Gold is bouncing back after some profit-taking yesterday…as of 5:40 am Pacific, the yellow metal is up $13 an ounce at $1,743…Silver has gained 21 cents to $33.71…Copper is up 2 pennies to $3.85…Crude Oil is $1.23 higher at $100.01 while the U.S. Dollar Index (new chart below) has lost one-fifth of a point to 78.93…
Strong Finish To January In The Markets
U.S. stock index futures, as of 5:40 am Pacific, indicate a positive open for Wall Street this morning ahead of a slew of earnings and as hopes rise for a deal between Greece and private sector creditors on restructuring some of the country’s debt…European stocks are higher on the same hopes and as leaders in the EU signed a pact to bring tighter budgetary discipline to the euro zone…
On the macroeconomic front, investors will be watching the S&P/Case-Shiller Home price index, due to be released at 6:00 am Pacific, for signs of life in the U.S. housing market…
Bullish Signs In Emerging Market Currencies & Equities
The Financial Times reports this morning that emerging market currencies are on track for their best start to the year since the turn of the century as risk appetite among investors improves….the Mexican peso, Brazilian real and Indian rupee have outstripped currencies in the world’s most industrialized nations to gain more than 5% against the U.S. dollar this year, bouncing back from sharp falls in recent months….the peso and the rupee have both risen 7% this month against the dollar, while the real and the Russian rouble are up 6% since the start of the year…
Meanwhile, investors poured more money into emerging market equity and bond funds last week than at any time since April last year, according to EPFR Global, a data provider…the dollar-denominated MSCI emerging markets’ equities index, which lost 21% in 2011, is up 10.2% this year…
Another View On China
A senior International Monetary Fund official said yesterday that China was taking steps to reduce property bubble risks and said it has room to add fiscal stimulus if conditions worsen…”China can move away from its reliance on external demand and needs to build up domestic demand,” said Anoop Singh, the IMF director for Asia and the Pacific at a news conference…he said Beijing was working on measures to stimulate demand…”We don’t see (a) hard-landing risk as likely,” Singh added, noting property prices were moderating and sales volumes declining…”Our sense is that these risks are being addressed and our prediction is clear: that growth will remain above 8% at the baseline and that if there were to be greater risks externally China has sufficient fiscal space to respond”…
Venture Exchange 50-Day SMA Reverses To Upside
A very important technical event with the CDNX is now unfolding as its 50-day moving average (SMA) is reversing to the upside in a pattern similar to that seen in January, 2009, and September, 2010…this is hugely significant and should be followed in a month or so by a reversal in the 100-day SMA which has been in decline since May of last year…too many investors have still not clued in to what’s happening…the “trend is your friend”, as the saying goes, and the trend has definitely reversed after months of weakness and frustration…
Finding The Right Play
This is a time, a defining turnaround moment in the markets, when fortunes are born if you’re invested in the right plays in the speculative junior resource space…that’s another reason we’re so bullish on Rainbow Resources (RBW, TSX-V) which is essentially a former “shell” that is cashing up at the right time after vending in a major project through a transaction with a private exploration company (Braveheart Resources)…in situations like this, “smart money” loads up (through a strategic PP and in the open market) with the aim to get returns on their investment of at least 5 to 10 times what they put in…they don’t think in pennies like most retail investors…they think BIG and that’s why a guy like Bob Libin is a multi-millionaire and part-owner of an NHL team…so at BMR, we’re not playing for pennies with regard to Rainbow…given the people involved and the merit of the properties, we’re hugely confident RBW is a major home run opportunity and we’re prepared to hang our hats on it…at yesterday’s close of 21 cents, the current market cap is only $5.5 million…
For those who are focused only on the very short term, John’s latest RBW chart shows two initial Fibonacci levels – 25 cents and 36 cents…”Wave 1″ in RBW’s move, from a technical perspective, has not even concluded yet…
Note: Both John and Jon hold positions in RBW (Terry does not) with Jon adding to his position again yesterday.
Adventure Gold (AGE, TSX-V)
Adventure Gold remains one of our favorite plays due to its management and impressive portfolio of properties which includes the Pascalis-Colombiere Gold Property (the company’s flagship project) immediately adjacent to Richmont’s (RIC, TSX) Beaufor Mine…we are working on an article regarding AGE after a visit to Pascalis reconfirmed our bullish views regarding this property and former producer near Val-d’Or…below is a picture we took of some outcrop mineralization from a very interesting new area at Pascalis the company is exploring (about 1.2 kilometres northwest of the shaft of the former L.C. Beliveau Mine)…work by AGE last summer led to the discovery of a high-grade Gold-copper-silver showing north of the previously reported Highway Zone…the company’s exploration team made this new discovery while performing a mechanical stripping program…grab samples collected within the new mineralized zone returned up to 4.7 g/t Au 11.4% copper and 112 g/t Ag as reported by AGE October 26…what this demonstrates is that the Pascalis mineralized system is quite possibly larger and perhaps richer than originally thought…last year’s drill results were very positive and the company is gearing up for another drill program…
AGE closed at 43 cents yesterday…we believe it’ll be a strong year for Adventure Gold which raised $1.75 million at the end of December in a non-flow-through financing above the market price…
Additional Charts
John has two additional charts this morning…Geologix Explorations (GIX, TSX-V) traded a whopping 29 million shares Friday (all exchanges) and closed yesterday on the Venture down half a penny at 30 cents…on January 17 the company reported very encouraging drill results from its Tepal Gold-Copper Porphyry Project in Mexico…put GIX on your “radar screen” and, as always, perform your own due diligence…
Note: John, Jon and Terry do not hold positions in GIX.
We regularly monitor the important U.S. Dollar Index, so below is John’s 2.5-year weekly chart update…