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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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