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1. Gold is taking off on news of an emergency interest rate cut of half a point by the Federal Reserve to combat the growing global economic threat of COVID-19…the move is the first such cut since the financial crisis…markets had been widely expecting the central bank to take some type of action, with anticipation of a 50 basis point cut by the next FOMC meeting later this month…in addition to the cut on its benchmark overnight borrowing rate, the Fed also announced a half-percentage-point reduction on the interest it pays on excess bank reserves…the Fed’s action comes after a conference call between Jerome Powell, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and finance ministers and central bank leaders from each country of the G-7…the G-7 came out with a vague statement, saying it would commit unspecified tools to help the global economy deal with the threat…as of 7:00 am Pacific, Gold is up $28 an ounce at $1,617…Silver has climbed 32 cents to $17.04…base metals are flat with Copper, Nickel and Zinc at $2.54, $5.72 and 90 cents, respectively…Cobalt is steady at $14.97…Crude Oil is up $1 a barrel at $47.75…OPEC and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, are expected to announce deeper output cuts at their meeting later this week in Vienna (March 5–6)…the group had agreed to cut output by 1.7 million bpd in a deal that runs to the end of March…the U.S. Dollar Index is up nearly one-fifth of a point at 97.52…it’s “Super Tuesday” in the United States as voters across 14 states are starting to weigh in on the Democratic Presidential nomination contest…Bernie Sanders, not even a Democrat, is set to greatly widen his delegate lead as the Democratic Party takes on a doomed socialist agenda…

2. One company that’s destined to get a lot of attention in the battle against COVID-19 is Sona Nanotech (SONA, CSE), halted (pending news) pre-market this morning…we initially highlighted this opportunity for subscribers when SONA was trading in the 30’s last month…it closed yesterday at 65 cents…volume in the stock has picked up dramatically but this story definitely hasn’t yet hit the radar screens of the masses…Sona is deploying its proprietary nanotechnology to produce a quick-response lateral flow test to screen patients for COVID-19…when completed (and this is moving along at a rapid pace), the test is expected to produce results in 5 to 15 minutes…there is currently no lateral flow test specific to COVID-19, which was first detected in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, and continues to spread across the globe…Sona will integrate its proprietary nanorod technology into a disposable lateral flow test platform (similar to pregnancy tests that can be administered without skilled technicians or additional laboratory equipment) for use as a screening tool to help triage individuals…currently, the majority of testing completed for the COVID-19 virus utilizes molecular based technology (PCR), a testing platform that typically costs more than $200 per test, frequently takes 2 to 4 hours to produce results, and requires specialized laboratory equipment and skilled technicians to operate…in comparison, lateral flow assays provide results between 5 to 15 minutes and can be administered by a layperson…

3. TD Securities has hiked its Gold forecast, looking for the metal to average $1,700 an ounce in the 4th quarter and potentially trade as high as $1,800 at some point (a conservative forecast in our view)…the Canadian firm remains upbeat on the metal despite last week’s pullback, which TDS largely attributed to selling to raise money to meet margin calls in other markets as equities and other so-called risk assets plunged…TDS now looks for Gold to benefit from further loosening of monetary policy…Gold prices hit a 7-year high around $1,689 an ounce at the beginning of last week, but then tumbled all the way to $1,563 by Friday despite what TDS described as supportive developments in interest rates, bond yields and moves in the U.S. dollar…“We hypothesize that the sharp decline can be traced to liquidity issues in the broad market,” TDS said in a report issued late Monday…“The yellow metal was likely sold to provide funds to cover margin calls on collapsing leveraged equity positions”…

4. Since globalist Justin Trudeau took over as Canadian Prime Minister, more than $150 billion in capital and 200,000 jobs have left Canada because Liberals have made it impossible to build anything…Trudeau showed up at PDAC yesterday, preaching the same failed strategy that has undermined the Canadian resource sector and overall economy the last several years while shifting capital (and emissions) elsewhere…the Trump economy has been one of the beneficiaries of Trudeau’s anti-resource agenda and economic illiteracy…“Of course (of course, it’s so obvious!) we can only create a better stronger economy for everyone (whose everyone?) if we are fighting climate change at the same time,” said Trudeau (what exactly are we “fighting”, how are we fighting it and why are we doing things opposite to our largest trading partner?)…“We know that, Canadians know that (of course we do!!) – we just haven’t reached that point of consensus…about the best way to do it”…meanwhile, Trudeau and other failed politicians were cutting a deal under pressure with the radical Wet’suwet’en “hereditary chiefs” last weekend in Smithers, the same group that “feathered” and shamed 4 female hereditary chiefs (stripping them of their titles) for their pro-pipeline positions…isn’t Trudeau also supposed to be a “feminist”?…Trudeau should have travelled to Smithers to learn something, not Toronto…the proposed “hereditary chiefs” deal, which still has a lot of moving parts, is going to blow up in his face…

5. The Dow has erased a 350-point decline near the open and is now up more than 200 points as of 7:00 am Pacific following the announcement of the half point Fed rate cut…in Toronto, the TSX is up 196 points, thanks to higher Gold and Oil prices, while the Venture has jumped 11 points to 524…some recent top performers who got dragged down during last week’s market panic are bouncing back strongly…surprise Gold news from Canada Cobalt (CCW, TSX-V) yesterday helped the stock recover from last week’s broader market chaos that drove CCW down to its rising 200-day moving average (SMA) Friday…CCW jumped 8.5 cents to close at 48.5 cents to begin the new week and is pushing higher again this morning…Matt Halliday, VP Exploration, says the geological processes at Castle are “more dynamic” than previously recognized, lending support to the idea that the exceptionally high-grade Silver discovery at Castle East – immediately adjacent to 3 past producers (~70 million ounces) – may host a large deposit or series of deposits in the Miller Lake basin where the diabase appears to thicken…a “major update” on Castle East is expected soon, Halliday says…Fiore Gold (F, TSX-V), a producer in Nevada, and Quebec explorers QMX Gold (QMX, TSX-V), Azimut Exploration (AZM, TSX-V) and Amex Exploration (AMX, TSX-V) were all oversold last week and should be strong performers this month…Yamana Gold (YRI, TSX; AUY, NYSE) is looking highly attractive after last week’s nearly 30% haircut…

6. Marathon Gold (MOZ, TSX), one of our favorite advanced Gold plays, has cut 15.2 g/t Au over 3 m, along with other initial encouraging results, from its 2020 drill program within the 6-km-long under-explored Sprite Corridor at its Valentine Gold Project in central Newfoundland…the results announced this morning represent fire assay data from the first 8 drill holes of a planned 32,000-m drill program at Sprite, located between the Marathon and Leprechaun deposits…the 8 drill holes cover a 200-m-long strike length of quartz-tourmaline-pyrite-Gold (QTP-Au) veining extending to the northeast, and confirm the emergence of a developing Main zone-type sequence of mineralization in an important new area now named the Berry zone…Matt Manson, President and CEO, commented, “These first drill results from our 2020 exploration drill program have confirmed the presence of Main zone-style mineralization in the Sprite corridor of a type characteristic of the nearby large-scale Leprechaun and Marathon deposits”…MOZ is up 4 pennies at $1.35 through the first 30 minutes of trading…the stock sold off last week exactly to its rising 300-day SMA in the $1.20’s…

7.  China’s Purchasing Managing Index – a measure of purchasing sentiment amongst manufacturers – fell to its lowest level on record for the month of February, dropping from 50.0 in January to just 35.7, a range that indicates the Chinese economy is heading towards a contraction…for comparison’s sake, at the start of the global financial crisis in November 2008, Chinese PMI had dropped to 38.8…the PMI is a particularly important gauge of future economic activity because it surveys business executives across various industries who weigh in on indicators like inventory orders, employment, production levels and supplier deliveries…much of the global supply chain is linked to China, given that it is the world’s largest manufacturing hub…some analysts, however, remained optimistic despite the record-low PMI data…“China continues to ramp up policy easing and other support, which will help growth rebound into the second quarter,” wrote UBS Global Wealth Management’s chief investment officer Mark Haefele in a note… “While new clusters outside China are a concern, the domestic situation appears to be normalizing”…

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