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1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,806 and $1,820 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific the yellow metal is up $5 an ounce at $1,815…Silver futures have topped $20 an ounce for the first time since 2016…heavy ETF buying is 1 of multiple factors driving Silver to new multi-year highs with the new bull market still in its very early stages based on chart patterns and fundamentals…Silver is increasingly being consumed in high technology applications from mobile electronics to solar panel manufacturing to water purification systems…the metal’s strong antibacterial benefits are also more recognized and appreciated now…meanwhile, of 275 disrupted mining operations globally since the onset of COVID-19, the most impacted were Gold and Silver mines, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence…in Latin America, where much of the world’s Silver is produced, the pandemic has worsened, with Mexico recently overtaking Italy in terms of deaths from COVID-19…Copper, Nickel and Zinc are steady in early trading at $2.92, $5.98 and 99 cents, respectively…Crude Oil has slipped 45 cents to $40.14 while the struggling U.S. Dollar Index has rebounded one-tenth of a point to 96.04…Oil major Chevron (CVX, NYSE) announced this morning that it’s acquiring Noble Energy (NBL, NASDAQ) in an all-stock deal that would value Noble at roughly $13 billion, including debt…Noble brings low-capital, cash-generating offshore assets in Israel, strengthening Chevron’s position in the Eastern Mediterranean, and it also enhances Chevron’s leading U.S. unconventional position with de-risked acreage in the DJ Basin and 92,000 largely contiguous and adjacent acres in the Permian Basin…Chevron’s offer comes more than a year after it was forced to abandon its takeover bid for Anadarko Petroleum, outmaneuvered by Occidental Petroleum’s (OXY, NYSE) higher offer…shale producers have been hit hard as Oil prices collapsed in April due to the pandemic and a brief price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, leading many companies to seek bankruptcy protection…

2. Congress returns to Washington this week facing a critical deadline to pass another coronavirus aid bill as the pandemic continues to rip through the United States…lawmakers in the divided Congress will need to quickly decide how to resolve broad differences on the best tools to blunt both the latest outbreak and give the economy a much-needed further lift…the end result is sure to be a substantial fresh surge in the U.S. federal budget deficit, bullish for Gold…Florida reported 12,523 new cases of the Wuhan COVID-19 virus on Saturday, marking the 5th consecutive day the hot-spot state reported more than new 10,000 infections…the Florida Department of Health says the virus has infected more than 350,047 people in the state and killed at least 4,982…

3. A potential coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University in the U.K. has produced a strong immune response in a large, early-stage human trial, according to newly released data published this morning in the medical journal The Lancet…Oxford researchers, in partnership with pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (AZN, NYSE), are calling their experimental vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19…it combines genetic material from the coronavirus with a modified adenovirus that is known to cause infections in chimpanzees…the Phase 1 trial had more than 1,000 participants…Professor Adrian Hill, director of Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, told CNBC this morning that the strong immune response means the vaccine is more likely to provide protection against the virus, though nothing is guaranteed…he said scientists hope to begin human trials in the U.S. in the next few weeks…

4. Industry bellwethers such as Canadian Pacific Railway (CP, TSX), Suncor Energy (SU, TSX), Rogers Communications (RCI.B, TSX) and Teck Resources (TECK.B, TSX) report 2nd-quarter earnings this week…for many firms, results will be bad…the important question is how robust are the signs of recovery…while profit expectations are still at a 4-year low, strategists have become more optimistic lately, according to data compiled by Bloomberg…in the U.S., almost 10% of companies in the S&P 500 have reported results and so far…a majority of them beat analyst expectations on sales and profit…in Canada, 3 groups make up nearly half of the S&P/TSX Composite Index: banks, miners and energy firms…the latter 2 sectors report first…banks won’t report again until later in the summer…

5. Walmart (WMT, NYSE) announced this morning a $3.5 billion investment to enhance its stores and online commerce in Canada…the investment over the next 5 years includes renovating 150 of Walmart’s 400 stores in this country and opening 2 new distribution centres in the Greater Toronto Area and Surrey, British Columbia…Walmart “stores of the future” will reduce touchpoints with more self-checkout and mobile payment technology that lets employees check out customers anywhere in the store…it also aims to speed up its online shopping experience by creating more fulfilment centres and expanding full pickup service to about 270 stores by the end of this year…the retailer says the investment will also create hundreds of Canadian construction jobs and forge new partnerships with Canadian technology companies…

6. The Dow is off 160 points as of 7:00 am Pacific...red-hot biotech Moderna (MRNA, NASDAQ) got a downgrade this morning at JPMorgan as the Wall Street firm sees less upside after the company’s massive run this year…JPMorgan slashed its rating on Moderna to neutral from overweight, while raising its 12-month price target on the stock to $89 from $60, which would represent a 6% decline from Friday’s close of $94.85…the stock has shot up by more than $32 a share or 51% over the past 5 sessions until backing off this morning…in Toronto, the TSX is just 2 points lower as of 7:00 am Pacific…the TSX Gold Index, looking very strong, is up another 8 points at 375 as it attempts to confirm a new breakout above key resistance in the 360’s…the Venture is 7 points higher at 682…Spanish Mountain Gold (SPA, TSX-V) is up strongly on news that Eric Sprott is investing $5 million into the company at 30 cents per unit…high-grade producer K92 Mining (KNT, TSX-V) has hit a new high of $5.68 in early trading…GR Silver Mining (GRSL, TSX-V) is up 8 cents at 79 cents after reporting drill results that included 1,096 g/t Ag over 5.4 m (2.7 m true width) starting 106 m downhole at its Plomosas Project in Sinaloa, Mexico…GRSL President and CEO Marcio Fonseca commented, “The mineralized veins and hydrothermal breccias at the Plomosas mine area were originally interpreted to be confined only along the major Plomosas Fault, however our recent validation and integration of all drill results, underground structural mapping and sampling, supports the occurrence of additional mineralized veins outside of that major structure”…Metallis Resources (MTS, TSX-V) has launched 2020 Phase 1 exploration at its 100%-owned Kirkham Property in the Eskay Camp…the focus will be on high-grade Gold targets associated with a large porphyry system, and the K-9 Nickel target at the base of Nickel Mountain…MTS is off half a penny at 43 cents but the chart is strong from a technical perspective…

7. The director of the National Institutes for Health said yesterday that long delays Americans are seeing across the country in getting COVID-19 tests is undercutting their usefulness…“The average test delay is too long,” Dr. Francis Collins stated on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press‘…”And that really undercuts the value of the testing, because you do the testing to find out who’s carrying the virus and then quickly get them isolated so they don’t spread it around”…as COVID-19 continues to surge in the U.S., some states, labs and public health departments are warning that turnaround times for diagnostic testing have slowed…the challenges, which stem in part from persistent obstacles in the test supply chain, underscore that while overall U.S. testing capacity has multiplied, the nation’s health system still struggles in some regions to rapidly detect the spread of the virus…despite federal efforts to support testing in some cities and regions, major diagnostic companies said earlier this month that the growing demand for tests has in turn increased average wait times for delivering results which can now take an average of 4 to 6 days for the general population or in some states like Arizona up to 3 weeks…“We need to do things that are more on the spot,” Collins said…with accurate test results in 10 to 15 minutes, it’s not hard to envision the potential demand for Sona Nanotech’s (SONA, CSE) Rapid Response test…

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