BullMarketRun.com

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1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,708 and $1,681 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the yellow metal is off its overnight lows, down $15 an ounce at $1,702…Spot Gold has narrowed the gap with Gold futures, signalling hopes for an improvement in strained supply chain logistics that have hampered bullion shipments to the United States to meet contract requirements…Silver, with strong new support at $15, has slipped 23 cents to $15.27…Copper and Nickel have firmed up…Copper has gained 4 cents to $2.34 while Nickel has jumped a dime to $5.39…Zinc is up a penny at 88 cents while Cobalt is steady at $13.38…Crude Oil remains under pressure due to global demand concerns, down another $1.62 a barrel to $18.25…the U.S. Dollar Index has retreated one-third of a point to 99.69…President Trump gave governors a road map yesterday for recovering from the economic pain of the Wuhan COVID-19 pandemic, laying out “a phased and deliberate approach” to restoring normal activity in places that have strong testing and are seeing a decrease in COVID-19 cases…“We’re starting our life again,” Trump said during his daily press briefing…“We’re starting rejuvenation of our economy again”…he added, however, that “this is a gradual process”…the new guidelines are aimed at easing restrictions in areas with low transmission of the virus, while holding the line in harder-hit locations…they make clear that the return to normalcy will be a longer process than many envisioned, with federal officials warning that some social distancing measures may need to remain in place through the end of the year to prevent a new outbreak…and they largely reinforce the plans already under development by governors, who have the primary responsibility for public health in their states…China’s math problem – facing heat over fake numbers, China has suddenly increased its “official” virus death total by nearly 50% to 4,632…the real number is believed to at least 10 times higher…there have been claims of city officials in Wuhan paying off families in exchange for their silence…from the start of this virus in Wuhan late last year to today, China’s Communist Party has repeatedly lied to the world and engaged in the costliest government cover-up ever, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) which, shamefully, has had unrelenting support from the Trudeau government in Canada…

2. Since the Cultural Revolution ended in the mid-1970’s, China’s economy, fueled by market reforms, has notched up more than 4 decades of unbroken gains, enlarging the domestic economy by roughly a hundredfold and transforming the world…that winning streak is over…China today reported a 6.8% year-over-year contraction in its economy for the first 3 months of the year…of course, numbers from China can’t be trusted anymore (-6.8% may have been –16.8%, who knows) but the fact is that China has experienced its first quarterly decline in GDP since since official record-keeping began in 1992, and likely the first since Mao Zedong’s death in 1976…the fall was even steeper compared with the previous quarter: a 9.8% pullback as the virus that first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan spread across the country and around the world, delivering an economic blow unprecedented in modern times…“The scale and breadth of China’s economic contraction are staggering,” said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division…“There is little prospect of China driving a revival of global growth”…after shuttering Wuhan and enforcing a strict, roughly 2-month nationwide shutdown of all but the most essential commercial activity, China has largely returned to work but reports suggest it’s far from business as usual…nonetheless, the communist government reported today that industrial production was down just 1.1% in March compared with last year…other metrics, such as daily power production and coal consumption, have regained all or most of last year’s levels – again, that’s the claim by the CCP…

3. The experimental COVID-19 treatment remdesivir is showing promise in a Chicago clinical trial, according to the health news site STAT…it reported that patients in the trial experienced rapid recoveries from fever and respiratory symptoms…nearly all patients were discharged in less than a week, it said..the news has sent shares of remdesivir developer Gilead Sciences (GILD, NASDAQ) up $6.47 to $83.01 as of 7:00 am Pacific…getting any kind of COVID-19 vaccine to market, however, won’t happen this year…meanwhile, French drugmaker Sanofi expects to produce up to 600 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine in 2021 if its clinical trials with GSK go as planned, CEO Paul Hudson told CNBC this morning…“We believe we’re one of the few companies who will be able to make a vaccine at a huge scale,” he said during an interview on “Squawk Box”…Sanofi and GSK announced Tuesday that they entered into an agreement to jointly create a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of next year…the companies plan to start clinical trials in the 2nd half of 2020 and, if successful, make it available to the public by the 2nd half of 2021…

4. Spain’s health ministry says the total number of cases in the country have jumped to 188,068, up from 182,816 yesterday…second only to the U.S. worldwide, Spain has recorded the highest number of Wuhan Covid-19 infections in Europe…earlier today, Spain’s social security minister said the government would try to support roughly 1 million of the poorest households with a monthly basic wage…the UK announced a further 3-week extension of its lockdown yesterday as the number of daily confirmed cases remained steady at around 5,000…the death toll however, has remained consistently high with another 861 people losing their lives yesterday…the total now stands at 13,729…Indonesia’s health ministry has confirmed 407 new coronavirus cases, taking the country’s total number of infections to 5,923….pandemic problems are escalating in Russia…officially, the country has registered more than 25,000 cases and 198 deaths, but many doctors and local officials believe those numbers don’t reflect the true extent of the outbreak which is clearly getting worse there…aside from its ethnic cousins in Belarus or Ukraine, there may be no other European country less capable of combating the pandemic than Russia…the average lifespan of a Russian male is 66 years…Russians, and especially Russian men, are known to have weak hearts, bad livers and high rates of cancer…we don’ know everything yet about COVID-19, but we do know that these 3 medical problems make people more susceptible to complications from this pernicious infection…Turkey is also still firmly in the acceleration phase as it registered a record 125 deaths yesterday…for the 9th straight day the country has recorded more than 4,000 new cases…meanwhile, Latin America is a mess when it comes to the Wuhan COVID-19 virus…Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fired his health minister yesterday after clashing with him over how to fight the virus, and again called for states to end stay-at-home orders that he said were hurting the economy…the spread of the Wuhan virus in Brazil has accelerated to 30,425 confirmed cases, with some 200 fatalities per day bringing the death toll to 1,924 through yesterday, according to Health Ministry data…that’s the highest reported death toll in Latin America…

5. With hundreds of bodies left decaying in homes for days due to lack of space in the city’s overwhelmed morgues and hospitals, the Wuhan virus has struck a massive blow to Ecuador’s economic capital Quayaquil, now a symbol of the chaos the pandemic can unleash among Latin America’s poor…the Pacific port city has become the epicenter of South America’s struggle as the pandemic gradually tightens its grip on the region…in Guayaquil, which has a very high population density, the virus has struck particularly hard…the stench of death floats around the hospitals…long lines of vehicles form outside the cemeteries, loaded with cardboard coffins…for days, hundreds of bodies were left at home, or in the streets where they fell, wrapped in black plastic…hampered by a strict 15-hour curfew, funeral services were overwhelmed and the health sector, lacking funds and personnel, simply collapsed…nearly 800 corpses have been removed from homes in the city over the past couple of weeks, a government official announced late Sunday, though that figure is believed to be significantly higher…the grim task of removal has been handed to a special force of troops and police hastily set up last week, in response to videos posted on social media by panicked residents of bodies lying in the streets…officially, Ecuador has reported just over 400 deaths and 8,000 cases, but those numbers are believed to be grossly understated at this point…a large number of Ecuadoreans work overseas…as the contagion spread during February to Europe and the U.S., where Ecuadoreans work due to lack of jobs at home, they started returning home…controls at the airports were insufficient…their unscreened entry in the country unfortunately resulted in a swift and severe escalation of the coronavirus pandemic…

6. The Dow has jumped 558 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…Boeing (BA, NYSE) is up more than 10% after the airplane maker said it would resume production in the Seattle area as early as April 20…in Toronto, the TSX has gained 345 points while the Venture has added 1 point to 445…in a sweeping reversal of Canopy Growth’s (WEED, TSX; CGC, NYSE) once grandiose international growth strategy, the company announced yesterday it will shut down much of its cannabis and hemp operations abroad in an effort to rein in spending and keep supply in check as the legal cannabis sector continues to experience sluggish growth…the Smiths Falls, Ontario-based licensed producer will either scale back or close down operations in New York, Saskatchewan, Colombia, South Africa and Lesotho, the company said in a statement…Canopy will continue to operate internationally in Europe, Australia and Latin America on a much smaller scale through its Spectrum Therapeutics medical brand…Newmont (NGT, TSX; NEM, NYSE) is looking to restart in as soon as days some of the 4 Canadian and South American Gold mines that it shut last month to curb the spread of the Wuhan virus…

7. The Financial Times reported this morning that Public Health England has been given 1 week to disclose the details of how much the government paid for Covid-19 antibody tests, who they were bought from and how much money has been recovered after the devices were deemed not fit for purpose…Greg Clark, chair of the science and technology committee, wrote to Kathy Hall, PHE’s director of COVID-19 testing strategy, to ask for details, after she admitted in an inquiry hearing that the government was attempting to recoup money spent on the tests…Hall has until April 23 to respond…after ordering 17.5 million antibody (serological) blood tests, the government conceded that none had proven effective enough to be used…scientists in Oxford had been validating tests from 9 companies, including Wondfo and SureScreen…today, the Department of Health confirmed that at least 500,000 tests had been imported from China, but did not confirm nor deny a report that $20 million had been spent on 2 million tests from 2 companies alone…in his letter, Clark asked for details of how many and which companies had signed contracts with the government, how much was spent, how much money had been recovered so far and “why it was considered necessary to commit to pay for the antibody tests in advance of their effectiveness and accuracy being proven”…just one more reason why Sona Nanotech (SONA, CSE) is set the explode after imminent validation of its antigen-based COVID-19 test, backed by the credibility of GE and expected to be the leading brand in the COVID-19 space for lateral flow tests…

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Visit the BMR comments section throughout the day for updates and helpful information!

1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,714 and $1,740 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the yellow metal is up $18 an ounce at $1,734…$1,700 may become new support…Bank of America analysts noted that with Gold prices having traded around $1,750, the market is up almost 15% for the year…one should expect significantly higher prices this year just based on historical patterns…“Gold prices have rallied 20% or more 15 times since 1981 and 30% or more 7 times. The biggest rallies were in 2006–2011 during the late cycle equity rally into and after the Global Financial Crisis. If $1,947 were to be reached, then Gold would be up 27% YTD. A 31% YTD rally reaches $2,000. A 41% rally like 2006 reaches $2,150“…Silver is up 8 cents at $15.52…base metals are relatively quiet with Copper, Nickel and Zinc at $2.31, $5.28 and 88 cents, respectively…Cobalt remains steady at $13.38…Crude Oil is up slightly at $19.95 while the U.S. Dollar Index has gained one-quarter of a point to 99.72…respected JP Morgan strategist Marko Kolanovic said yesterday on CNBC’s “Fast Money” that he thinks the next few weeks will see a limited reopening of the U.S. economy and another move higher for stocks…Kolanovic observed in late March that some alternative data pointed to a faster peak for coronavirus cases in the U.S. and a rebound in stocks, and since then the market has erased a big chunk of its losses as some of the hardest-hit areas from the virus , such as New York, start to show some encouraging signs of progress…a popular small business relief program ran out of funds this morning, as billions of dollars in additional coronavirus aid remain stuck in congressional limbo…the Small Business Administration said on its website that the agency is “currently unable to accept new applications for the Paycheck Protection Program based on available appropriations funding. Similarily, we are unable to enroll new PPP lenders at this time”…getting timely relief to affected citizens is going to be a huge challenge for overwhelmed federal and state governments…protests in Michigan show that draconian state lockdown orders – if allowed to continue too long – threaten the voluntary law-abiding character of the American people…state governors, who truly control whether the economy stays open or shut, must better explain their reasons for their trade-offs between slowing the spread of the pandemic versus throwing millions out of work and destroying billions in economic activity…the same applies to Canada…

2. More than 5.2 million Americans filed unemployment claims last week, taking the number that have sought benefits for the first time since last month’s start of widespread U.S. lockdowns to more than 22 million…initial jobless claims totalled 5.25 million in the week ended April 11, lower than the 6.62 million recorded last week, the Labor Department announced this morning…according to preliminary state-level estimates that have not been seasonally adjusted, California once again reported the largest number of jobless claims at 660,966…the Labor Department also reported that, among the unemployed, the insured rate on April 4 had climbed to 8.2%, up from 5.1% the previous week…that is the highest rate of insured unemployed since the department began keeping records in 1967…it is also likely an undercount of unemployed Americans, as there have been widespread reports of state-level breakdowns and delays in filing for and receiving unemployment insurance benefits….

3. China’s “Big Lie”, the costliest government cover-up of all time: There is an increasing belief that the current global pandemic that has already killed nearly 150,000 people (unofficially many more) and created an economic catastrophe originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, not in a wet market as claimed by China’s Communist Party…the virus was not a “bioweapon”, high level sources say, but was part of Beijing’s effort (a bungled one) to identify and treat viruses to enhance its own international prestige, according to multiple media reports…documents detail early efforts by doctors at the lab and early efforts at containment…the Wuhan wet market initially identified as a possible point of origin never sold bats, and sources told Fox News that blaming the wet market was an effort by China to deflect blame from the laboratory, along with the country’s propaganda efforts targeting the U.S. and Italy…U.S. embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday…it’s believed that standards in Wuhan were disregarded before the virus leaked accidentally, and then Beijing began its cover-up…”Patient Zero” worked in some capacity in the Wuhan laboratory, having caught the virus from a bat, and then unwittingly went into the general population…when early efforts of containment failed, journalists and doctors who spoke out against the threat were disappeared…sources also say the World Health Organization (WHO) was complicit from the beginning to help China cover its tracks…the WHO and China have denied any wrongdoing…there is precedent for such virus “escapes,” usually via inadvertently infected lab workers, both in China and elsewhere…they include a 1977 flu pandemic traced to a lab mishap in China or Russia, 3 or 4 accidental releases of SARS virus from a Beijing lab in 2004, and the repeated, unintentional escape of smallpox from a British facility in the 1960’s and 1970’s…a number of American virus labs, meanwhile, have been shut down in recent years because of dangerously sloppy procedures, according to a National Post report…

4. A Canadian Parliamentary health committee has repeated calls for the World Health Organization to explain its handling of the pandemic, amid mounting criticism that the United Nations’ agency knowingly relayed faulty Chinese data about the Wuhan COVID-19 virus…the federal Standing Committee on Health passed a motion, put forward by Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux, that invites senior WHO official Bruce Aylward to appear before the committee by the end of month…Prime Minister Trudeau continues to deflect criticism regarding WHO and China…it’s increasingly clear, however, that Trudeau put the safety of Canadians at risk simply because of his strong desire to earn Canada a seat on the UN Security Council (for part of February, Trudeau travelled across the globe promoting his desire for a Security Council seat, even warmly greeting Iran’s foreign minister)…Trudeau refused to impose a travel ban on China at the end of January, as President Trump did, apparently out of fear of “retaliation” by China, while the Prime Minister supported WHO’s argument at the time that a travel ban was “racist”…yes, the politics of securing a Security Council seat appears to have mattered more to Trudeau than taking decisive early action to protect Canadian lives, at the expense of annoying China…

5. The United States is moving aggressively toward a phased restart of its economy within the next couple of weeks, but that’s not the approach being taken by Canada even though there are fewer reported per-capita cases of the Wuhan COVID-19 virus in this country…Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the partial shutdown of Canada has to last “weeks more” to get COVID-19 under control, using his strongest warning yet against loosening economic restrictions too soon as he unveiled expanded help for hard-hit workers…in the last month, the national economy has experienced a record contraction as businesses have been ordered closed (some are certain to never reopen again) and Canadians told to stay home…a more targeted approach makes more sense, but Canadian governments also did nothing for 3 weeks in February while the economy was held hostage by anti-capitalist anarchists protesting a huge job-creating LNG Project in Northwest British Columbia…in a fierce warning from in front of his residence in Ottawa, Trudeau said yesterday the country is still contending with the first wave of the pandemic…loosening controls too quickly, he emphasized, could mean the country gives up the ground gained…“With spring coming, people are looking outside, wanting to get out, wanting to this to be over – I understand that. It will be weeks more before we can seriously consider loosening the restrictions,” he added…as we pointed out the other day, Austria – on the border with Italy – has already started to loosen its restrictions…Canada’s federal and provincial governments are “behind the curve” and as a nation the “cure” is going to prove to be worse than the disease…

6. The Dow is off 221 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…dismal economic reports this week are cutting into some of last week’s optimism on Wall Street…in Toronto, the TSX has lost 73 points…1st quarter Gold and Copper production left Barrick Gold (ABX, TSX; GOLD, NYSE) on pace to meet its 2020 guidance, the company announced this morning…the senior Gold producer listed preliminary January-March production of 1.25 million ounces of Gold and 115 million pounds of Copper…the tallies were down from the results posted in Barrick’s 4th-quarter earnings report, which included 1.44 million ounces of Gold and 117 million pounds of Copper…Barrick will release its Q1 results before market open on May 6…the Venture is up 4 points at 447…Sona Nanotech (SONA, CSE) staged a dramatic intra-day reversal yesterday, closing up 42 cents at $1.97 after dipping as low as $1.31 on a “Wave 4” technical correction…a powerful “Wave 5” move now appears to have started…keep an eye on G6 Materials (GGG, TSX-V) which has traded record volumes in recent weeks and appears poised for another breakout during this 2nd half of April…Datametrex (DM, TSX-V) is this morning’s big mover after the company announced that it has secured the rights to import iOnebio Inc.’s iLamp novel COVID-19 detection kit (real-time reverse transcription Lamp-PCR assay system) into Canada…under the terms of this agreement, Datametrex was also given rights to sell the tests into other countries around the globe, including the United States…DM is up 4 pennies at 9 cents as of 7:00 am Pacific…

7. Feds target resource sector through CRA: Seabridge Gold (SEA, TSX) announced this morning that it has closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement from an existing shareholder for 1.2 million shares of the company at a price of $11.75 for gross proceeds of $14.1 million…what’s interesting, though, is the reason for the PP…the Trudeau government is believed to have instructed the CRA to crack down on Canadian resource companies who are utilizing flow-through monies…Seabridge is one of many examples…the company announced that the main use of the $14.1 million is to make deposits to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that cover potential tax liabilities stemming from reassessments of its Canadian exploration expenses by the CRA as disclosed in the company’s 2018 and 2019 financial statements…making the deposits enables Seabridge to proceed with its legal challenge of the CRA (of course, what about the juniors who have limited resources to fight the CRA?)…Seabridge CEO Rudi Fronk said, “We have an obligation to reimburse the investors who purchased our flow-through shares and are now going to be subject to reassessment by the CRA. We intend to honour our obligation to our investors and with this financing we have raised the funds needed to do so without affecting the business of the company. CRA decisions can be appealed to the courts and we intend to do so. We, and our advisers, are very confident that the Canadian exploration expense which the CRA has disallowed meets the requirements of the relevant statutes. Moreover, we believe the disallowed expenditures were accrued by us in a manner consistent with similar expenditures accepted by the CRA in previous audits. The total potential tax reassessments for which Seabridge is liable, if the CRA’s position is fully upheld, is $14 million, which is fully provided for in this financing”…

Most Popular Recent BMR Posts

Rapid Response!

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Smithers Shakes Off Turmoil For A Major 3-Day Event Connecting Hockey And The Resource Sector

Turbocharged Nickel

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The Nickel Mountain Magma Highway

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

Visit the BMR comments section throughout the day for updates and helpful information!

1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,684 and $1,704 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the yellow metal is up $2 an ounce at $1,688 with an imminent breakout above $1,700 likely…reflecting increasing appetite for bullion, holdings in SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest Gold-backed ETF, rose another 0.6% to 994.19 tonnes on Thursday…Silver has slipped 28 cents to $15.11 but will find strong new support at $15…base metals are relatively flat with Copper, Nickel and Zinc at $2.23, $5.14 and 86 cents, respectively…an historic deal over the Easter long weekend to cut global Oil production has stabilized Crude prices with WTI up 76 cents at $23.52 (see below)…the U.S. Dollar Index, meanwhile, relatively unchanged at 99.55…Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and part of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, said yesterday he was cautiously optimistic that the outbreak was slowing down in the United States…he also said parts of the country may start to reopen as early as next month…however, Fauci added this does not mean the entire country would flip a “light switch” and go back to normal…key U.S. economic data this week will be March retail sales on Wednesday (expected to plunge 8% from the prior month) and weekly jobless claims Thursday (5 million is the consensus estimate which would mean that nearly 22 million Americans have lost their jobs over the past 4 weeks)…not all U.S. businesses are hurting…Amazon (AMZN, NASDAQ) announced this morning that it’s hiring 75,000 additional workers after it filled more than 100,000 positions in the last month…the company has added more warehouse and delivery workers across the country to help meet a surge in demand tied to the pandemic outbreak…Americans are starting to receive their much-awaited stimulus check by direct deposit today as the IRS sent out the first round of aid for citizens…by Wednesday, the IRS is expected to have deposited between $50 million to $60 million worth of checks…the distributions are part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act signed into law by President Trump at the end of March…last Thursday’s job losses revealed by Stats Canada (slightly more than 1 million Canadians lost their jobs in March) don’t cover the full extent of disruption in this country…another 2.1 million people worked less than half their usual hours, or were away from work, bringing the total number of affected workers to 3.1 million…total hours worked across all industries plunged by 15%…further, worse results are likely coming…“March is just the start, and April will be worse – potentially significantly worse,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal…

2. Saudi Arabia, Russia and the U.S. have agreed to lead a multinational coalition in major Oil production cuts after a drop in demand due to the global pandemic and a Saudi-Russian feud that drove Oil prices to their lowest levels in 2 decades…the deal, concluded yesterday, came after President Trump intervened to help resolve a Saudi-Mexico standoff that jeopardized the broader pact…as part of the agreement, 23 countries committed to withhold collectively 9.7 million barrels a day of Oil from global markets – more than 10% of world production, though Trump said on Twitter this morning that “having been involved in the negotiations, to put it mildly, the number that OPEC+ is looking to cut is 20 million barrels a day, not the 10 million that is generally being reported”…the U.S. has never been so active in forging a deal like this, one that Trump believes will “save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States”…however, investors remain concerned that the cuts might not be enough to support higher prices in the coming weeks as worldwide lockdowns pummel demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel…amid travel restrictions and work stoppages, Oil consumption is expected to fall by as much as 30 million barrels a day this month…there likely won’t be a sustained recovery in the Oil price until pent-up demand is released in Q3…Morgan Stanley has raised its forecasts by $5 for the 2nd half of the year to between $30 and $35 a barrel…

3. Austria, which shares a border with Italy, will begin lifting its coronavirus restrictions tomorrow…Austria came to a standstill when it introduced lockdown measures on March 16…the country closed everything except supermarkets and medical facilities…but last week Austria became the first European country to announce it would begin lifting its lockdown measures…from tomorrow, non-essential stores under 4,300 sq. feet – about the size of one-and-a-half tennis courts – will be allowed to open their doors…so, too, will hardware stores and garden centers…on May 1 shops, shopping malls and hairdressers will follow suit…however, restaurants and hotels will have to wait until mid-May to reopen at the earliest and no public events can be held until at least late June…other public health measures, such as requiring people to wear face masks in supermarkets and pharmacies, will remain in place…the face mask rule has also been extended to other public shops and public transport…not surprisingly, there is virtually no talk from Prime Minister Trudeau – or any Canadian politicians, for that matter – about the importance of reopening the Canadian economy as quickly as possible, though Canada’s cases of the Wuhan virus are far less than Austria’s (per capita)…in addition, the Trump administration is already looking ahead by launching an “Opening Our Country Council”…every Canadian politician is singing from the same playbook…there’s no reason Canada could not adopt a COVID-19 SmartRestart economic strategy that would involve a quick phased restart of the economy beginning in the lowest risk areas of the country, especially with the help of extensive (increased) testing and continued physical distancing measures…”modelling experts” are looking at only 1 side of the equation – potential COVID-19 cases and deaths, when they should weighing that against the very negative potential health affects of a million people losing their jobs in just the last month, extended isolation at home, and individuals and businesses facing bankruptcy…the damage being done to the economy, if sustained, could easily cost more lives than the virus…common sense is not prevailing in Canada, but nor was it in February when anarchists were allowed to disrupt national infrastructure including critical rail service over opposition to a job-creating LNG Project in British Columbia…

4. How ironic: The City of Vancouver – the same council that has wasted taxpayers’ money on all sorts of bizarre left-wing causes including radical climate change initiatives aimed at “saving the planet”, while unfairly hiking property taxes – is now at risk of going bankrupt, says the mayor, citing a recent poll showing more than half of property owners are not expecting to pay full property taxes this year as COVID-19 financial woes take hold…now Vancouver City Council knows the pain they didn’t care about trying to inflict on the Oil and gas sector the last few years…in a press release strangely issued on Easter Sunday, Mayor Kennedy Stewart said his earlier claim that the city would lose up to $189 million in revenue and fee shortfalls in 2020 could be $325 million short of the mark…the city has already laid off 1,500 workers…“If 25% of homeowners do end up defaulting on their property taxes, we could shed up to an additional $325 million in revenues,” Stewart said…“Losing more than half-a-billion dollars in operating funds in 2020 would devastate the city’s financial position, forcing us to liquify assets and exhaust every reserve fund we have – just to avoid insolvency”…property taxes make up the bulk of the city’s revenues at $874 million in 2019…Stewart said that Research Co. polling commissioned by his office found that a quarter of all property owners would not be able to pay more than half their property tax owed in 2020 and that 6% per cent were not expecting to pay anything at all…the poll also found that 68% of Vancouver home owners did not pay their full mortgage on April 1, and that 55% were not expecting to make their full mortgage payment on May 1…according to the Canadian Bankers Association, over half a million Canadians have asked for mortgage deferrals in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis…

5. After last week’s huge gains, the Dow has retreated 370 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…Goldman Sachs says that its call for a deeper sell-off is “no longer likely” as it believes it underestimated the “unprecedented policy actions” by government and the Federal Reserve to offset the impact of the pandemic…the bank says the stock market has likely bottomed and it’s now pricing in a “sharp” economic recovery…Freeport-McMoRan (FCX, NYSE) says it has suspended operations at its Chino Copper mine in New Mexico indefinitely because of the spread of COVID-19 among the site’s workers…the closure marks the latest blow for Freeport, the world’s largest publicly traded Copper producer, after Peru’s government shuttered its mines last month because of the pandemic…the Chino mine produced 175 million pounds of Copper last year, making it the company’s 3rd-largest North American mine by production…in Toronto, the TSX has lost 182 points while the Venture is up 1 point at 423…Silvercrest Metals (SIL, TSX) has arranged a non-brokered private placement of 10 million shares at a price of $7.50 per share for gross proceeds of $75 million…the financing, to be used for continued exploration and development of the company’s promising Las Chispas Project, is expected to close on or about April 17…

6. Sona Nanotech (SONA, CSE) is off modestly in early trading, after briefly trading at a new high of $2.25, after providing an update on the development, manufacturing arrangements and pre-orders for its COVID-19 Rapid Response Lateral Flow test…1) the company has progressed from feasibility and prototype testing to the optimization stage; 2) it has commenced work with 2 third party laboratories to prepare validation protocols; 3) it has signed an MOI to manufacture its test with a 2nd contract manufacturer in North America; and 4) it has accepted preorders for a further 1.25 million test kits…this past week, the company tested a working prototype in a hospital laboratory environment with live COVID-19 patient samples, achieving positive results…accordingly, Sona’s prototype test progressed to the optimization stage during which work will be done to ensure it attains maximum performance in both quality and accuracy…“Development work on our test is largely complete and we have moved to an optimization stage utilizing a 3rd party for the optimization process,” stated CEO Darren Rowles…”In recent weeks, many antibody detecting tests have entered the market generating concerns over performance and applicability. These serological tests detect IgG and IgM antibodies which are not necessarily unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and should not be used as a predictor for immunity against COVID-19. Sona is therefore dedicated to getting an antigen test in the field as quickly as possible, but not at the expense of accuracy or quality”…

7. An online petition calling for the resignation of World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is nearing 1 million signatures and cites the WHO’s delay in labeling the pandemic as a public health emergency of international concern…critics also hammer the WHO for not pushing back when China silenced whistleblowers in the city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in November of last year…China did not report the outbreak to the WHO until late December and did not confirm human-to-human transmission until just days before the Lunar New Year holidays in late January…by the time Wuhan was locked down on January 23, millions had already left the city for other destinations within and outside China…Tedros has been an outspoken advocate for the Chinese government’s Covid-19 response…he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in January, and praised China’s top leadership for its “openness” in sharing information with the WHO and other countries…at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, Tedros said that “China has bought the world time”…in contrast, he has been quick in criticizing other countries for their responses to the outbreak, including President Trump’s decision to impose a travel ban on China at the beginning of February…numbers released by China in terms of total cases and deaths have been a complete fraud…

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