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1. Gold has traded between $1,311 and $1,316 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is off $2 an ounce at $1,313…holdings of Gold by global ETFs and similar products as of the end of January stood at their highest level since 2013, according to data from the World Gold Council this morning…ETF holdings increased for the 4th straight month, this time by 71.9 tonnes to 2,512.8 tonnes…holdings have jumped by around 185 tonnes over those 4 months, reversing a decline in the 3rd quarter of 2018…Silver has retreated 4 pennies to $15.79…Nickel touched $5.93 overnight, a fresh 4-month high, before pulling back to $5.76…this latest move in Nickel is related to concerns that a force majeure by Brazil’s Vale on some Iron ore contracts could lead to restrictions in its Nickel supply – whether that actually materializes remains to be seen…Vale is the world’s top producer of Nickel…a Brazilian court forced production to stop at Vale’s Iron ore mine after a tailings dam burst last month, killing more than 300 people and compelling the company to tell clients it could not deliver on some Iron ore contracts…Copper is up 2 pennies to $2.81 while Zinc is steady at $1.23…Crude Oil has retreated 54 cents a barrel to $54.02 while the U.S. Dollar Index is up more than one-tenth of a point at 96.21…in economic news, the U.S trade deficit with its global partners fell in November for the first time after 5 straight months of increases as the shortfall with China and several other countries declined…President Trump delivered a rousing State of the Union address last night, including words he’ll likely be repeating a lot leading up to the 2020 elections against a Democratic Party that has lurched far to the left…“America was founded on liberty and independence and not government coercion, domination and control,” he said to Republican applause…“We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a Socialist country,” he added as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat rather stone-faced behind him…at least 70 Democrats have so far endorsed the so-called “Green New Deal” which would dramatically transform America society…
2. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning, expressed confidence in the progress of trade talks with China and said he and a U.S. delegation are heading to China next week with intent to make a March deadline…“We are committed to continue these talks. We’re putting in an enormous amount of effort to hit this deadline and get a deal. That’s our objective”…Mnuchin said the administration had “very productive meetings” with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He…the White House has set a March 2 deadline to iron out complex trade issues with China…in particular, the administration is looking for concessions on the ability of U.S. companies to sell in China, to stop the theft of intellectual property and other structural issues…
3. The Dow is off 62 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…infrastructure and defense shares are 2 of the winners from President Trump’s State of the Union address…drug stocks, meanwhile, are the biggest loser as Trump pushes for lower medicine prices…in Toronto, the TSX is off slightly while the Venture, which had its 8-session winning streak snapped yesterday, is down 5 points at 616 as cannabis stocks come under some additional pressure…Khiron Life Sciences (KHRN, TSX-V) was halted on news that the company has arranged a $20 million bought deal financing at $2.20…Khiron is positioned to be the dominant integrated medical cannabis company in Latin America…it has core operations in Colombia and is fully licensed in the country for the cultivation, production, domestic distribution and international export of both THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol) medical cannabis…
4. Following completion of a $3 million strategic investment from Canopy Growth (WEED, TSX), 48North Cannabis (NRTH, TSX-V) announced this morning that it has closed the $7 million final tranche of that 75-cent private placement for aggregate proceeds of $10 million…the $7 million came from a leading U.S.-based private investment fund…the financing provides capital and liquidity to support the continued expansion of 48North, including the development of its 100-acre farm and large-scale extraction capabilities to significantly increase 2019 production and facilitate the rapid development of innovative, next-generation cannabis products…48North operates 2 indoor-licensed cannabis production sites in Ontario with over 86,000 sq. feet of production capacity…NRTH is unchanged at 71 cents in early trading…
5. Robert Friedland is beating the drums again: Ivanhoe Mines (IVN, TSX) and its Chinese partners, Zijin Mining Group and Crystal River Global Ltd., have released an independent prefeasibility study (PFS) for the development of the Kakula Copper mine and an updated, expanded PEA for the overall development plan of the Kamoa and Kakula Copper discoveries at the Kamoa-Kakula Project in the Congo…“It has been a remarkable 25 years since my first keynote presentation at the very first Mining Indaba, in this beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa. In that inaugural speech in 1994, we shared with delegates how African Minerals, the founding, corporate trailblazer for Ivanhoe Mines, was focused on its quest for major discoveries in and around Southern Africa’s legendary mineral fields,” stated Friedland, in his usual colourful language…“Now, after more than a quarter of a century of exceptional field work by our team of visionary and tenacious exploration geologists, we are about to make the ‘Great Leap Forward’ from one of the modern world’s top mine finders to one of the world’s leading producers of Copper – as well as Palladium, Platinum, Zinc, Nickel, Gold, Silver and Rhodium from the other two major mining projects that Ivanhoe is developing in Southern Africa. To all of our African Brothers and Sisters, you now can clearly see the fruits of the incredibly intensive efforts by our people over the past two decades, while overcoming countless challenges, to initially discover, then extensively expand, the Kamoa and Kakula resource base with a massive drilling and engineering effort”…the Kakula PFS analyzes the development of an initial 6 mtpa Kakula mine at the Kakula deposit in the southerly portion of the Kamoa-Kakula project’s discovery area…for this option, the PFS envisages an average annual production rate of 291,000 tonnes of Copper at a mine site cash cost of 46 cents (U.S.) per pound Copper and total cash cost of $1.11 per pound of Copper for the first 10 years of operations, and Copper annual production of up to 360,000 tonnes by year 4…an initial capital cost of $1.1 billion (U.S.) for this option would result in an after-tax NPV at an 8% discount rate of $5.4 billion (U.S.)…the IRR is 46.9% cent and the project payback period is 2.6 years for stage 1 of production…
6. Balmoral Resources‘ (BAR, TSX) released results this morning from the first expansion drilling in several years at its Grasset Nickel-Copper-Cobalt-PGE deposit…there was nothing dramatic or game-changing in the numbers, but BAR did expand the H3 zone of the deposit with broad mineralized intercepts and successfully intersected the lower H1 zone of the deposit at a vertical depth of approximately 775 m…this latter intercept adds over 230 m to the known vertical extent of high-grade and disseminated Nickel sulphide mineralization at Grasset…the late 2018 drill program also extended both zones of the deposit by approximately 100 m to the northwest…Grasset continues to remain open to depth and along strike to the northwest…drill holes GR-18–90D and GR-18–107 both returned Nickel sulphide intercepts of over 90 m in downhole width…both holes contain a higher grade core which returned 23 m grading 1.08% Nickel, 0.12% Copper, 0.03% Cobalt, 0.20 g/t Platinum and 0.51 g/t Palladium in hole 90D, and 0.51 g/t, and 53.50 m grading 1.11% Ni, 0.12% Cu, 0.03% Co, 0.22 g/t Pt and 0.55 g/t Pd in hole 107…drilling expanded the known extent of one of the broadest portions of the deposit, located near the base of the currently delineated resource…the high grade core of the Grasset deposit currently hosts an Indicated Resource estimated at 3.45 million tonnes grading 1.56% Ni, 0.17% Cu, 0.03% Co, 0.34 g/t Pt and 0.85 g/t Pd to a vertical depth of just under 500 m…
7. Atlantic Gold (AGB, TSX) has cut significant mineralization with average true widths of 15 m to 20 m outside of the current resource at its Cochrane Hill Gold deposit in Nova Scotia…the property is 80 km northeast of the company’s central processing facility at the Moose River Consolidated Gold mine…generally, Gold assays are distributed evenly across the mineralized zones…however, as in the case of drill hole CH-18–317, several intersections do include single metre assays with very high Gold values (hole #317 includes 1 m of 466g/t Au within a broader zone of 11 m averaging 43.7 g/t Au)…these higher-grade assays are frequently associated with visible Gold that occurs on the margins of bedding parallel quartz veins within the argillite host rock…Cochrane Hill’s current Measured and Indicated resources stand at 10.66 million tonnes at 1.16 g/t Au for 398,000 ounces at a 0.35 g/t Au cut-off grade…Inferred resources amount to 1.63 million tonnes at 1.32 g/t Au for 69,000 ounces at a 0.35 g/t Au cut-off…
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Comment by Sameer — February 6, 2019 @ 9:21 am
BAR – october drilling + Feb results . seems to have a nice start of 1%+ Ni + metlas . Either more tonnage or a sweet spot is needed to spark a thrill I guess
Comment by David — February 6, 2019 @ 12:37 pm
Exited BAR a week ago and put funds into CCW. Neither have set the house on fire since but still happier with CCW . Prefer GGI in the Nickel area. Grades are different class to anyone else.
Comment by Patrick — February 6, 2019 @ 2:10 pm
At current metals prices Balmoral’s 92 m of 0.77% Nickel is equivalent to 92 m of 3.24 g/t Gold (53 m of 1.1% Ni equivalent to 53 m of 4.5 g/t Au).
Comment by Daniel — February 6, 2019 @ 2:25 pm
Jon: In your conversation with MOON ceo, did he give any indication as to when we might expect the next update from the company? Thanks.
Comment by adrobyshev — February 6, 2019 @ 8:10 pm
I don’t believe we’ll have to wait very long, adrobyshev…Patrick is anxious to pull the trigger on a couple key things…in the meantime, if someone wants to give up their paper at 4 cents, great…tremendous underlying value here that’s well above current share price – look at what Arizona Mining did with its Hermosa Zinc deposit…turned that into a $1.3 billion takeout…wouldn’t be surprised if that group was eyeing the situation at Blue Moon…those last results speak volumes about the deposit’s potential for multiple metals – Zinc, Copper, Gold and Silver…
Comment by Jon - BMR — February 7, 2019 @ 8:52 am