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Gold has traded between $1,136 and $1,155 so far today…as of 9:45 am Pacific, bullion is up $19 an ounce at $1,153, its highest level in more than a month…Silver has jumped 24 cents to $15.55…Copper has rebounded a nickel to $2.31…Crude Oil touched nearly $40 a barrel but is now up slightly at $41.01 while the U.S. Dollar Index has tumbled half a point to 96.00…

After the release of yesterday’s rather dovish Fed minutes from July’s meeting, and considering developments in China the last few weeks, there appears to be little doubt that a September rate hike is now absolutely off the table as we’ve been speculating for many weeks…that’s why Gold has pushed higher this morning as it challenges resistance at $1,150…interestingly, a growing consensus of so-called market experts – particularly economists and “strategists” – believe the Fed will increase rates next month for the 1st time since 2006…traders in Fed futures (and Gold), however, tell a different story, and we’ll side with the traders…

The combination of China’s slowing economy and falling commodity prices is really bringing the deflation scenario back to the forefront, and that must have the Fed, and central banks and governments across the globe, very concerned…

2.5-Year Weekly Gold Chart In Canadian Dollars

Below is an updated look at Gold in Canadian dollars…the uptrend is impressive…this chart, plus the fact that Oil prices are at a 6.5-year low, demonstrates the tremendous opportunities in high quality Canadian-based Gold producers in particular – Richmont Mines (RIC, TSX) and Claude Resources (CRJ, TSX) are just 2 good examples – who are benefiting from a weak loonie that will likely remain weak for an extended period…

If the band of Fib. resistance between $1,471 and $1,514 is successfully cleared, then a challenge of this year’s high of $1,655 could be in the works at some point during the final 4 months of the year…

TSX Gold Index Update

There’s a confirmed breakout today in the TSX Gold Index above 135 resistance as shown in this 5-year weekly chart…what got us excited recently was when the Gold Index hit the bottom of a downsloping wedge just below 120…it appears the Index could take a run in the near future at its declining 200-day moving average (SMA) in the mid-150’s…a breakout through that level would likely take the Index to the top of the downtrend line (dotted blue)…

The Gold Index has surged 7 points to 145 as of 9:45 am Pacific…

“Climate Change” Hypocrites On The Left

Let’s see, where to start?…is left-wing hedge fund billionaire George Soros, pictured below, now suddenly King Coal?…Soros of course is a hardball investor and philanthropist to myriad left-wing causes, including the activist and “clean energy” rent-seeking movements that have helped take down the coal industry…less than a year ago the Soros’ Climate Policy Initiative issued a major report concluding that the world could save $1.8 trillion over the next 2 decades by transitioning away from coal…the report referred to coal reserves as “stranded assets” that were losing value as they were no longer needed…

Soros has demonized coal and fossil fuels for years, aided by his buddy in the White House, to the point where there are now too many good investment opportunities to pass up…U.S. Securities and Exchange Act filings indicate that Soros has purchased an initial 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal, the 2 largest publicly traded U.S. coal companies!…he has obviously warmed up to Big Coal now that stocks are dirt cheap…

Obama’s Arctic Drilling Approval

Meanwhile, President Obama’s case against the Keystone XL Oil pipeline – his 7 years of lies and distortions regarding that project – now seem even more outrageous given the fact he has just given the go-ahead to a far more worrying project (in the eyes of many), which will allow Shell Oil to drill for Oil 8,000 feet below the ocean floor in the Arctic off Alaska…of course the same environmental groups that were singing Obama’s praises over Keystone and his recent announcement of a comprehensive anti-emissions drive are now confused and outraged, to say the least…

“It sends a terrible signal to the rest of the world for the United States to be using public resources to promote that development,” said Niel Lawrence of the Natural Resources Defence Council…

Obama’s comments regarding Shell’s arctic drilling are nothing short of bizarre, but we’ve come to expect the bizarre from this President who is so admired by the left in Canada, especially Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair…

Obama backed the Shell project on the basis that it “benefits our economy and enhances global energy security”…

“Treasonous”?  Obama Speaks Of “Global Energy Security”, Not “North American Energy Security”

Interesting that Obama considers “global energy security” more important than “North American energy security” (some would consider that “treasonous”, Republicans should pick up on that)…Obama never talks about North American energy security…no wonder Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper shakes his head in bewilderment regarding this guy…

But here’s the really strange part:  “I would rather us, with all the safeguards and standards that we have, be producing our Oil and gas, rather than importing it, which is bad for our people, but is also potentially purchased from places that have much lower environmental standards than we do,” Obama told a press conference…

Wow…those words actually bolster the case for Keystone XL and energy security from a reliable ally with high environmental and democratic standards (vs. other regimes around the world the U.S. still imports from)…and when he says “us”, is he referring to Americans, or is Obama simply not aware that Shell is a European multi-national, not a U.S. firm?…

Even Hillary Clinton, while deeply mired in a major email scandal and a floundering Presidential campaign, found time to tweet her opposition to Obama’s decision to allow Shell to drill in the Arctic, stating, “The Arctic is a unique treasure. Given what we know, it’s not worth the risk of drilling. -H.”

Greece Puts The Screws To Eldorado Gold (ELD, TSX)

No wonder Greece is such an economic basket case…the socialists and environmental wing-nuts in the bureaucracy there have suspended the mining operations of Eldorado Gold (ELD, TSX) in northern Greece (the Skouries-Olympias Gold Project), saying the company “violated contract terms”…we saw this coming, as we reported earlier this year, and we’re more inclined to take the company’s point of view…Greece’s economy, more than any other in the world, desperately needs the $300 million or so that Eldorado had been planning to spend in the country this year…permitting delays and regulatory “crap” have pushed most of that spending into 2016 or beyond…

Eldorado CEO Paul Wright commented, Paul Wright, “We are most disappointed and perplexed by this entirely inappropriate decision of the Ministry of Energy, which puts 5,000 direct and indirect jobs in Greece at risk, including the jobs of 2,000 Greek employees and contractors of Hellas Gold. We have received numerous favourable decisions of the Council of State – Greece’s supreme court on administrative and environmental matters – over the course of the last three years, which confirm the legality of our activities in Halkidiki. We will once more take legal action against a decision of the ministry in order to safeguard the rights of Eldorado, Hellas Gold, our Greek employees, and the communities and stakeholders that support our projects in Halkidiki. At this time, work at all our Halkidiki operations and projects continues as normal; however, Hellas Gold may be forced to suspend all its mining and development activities in Halkidiki due to this rash decision by the Ministry of Energy.”

Today’s Equity Markets

Asia

China’s Shanghai Composite tumbled 129 points or 3.4% overnight to close at 3666…key support, as John’s charts have shown, is 3400…how long China’s “rescue team” can keep the market above that level remains to be seen…

Europe

European markets were down sharply today…

North America

The Dow is off 241 points as of 9:45 am Pacific…in Toronto, the TSX has fallen 186 points while the Venture is off 5 points to 553…the Venture, entering today, has had 20 “down” days out of the last 25, albeit on low volume…

In economic data released today, the headline index for the survey of manufacturing from the Philadelphia area strengthened in August after plunging in July, beating expectations, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve…the index for current general activity in Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing business outlook survey rose to 8.3 in August, from July’s reading of 5.7…meanwhile, U.S. home resales rose more than expected in July to their highest level since 2007, a sign the U.S. housing market was heating up and could provide more support for the overall economy…

Interesting:  Influential U.S. law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz has an idea that may be music to the ears of its big corporate clients and a nightmare for some investors and analysts – end quarterly earnings reports…will this idea catch on?…we’ll see…

Wachtell this week called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to consider allowing U.S. companies to do away with the obligatory quarterly reports, 1 of the most important rituals on Wall Street and in corporate North America, suggesting that they distract executives from long-term goals…it’s the latest idea put forward by Wachtell to combat what it and some others see as an excessive focus on short-term performance that they say has been encouraged by activist shareholders…the investors have widened their influence in recent years, drawing criticism from influential figures who say they encourage companies to focus on gimmicks that provide short-term stock gains at the expense of long-term health…Clinton, for one, has pledged reforms including tax changes to “help CEO’s and shareholders alike to focus on the next decade rather than just the next day.”

HXD S&P/TSX Bear Plus ETF

Like it did during the early summer of last year, the HXD (double short TSX ETF) is threatening to break out from a 3-year downsloping channel…confirmation of this would be quite negative for the TSX…we’ll keep monitoring this chart closely…

Pure Energy Minerals (PE, TSX-V) Update

A very informative company conference call 2 days ago got us even more excited about Pure Energy (PE, TSX-V), as we reported Tuesday morning…pre-market today the company released an “order of magnitude cost estimate study” from Tenova Bateman Technologies for PE’s Clayton Valley Lithium Brine Project in Nevada…it’s important to stress that only an inferred (albeit significant) resource currently exists for Clayton Valley (recently released), and the company has yet to provide a Preliminary Economic Assessment for the project which is likely why the language used in this morning’s news may require “clarification” in the eyes of the regulatory authorities – hence the halt 17 minutes into trading with PE up 4 cents at 46.5 cents on volume of more than half a million shares…nonetheless, the news is highly encouraging and underlines how this project, when combined with Tenova’s LiSX selective lithium extraction technology, has the potential to be a low-cost producer of battery-grade lithium materials…

Technically, PE is once again challenging Fib. resistance at 47 cents…the stock essentially “filled the gap”, as expected, from the big move August 4…

Skeena Resources Ltd. (SKE, TSX-V)

Skeena Resources (SKE, TSX-V) reported very positive results this morning from the 1st 6 holes of a 60-hole drill program at its Spectrum Project in northwest B.C., approximately 75 km southeast of Garibaldi Resources’ (GGI, TSX-V) Grizzly Project…each Skeena hole featured multiple high-grade intercepts including S15–012 which returned 10.59 g/t Au over 6.6 m, beginning at 102 m, including a 1.4 m sample that assayed 37.8 g/t Au…further down that hole, 2 other high-grade sections yielded assays of 25.27 g/t Au over 3.9 m at 197.6 m and 4 m grading 7.08 g/t Au at 234 m…

The Spectrum deposit comes to surface and is being tested with relatively short drill holes averaging 230 m in length…

SKE is off a penny at 8.5 cents as of 9:45 am Pacific…strong support between 7.5 and 8 cents, the rising 50 and 200-day SMA’s, respectively…mining legend Ron Netolitzky and his group are off to a good start proving up a potential substantial high-grade Gold resource at Spectrum…the property is also prospective for Cu-Au porphyry deposits…

Integra Gold Corp. (ICG, TSX-V) Update

Leapfrog and WSP I Parsons Brinckerhoff (WSP) have partnered with Integra Gold (ICG, TSX-V) for its Integra Gold Rush Challenge – the $1-million crowd-sourced prize for finding Val d’Or’s “next big Gold discovery”, as the company announced this morning…

More significantly, ICG is ramping up drilling at the Lamaque Project at the end of this month, thanks to a major financing announced earlier this week with Eldorado Gold…this puts ICG in an excellent position for a sustained breakout above Fib. resistance at 30 cents…

ICG is unchanged at 30 cents as of 9:45 am Pacific…

Lion One Metals Ltd. (LIO, TSX-V)

Weakness in the overall junior resource market has wiped 50% off the value of Lion One Metals (LIO, TSX-V) since the beginning of June…this is a high-quality situation that exploded suddenly in early May after breaking out above a long-term downtrend line shown in this 10-year monthly chart…over the last 2-and-a-half months, LIO has retraced back to strong support at the downtrend line which also roughly coincides with the rising 200-day SMA…

LIO’s high-grade Gold Project in Fiji has very robust economics as reported by the company June 1 when it released a Preliminary Economic Assessment (after-tax IRR of 52% and a 1.5-year payback, all-in-sustaining costs of $779 an ounce, and pre-production capital costs of only $49 million including a 14.5% contingency)…

LIO has only 60 million shares outstanding and reported $5 million in cash with no debt at the end of March…it’s off a penny at 32 cents as of 9:45 am Pacific…

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