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This shortened trading week in Canada and the U.S. has started off on a volatile note for global equity markets with the deteriorating situation in Greece…Gold has generally ignored the noise, however, trading between $1,173 and $1,186 so far today…bullion is up $4 an ounce at $1,178 as of 9:00 am Pacific…Silver has lost 4 cents to $15.71…Copper is flat at $2.62…Crude Oil is off more than $1 barrel to $58.48 while the U.S. Dollar Index has slid to 95.15…the euro is holding up well today despite the Greece flap – not good news for dollar bulls…

“Greece brought us democracy centuries ago, now they’re about to bring us chaos,” commented billionaire Wilbur Ross, who has a large interest in Greece, during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning.  “I don’t see how Mr. Tsipras and the Syriza Party survives this,” he added.

Greek banks and the country’s main stock exchange will stay closed until next Monday, and the central bank has also moved to impose capital controls in a bid to prevent a severely battered banking system from collapsing completely…over the weekend, Greek’s socialist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras shocked European policy makers by announcing the country will hold a referendum on whether to accept the terms of Greece’s creditors to unlock desperately needed financial aid…it now looks almost inevitable that the country will go into default tomorrow on a €1.54 billion ($1.69 billion U.S.) payment due to the IMF…

Investor Dennis Gartman, who publishes the Gartman Letter, doesn’t believe the Greek Tragedy will play out as badly as some are speculating…

“If we’ve learned anything in more than four decades in the capital markets we’ve learned that nothing is forever. Mexico devalued and was allowed to return to the capital markets within months. Russia defaulted and it is now a fully fledged participant in the global capital market. Argentina has defaulted too many times to count, and will again, but it it will be re-admitted to the markets within months…perhaps even weeks…of so doing,” Gartman stated.

Reuters took a poll of more than 70 economists and traders today that showed a continuing, albeit declining, consensus (55% vs. 45%) that Greece will remain in the euro zone…

Puerto Rico On Verge Of Financial Collapse

Puerto Rico can no longer make payments on its $73 billion in debt, according to Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla, who warns the island is perilously close to entering a “death spiral”…Padilla told the New York Times in an interview published last night, “The debt is not payable…there is no other option. This is not politics, this is math.  But we have to make the economy grow. If not, we will be in a death spiral.”

Global Consumption of Copper Poised To Increase

Interesting observations as usual from Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer for U.S. Global Investors in his weekly alert that we suggest investors check out at www.usfunds.com.

“Here’s a bit of energizing news,” Holmes wrote.  “In 2014, for the first time in four decades, the global economy grew along with energy demand without an increase in global carbon emissions.

“That’s according to energy policy group REN21’s just-released Renewables 2015 Global Status Report, which attributes this stabilization to ‘increased penetration of renewable energy and to improvements in energy efficiency’.

“What this means is that as the world’s population continues to grow, and as more people in developing and emerging countries gain access to electricity, the role alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal play should skyrocket. Between now and 2040, a massive $8 trillion will be spent globally on renewables, about two-thirds of all energy spending, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Solar power alone is expected to draw $3.7 trillion.

“This is good news indeed for Copper, necessary for the conduction of electricity in all energy technologies, whether they be traditional or alternative. The use of some carbon-emitting fossil fuels – coal, for instance – will likely drop off over the years, but Copper will remain an irreplaceable component in our ever-expanding energy needs.

Global Copper consumption is poised to increase not just because electricity demand is growing. New energy technologies typically require more of the red metal than traditional sources. Each megawatt of wind power capacity, for instance, uses an average of 3.6 tonnes of Copper. Electric trolleys, buses and subway cars use about 2,300 pounds of Copper apiece. Where we’ll see the most significant growth, though, is in the production of hybrid and electric cars, which use two to three times more Copper than internal combustion engines.”

Today’s Equity Markets

Asia

Shanghai 2-Year Weekly Chart

After more than a week of a brutal sell-off in Chinese stocks, the country’s central bank on Saturday took a rare easing step, cutting both its benchmark interest rates – the 4th reduction since November – and the amount of reserves certain banks are required to hold…the central bank has rarely cut both interest rates and the reserve-requirement ratio on the same day…the last time it did so was in October 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis…

Interestingly, the Shanghai closed exactly at the bottom of a downsloping channel Friday and then Chinese authorities stepped in over the weekend in an effort to prop up not just a slowing economy but a stock market that had fallen 20% after a spectacular surge…

But the central bank’s actions failed to lift the market overnight amid concerns over investors’ debt levels, while nervousness surrounding Greece also contributed to another slide in the Shanghai…the index sank 138 points or 3.4% to close at 4055 – putting it exactly at Fib. support and just slightly below the upsloping channel in place since last summer…

The Shanghai will either move back higher from here or test the next critical support around 3400…

Japan’s Nikkei average tumbled 596 points or 2.9% overnight to close slightly above 20000…

Europe

European markets were sharply lower today as bank stocks in particular got hit hard due to the situation in Greece…Germany’s DAX suffered its worst day since 2011…

North America

The Dow has fallen 200 points as of 9:00 am Pacific…U.S. pending home sales rose 0.9% in May from April, slightly below expectations, according to the National Association of Realtors, after a downward revision to April’s reading…the May figure, however, is still the highest level on the Association’s index since April 2006…

Other important economic data this holiday-shortened trading week will feature Thursday’s employment report from the Labor Department (June’s non-farm payrolls are coming out a day earlier than usual due to Independence Day Friday)…  consumer confidence data will be released tomorrow followed by private employment and national manufacturing data both for June on Wednesday…

In Toronto, the TSX has tumbled 285 points as of 9:00 am Pacific while the Venture has slid 5 points to 674…a very strong Fib. band of support on the Venture exists between 654 and 681…

Mapan Energy (MPG, TSX-V) is this morning’s Venture leader, jumping 49 cents to $1.38 on high volume following an all-stock takeover offer announced by Tourmaline Oil Corp. (TOU, TSX)…Castle Mountain Mining Company (CMM, TSX-V) has changed its name to NewCastle Gold Ltd. with the change expected to be effective tomorrow on the Venture…”NCA” will be the company’s new ticker symbol…

Skeena Resources Ltd. (SKE, TSX-V) Receives 3-Year Drill Permit For Spectrum

Skeena Resources (SKE, TSX-V) has mobilized 2 drills to its Spectrum high-grade Gold Project in northwest B.C., approximately 75 km southeast of the Sheslay district…the company has received a 3-year drilling permit and has started fieldwork and camp construction…drilling is expected to begin within several days…a total of 10,000 to 12,000 m of drilling in 50 to 60 holes is planned with holes averaging 200 m and varying from 50 to 350 m in depth…the program has been designed to expand the historic resource at the 500 Colour and Central zones, the latter of which includes the QC 1, QC 2, Porphyry 1, and Porphyry 2 structures…other holes will test the East Creek Zone, believed to be a possible extension of the Central Zone, and other outlying targets…a 43-101 resource estimate will be completed by the end of the year…

More Companies Using Drones As Important Exploration Tool 

More junior explorers – at least those with money – are making effective use of drone technology…Adventure Gold (AGE, TSX-V) reported this morning that following channel sampling over mineralized zones at its Val d’Or East Project, the company utilized an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV or drone) to survey the area…the purpose of this survey was to acquire an accurate 3D-like terrain model and high-quality aerial orthophoto data set…all the information acquired from the drone will be processed to create a 3D map (centimeter accuracy) that will be integrated into the company’s geological and block models…details obtained from the orthophoto data set will also significantly enhance the precision of the geological mapping of the strip zones and will help to better understand the structural control on the Gold mineralization…

NexGen Energy Ltd. (NXE, TSX-V) Update 

NexGen Energy (NXE, TSX-V), now with an aggressive summer drill program in progress at its emerging world class high-grade Uranium discovery in the Athabasca Basin, has backed off this morning due to overall market weakness after hitting a fresh all-time high Friday of 86 cents…

Any recent pullbacks in NXE have been accumulation opportunities given events on the ground and a highly encouraging technical pattern…in situations like this, RSI(14) conditions tend to become very overbought for an extended period – so there clearly appears to be more upside here…while not shown on this 2-year weekly chart, the next measured Fib. resistance level after 83 cents is $1.20…

NXE is off 2 pennies at 84 cents as of 9:00 am Pacific…

Garibaldi Resources Corp. (GGI, TSX-V) Update

Garibaldi Resources (GGI, TSX-V) appears to have turned the corner after surviving an onslaught of indiscriminate fund selling from Sprott Securities (SII, TSX) which has affected nearly 100 companies in the resource sector…

Non-resource assets now make up more than three-quarters of Sprott’s actively managed funds, up from 27% in 2012…Sprott’s funds held just over 10 million GGI shares (about 20% of the total outstanding) entering 2015, and it’s now believed that Sprott is out completely after a deluge of selling linked to them over the last couple of weeks…

Given very oversold technical conditions, and plenty of activity coming up in B.C. and Mexico over the summer, GGI has an excellent opportunity to rebound strongly during Q3…more later in the week…

Silver Short-Term Chart

As expected, Silver continues to test new support at a downtrend line (dotted blue, near $16) where it broke out from in May…

Silver is about to enter a traditionally strong period of the year, so it’s reasonable to expect the downtrend line support and chart support at $15.66 to hold…

Silver Long-Term Chart

An explosive push higher (eventually) – is this actually a scenario that could unfold in Silver over the next couple of years?…quite possibly, given the look of this 34-year monthly chart, though at the moment it’s hard to understand all the factors that could come into play to generate the kind of “Wave 5” move that appears to be in the works here…

It seems quite possible that the bottom of “Wave 4” came late last year when Silver briefly plunged to just above $14 an ounce…RSI(14) has managed to hold support which goes back to 2001…

Sell pressure continues to remain strong, however, as shown by the CMF – amazingly, at levels not seen in nearly 25 years since the low of $3.51…this intense sell pressure at the moment, which could continue for a while yet, should therefore be viewed in a larger context as a bullish contrarian indicator…

Several fundamental factors are currently in Silver’s favor…industrial demand for the metal is growing, and global supplies are poised for a deficit of 57.7 million ounces this year, according to Thomson Reuters…

Note:  John and Jon both hold share positions in GGI.