¢ a piece. Victoria will use the money to advance its two core projects, which are the Cove gold project in Nevada and the Eagle gold project in the Yukon.

High-grade gold samples from the 3Ace project in the southeast Yukon gave Northern Tiger Resources a nice share price lift. Nine grab samples taken from the main outcrop at 3Ace returned values as high as 4,820 grams gold per tonne and the results pushed Northern Tiger’s share price up 10.5¢ to 30¢.

Silver Quest Resources also rallied on good gold results. The company is drilling at its Capoose project in north-central British Columbia and a recent 100-metre step-out to the southeast returned 30 metres grading 1.89 grams gold and 12.51 grams silver per tonne followed by 10 metres of 0.99 gram gold and 11.3 grams silver. Silver Quest gained 16¢ to reach 68¢.

Investors are pleased with Gold Bullion Development‘s progress at the Granada gold project near Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. Gold Bullion is exploring around an historic gold mine and recently produced strong infill results from the known deposit, including 123.5 metres of 1.07 grams gold and 75 metres of 1.5 grams gold. The company also just completed 27 holes probing the East-Northeast discovery area and says every hole intersected “significant zones of altered feldspar porphyry (favourable for gold mineralization) with quartz veining…Visible gold ahs also been observed in many holes…” Gold Bullion rose 9¢ to 58¢.

Finally, it was a challenging week for Challenger Development, which announced an option deal for a gold project in Tanzania only to be hit with a lawsuit and a TSX rebuke. Challenger signed on to earn a 70% stake in the Rwanagaza gold project and described the project’s inferred resource, only to retract the resource the next day because it is not compliant with National Instrument 43-101 regulations. And the lawsuit stems from another deal, this one to acquire 70% of a private Zambian company that owns an historic gold mine. Challenger signed the deal in March but now an individual is claiming he should get 25% of the property.