BullMarketRun.com

Check back later today for Daniel’s Den and visit the BMR comments section throughout the day for updates for helpful information.

1. Gold has traded between $1,340 and $1,345 so far today ahead of a Fed statement following the central bank’s 2-day meeting…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is up $6 an ounce at $1,344…Silver has added 13 cents to $17.22…on the base metal front, Copper is up 4 cents to $3.22…Nickel is 7 cents higher at $6.15…Zinc has added 2 cents to $1.63 while Cobalt is steady at $36.40… Crude Oil is off modestly at $64.14 while the U.S. Dollar Index has fallen one-quarter of a point to 88.92…

2. The new year got off to a strong start for job creation in the U.S. with businesses adding 234,000 in January, according to a report this morning from ADP and Moody’s Analytics…economists surveyed by Reuters had been looking for private payrolls to grow by 185,000…job creation was concentrated largely in service-related industries, which contributed 212,000 to the total…while the ADP report is encouraging and creates some upside momentum for the labor market ahead of Friday’s official non-farm payrolls data, the report is not always a reliable predictor of the government numbers…

3. Canada’s first actively managed pot-themed ETF is set to launch tomorrow when Redwood Asset Management, a unit of Purpose Investments, begins trading the Marijuana Opportunities Fund (MJJ)…it’ll be Canada’s second weed-focused ETF…the first, Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF (HMMJ, TSX), was launched last spring but, unlike Redwood’s offering, it’s not actively managed…HMMJ tracks the North American Marijuana index and has been the most popular Canadian ETF this year, far surpassing even broad market-tracking ETFs…MJJ will trade on the NEO exchange and will also be available to investors in a mutual-fund offering…

4. In President Trump’s State-of-the-Union address last night, he noted how “we have ended the war on American Energy”…in British Columbia, however, the war on energy has only just started…the Green Party, which is keeping the NDP afloat, is vociferously against LNG while yesterday the NDP and Greens took illegal action in an attempt to block the already approved (but not yet built) Trans Mountain pipeline expansion…the Oil haters in B.C. want to restrict shipments of Oilsands Crude in pipelines and on railway cars through a series of proposed new rules that are sure to lead to a legal battle as railways and pipelines that cross provincial borders are federally regulated…Alberta’s NDP Premier calls the B.C. move “unconstitutional”…Alberta United Conservative leader Jason Kenney put it more bluntly:  “The fight isn’t with words. It has to be with actions. If the mayor of Vancouver wants a carbon-free Vancouver by 2040, let’s try to give him one by 2020.  We can stop permitting the shipment of Oil to Burnaby right now like Peter Lougheed did to eastern Canada in the early 1980’s.  Albertans have been lied to, told if they pay the carbon tax they will get a pipeline. The whole thing has been hokum.  Here we have an Alberta NDP government that’s imposed a job-killing carbon tax and can’t even stop their NDP twins in B.C. from violating the Constitution and attacking the energy industry…we’ve got an NDP government in B.C. breaking the law to block our Oil because the opponents of Alberta’s energy industry aren’t interested in compromise. They want to keep the Oil in the ground.”

5. Investors will be watching closely as major reforms of environmental and regulatory reviews of big energy projects – one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s most anticipated policy changes – are due to be announced in days…the changes have the potential of encouraging a return of capital to the Canadian energy sector, or they’ll continue to push it away to more welcoming jurisdictions such as the United States…it’s critical that Canada gets this right as it simply can’t afford another layer of excessive regulation on top of already onerous carbon reduction policies…

6. The price of Bitcoin is down by about 30% in January, on pace for its worst monthly drop in 3 years, according to research site Coindesk…it fell below $10,000 this morning, a 2-month low, and it‘s down by about half from its all-time high near $20,000 reached in mid-December…notably, this isn’t Bitcoin’s first 30% plunge in a month…it also happened in January 2015 and on 2 other occasions over the last 5 years…while several factors are driving the current decline, the regulatory clampdown occurring around the world is an important reason why Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market have fallen on tougher times in recent weeks…yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission halted a $600 million initial coin offering, one of the biggest U.S. interventions yet into the world of raising money by issuing digital tokens…

7. Equity markets are bouncing back in early trading after a rough couple of days…even with recent declines, the Dow and S&P 500 are on track for their largest 1-month percentage gains in more than a year-and-a-half…of the S&P 500 companies that had reported as of yesterday morning, 80% have posted better-than-expected earnings, while 81% have beaten top-line estimates…the Dow is up 196 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…in Toronto, the TSX is off 3 points while the Venture has recovered 9 points to 867…Almadex Minerals (AMZ, TSX-V) has hit a new 52-week high of $1.60…last news from the company was in mid-December when it reported encouraging drill results from the Villa Rica zone of its El Cobre Property in Mexico, approximately 2 km south of the Norte zone where most of the company’s drilling has been focused since late 2016…El Cobre hosts large-scale porphry potential…Castle Silver Resources (CSR, TSX-V) and ML Gold (MLG, TSX-V), both up significantly in January, are rebounding this morning following sharp technical pullbacks to strong support in recent sessions…both have near-term catalysts to continue their uptrends in February…

Most Popular Recent BMR Posts

Venture Locked and Loaded For Powerful Q1

Commodity Check!

The Template For The Next 10% Stake In Garibaldi Resources

Thunder In The Corridor!

The Nickel Mountain Magma Highway

Two Big Plays Emerge in B.C., Setting The Stage For A Summer To Remember

How To Bring A Junior Resource Market To Life!

The Dramatic New Chase For A Nickel-Copper-Rich Massive Sulphide Deposit In The Heart Of A Famous Gold Camp

Northern Ontario Cobalt Junior Attracts Interest From Metal Trading Companies

The Most Important Venture Development Since The New Bull Market Began

Check back later today for Daniel’s Den, and visit the BMR comments section throughout the day for updates and helpful information.

1. Gold has traded between $1,334 and $1,348 so far today, bouncing back from its lows after fresh weakness in the greenback…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is up $6 an ounce at $1,346…Silver has added 9 cents to $17.25…on the base metal front, Nickel has eased off 13 cents to $6.13 after climbing as high as $6.32…Copper has slipped 2 pennies to $3.18…Zinc is unchanged at $1.63 while Cobalt is steady at $36.40, just slightly below its best level in almost a decade…metals markets should draw some bullish conclusions from President Trump’s State-of-the-Union address tonight when he will focus on economic growth and discuss a $1.5 trillion infrastructure improvement plan, “the next leg of the stool in our economic agenda,” according to White House economic advisor Gary Cohn in an interview on CNBC this morning…Crude Oil has retreated $1.27 a barrel to $64.29 while the U.S. Dollar Index has fallen one-third of a point to 89.03 as the Fed begins its 2-day meeting, the final one with Janet Yellen at the helm…

2. There’s speculation that India’s government will announce an import tax cut in its annual budget Thursday…such a move could boost India’s Gold demand and provide additional support to global prices…the bullion industry has been urging a tax reduction to combat smuggling, which has increased since India raised the import duty to 10% in August 2013 to narrow its current account deficit…“We are expecting a 2 to 4% reduction in the import duty,” Saurabh Gadgil, vice president of the Indian Bullion Jewellers Association (IBJA), told Reuters…

3. More good news for Gold…as the U.S. Congress limps toward the likely passage next week of another stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown, a Washington think tank now estimates the federal budget deficit is on track to surpass $1 trillion in 2019…if it does, it would be the first time since 2012 the U.S. economy will have to support a deficit so large…the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington fiscal watchdog, also stated that if current policies continue, the deficit could top a record setting $2 trillion by 2027…historically, Gold has performed very well during periods when the deficit trend is accelerating…

4. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Senate has approved legislation that includes major hikes in both taxes and royalties on metals under reforms fiercely opposed by the mining industry…a commission representing both houses of parliament meets later this week to smooth out divergences so that the two chambers adopt an identical document before it’s sent to President Joseph Kabila for his signature…the Congo’s move to double taxes on Cobalt (more than half of the world’s Cobalt production comes from that country) will further inhibit investment in a metal experiencing a boom due to its use in cellphones and electric vehicles.  “This revised mine code will hurt investments in a significant way,” said John Nkono, the secretary-general of the mine industry group Chamber of Mines, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.  “Government has ignored our advice on almost every aspect including on royalties and tax rates…it is total chaos.” Investors will increasingly look to other areas of the world for potential Cobalt supply such as the northern Ontario Cobalt Camp where multiple companies are active, including CSR which will soon be officially changing its name to “Canada Cobalt Works“…

5. The euro zone grew at its fastest rate in a decade in 2017, according to Eurostat data released this morning…the GDP of the single currency area expanded by 2.5% in the calendar year, the most rapid rate of growth since a 3.4% expansion in 2007, the year before the global financial crisis…the euro zone is in the midst of a broad cyclical expansion after years of economic stagnation and rolling crises, fueled by recovering confidence and monetary stimulus from the European Central Bank…businesses are indicating that new orders continue to increase, so it seems to be a safe bet that the euro zone economy will continue to perform well in the months ahead…that will help underpin commodity prices…

6. U.S. equity markets are suffering their second straight triple digit loss…the Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Apple is slashing planned production of the iPhone X for the 3-month period ending March 31, in a sign of weaker-than-expected demand…according to the report, Apple plans to make about 20 million iPhone X handsets in the 1st quarter, down from roughly 40 million initially planned…in Toronto, the TSX has slipped 116 points through the first 30 minutes of trading while the Venture has tumbled 18 points to 861…the 850 breakout point serves as very strong support…one bright spot in early trading is National Action Cannabis (NAC, TSX-V) which has hit another new high of $1.18…Skeena Resources (SKE, TSX-V) released results this morning from the final 12 holes of its 62-hole underground drill program completed during Q4 at its Snip Project in the Eskay Camp…highlights included 44.1 g/t Au over 1.5 m in UG17–051…in addition, UG17–059 intersected 8.1 g/t Au over 8 m including 14.9 g/t over 3.32 m, 50 m down-dip of previously reported drill hole UG17–062 which intersected two separate zones in the Upper Twin including 91.6 g/t over 3.8 m…a Phase 2 underground drill program is expected to commence next month and will focus on further defining the Twin, Upper Twin and 412 zones as well as exploring the newly defined 200 Footwall targets…Blind Creek Resources (BCK, TSX-V) has filed a NI-43–101 technical report for its 100%-owned Engineer Gold mine property near Atlin…the report provides the basis for Blind Creek’s recently announced planned spin-out of that asset which would provide BCK shareholders with 1 Engineer Gold share for every 2 BCK shares held as of the yet-to-be-announced date of record…Blink Creek would then focus on its Blende Property, the largest carbonate hosted Zinc-Lead deposit in the Yukon and one of the largest undeveloped Zinc-Lead deposits in Western Canada…

7. The Ontario government’s war on small business has drawn the attention of the marijuana sector…Aphria (APH, TSX) has calculated the province’s 21% minimum-pay jump from $11.60 to $14 an hour would add another $600,000 to its overall wage costs each year. “If this increase had been in effect in the current quarter, the company’s ‘all-in’ cost of sales of dried cannabis per gram would have increased by approximately $0.12 per gram,” the Leamington, Ontario-based company reported in its latest financials…that’s an increase of nearly 6% from its all-in cost of $2.13 a gram during the quarter ended in November…Aphria said in its MDA that when the provincial minimum wage goes up again to $15 on January 1, 2019, it expects overall company wages to go up by another $300,000 a year…Newstrike Resources (HIP, TSX-V) said it’s also feeling the financial pressure…the province is hampered by both relatively high labor costs and electricity costs…

Most Popular Recent BMR Posts

Venture Locked and Loaded For Powerful Q1

Commodity Check!

The Template For The Next 10% Stake In Garibaldi Resources

Thunder In The Corridor!

The Nickel Mountain Magma Highway

Two Big Plays Emerge in B.C., Setting The Stage For A Summer To Remember

How To Bring A Junior Resource Market To Life!

The Dramatic New Chase For A Nickel-Copper-Rich Massive Sulphide Deposit In The Heart Of A Famous Gold Camp

Northern Ontario Cobalt Junior Attracts Interest From Metal Trading Companies

The Most Important Venture Development Since The New Bull Market Began

Check back later today for Daniel’s Den, and visit the BMR comments section throughout the day for updates and helpful information.

1. Gold has traded between $1,340 and $1,349 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is off $6 an ounce at $1,343…Silver has retreated 18 cents to $17.20…on the base metal front, the big story continues to be Nickel which has climbed another 17 cents to $6.28 after pushing above the key $6 level last week for the first time in nearly 3 years…significantly, Nickel has pushed through a long-term chart downtrend line going back to 2011…it’s up 40% since June, aided by expectations of rising demand for the metal related to the electric vehicle revolution…Copper is steady at $3.20…Zinc has hit a new decade high of $1.63 while Cobalt is up slightly at $36.40, just 20 cents below its best level in almost a decade…Crude Oil is 58 cents lower at $65.56 while the U.S. Dollar Index has rebounded one-quarter of a point to 89.25…last week’s drop below the key 90 area is not a good sign for the greenback, however…

2. U.S. consumer spending rose solidly in December as demand for goods and services increased, but the move came at the expense of savings which dropped to a 10-year low…the Commerce Department reported this morning that consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, increased 0.4% last month, matching expectations, after an upwardly revised 0.8% increase in November…meanwhile, the lack of inflationary pressures in the economy continues to frustrate the Fed which meets again tomorrow and Wednesday…the central bank’s preferred measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, has come in at 1.7% for 2017 after December’s figures were released this morning…that’s down from November’s 1.8% reading and stubbornly remains below the Fed’s 2% target rate…

3. Aphria (APH, TSX) announced this morning that it would buy rival Nuuvera (NUU, TSX-V) for $826 million to expand globally, ahead of Canada’s proposed legalization of recreational weed by mid-2018…the move comes days after the marijuana industry saw its biggest deal ever when Aurora Cannabis said it would buy CanniMed (CMED, TSX) for $1.1 billion…medical marijuana is already legal in Canada, of course, but the sector is expected to get a boost from exports as many other countries move closer to legalization…Aphria will leverage Nuuvera’s network in countries like Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Uruguay to create an international footprint, the companies said…APH is down modestly on the news, off 76 cents at $19.40, while NUU is up $1 at $8.00 as of 7:00 am Pacific…

4. U.S. equity markets are off slightly in early trading following more record highs last week…the S&P 500 has closed at new record highs 14 times during the past 18 trading days, the most number of record highs in a month since 1955…the benchmark index is also on track for one of its strongest January performances ever and its best since 1989…last week it also hit its longest period in history without a 5% correction…in Toronto, the TSX has slipped 65 points through the first 30 minutes of trading while the Venture is flat at 891…Mountain Province Diamonds (MPVD, TSX) is acquiring Venture-listed Kennady Diamonds (KDI, TSX-V) which has jumped 53 cents to $3.28…Kennady shareholders will receive 0.975 of a Mountain Province common share for each Kennady common share, representing the equivalent of $3.46 per Kennady share based on the last closing price of Mountain Province…Dr. Rory O. Moore, President and CEO of Kennady, stated: “We are excited that our shareholders have the opportunity to benefit from the near-term cash flow of the world-class Gahcho Kue mine while retaining exposure to the significant exploration upside on the current Kennady assets”…Canada Zinc (CZX, TSX-V) has updated its NI-43–101 resource estimate for its Cardiac deposit in northeast British Columbia…Indicated resources have increased by 3 million tonnes to 22.7 million tonnes grading 8.3% Zn, 1.6% Pb and 14.1 g/t Ag…that’s a 15% increase in tonnage and a slight increase in grade compared to the previous estimate in 2016…Inferred resources have dropped to 7.5 million tonnes from 8 million tonnes…Orla Mining (OLA, TSX-V) has announced a $25 million bought deal at $1.75 per unit…Goldcorp and Agnico Eagle have indicated that they intend to subscribe for units in order to maintain their current ownership positions of approximately 19.9% and 9.9%, respectively…

5. A.I.S. Resources (AIS, TSX-V), an emerging Lithium producer in Argentina, announced this morning that a just-completed geophysics program (TEM, transient electromagnetic survey) has detected potential aquifers in what correlates to sand-rich units at shallow depths of 10 meters, 20 meters and 100 meters at each of the company’s 4 concessions at its Chiron Project in the heart of the Pocitos Salar in Salta…extremely low resistivity (0.4–1.0 ohm-m) at each of 19 data points covering the 27 sq. km package suggests the potential for Lithium-rich brines…Chiron’s concessions appear to be the preferred areas in the salar for brine saturated sequences, based on seismic data, and will be drill tested shortly (in February) with an 8-hole, 3,200-m program…Phil Thomas, Chief Operating Officer and exploration director for AIS., stated: “This initial seismic data from Chiron based on the TEM geophysics strongly supports our case for acquiring these strategic concessions. Together with our Guayatayoc Project to the northwest in Jujuy province, where we’ve made excellent progress with our pilot plant production chemistry, A.I.S. is on track for a breakthrough year as an emerging new producer in the Lithium brine space in Argentina.”

6. Orca Gold (ORG, TSX-V) has increased Indicated resources by 24% (588,000 ounces) while adding 368,000 ounces of Inferred resources to its updated model (new NI-43–101 mineral resource estimate) for its Galat Sufar South (GSS) and Wadi Doum deposits in Sudan…together they comprise an Indicated resource of 72.7 million tonnes grading 1.3 g/t Au (3.05 million ounces) at a cut-off grade of 0.60 g/t and an Inferred resource of 19.8 million tonnes grading 1.2 g/t, using the same cut-off, for 750,000 ounces…the new estimate is based on 98,754 meters of drilling in 688 holes…Richard Clark, CEO of Orca Gold, stated,  “The recent drilling at GSS has successfully increased the Indicated resource at GSS. The conversion of Inferred resources and the addition of new resources at GSS supports continued drilling to expand the scope of this exceptional deposit even further. Our resource expansion program will also extend to the Wadi Doum deposit with an objective to increase the tonnage of higher grade material that will be mined in the early years of production. We look forward to further announcements based on ongoing drilling culminating in the delivery of the Feasibility Study in early Q2 2018.”

7. NexGen Energy (NXE, TSX) has commenced its winter 2018 drill program at its 100%-owned Rook I Property in the Athabasca basin, Saskatchewan…the program will consist of approximately 25,000 m using 8 drill rigs and has several key objectives…at the Arrow deposit, drilling will focus on further A3 high-grade zone definition, targeting the large untested areas surrounding the A1 to A5 shears, potential extensions of the shears particularly to the northeast, and definition of newly discovered high-grade mineralization northwest of the A1 shear …at South Arrow, drilling will continue to focus on defining the extent of Uranium mineralization in all directions…further, highly ranked geophysical targets on the Arrow, South Arrow and Mirror conductors will be targeted after encouraging results from geophysical surveys conducted predominantly in 2016 and 2017…

Most Popular Recent BMR Posts

Venture Locked and Loaded For Powerful Q1

Commodity Check!

The Template For The Next 10% Stake In Garibaldi Resources

Thunder In The Corridor!

The Nickel Mountain Magma Highway

Two Big Plays Emerge in B.C., Setting The Stage For A Summer To Remember

How To Bring A Junior Resource Market To Life!

The Dramatic New Chase For A Nickel-Copper-Rich Massive Sulphide Deposit In The Heart Of A Famous Gold Camp

Northern Ontario Cobalt Junior Attracts Interest From Metal Trading Companies

The Most Important Venture Development Since The New Bull Market Began

Historically, no month has provided better returns for the Venture than February, so watch for a near-term acceleration of the Index uptrend…