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Gold has traded between $1,237 and $1,265 so far today…as of 7:30 am Pacific, bullion is down $25 an ounce at $1,242…Silver is off 50 cents at $19.21…Copper has shed 3 pennies to $3.23…Crude Oil is up $1.12 a barrel to $98.48 while the U.S. Dollar Index has climbed more than one-third of a point to 80.98…

Some wise comments from Lawrence Roulston in a wide-ranging interview with The Gold Report posted yesterday that we suggest you check out at www.theaureport.com (“Gold Crybabies Are Born To Lose, Says Lawrence Roulston)…“The higher-quality junior companies in the sector are starting to see a strong level of support at their current prices and many of them are notching higher. The professionals who are most familiar with the resource markets understand the cyclical nature of these markets and, more important, they know how to differentiate among the 2,000 publicly traded junior companies,” Roulston stated.  “The risk is in failing to get into the market before it is too late to win big. If an investor waits for a clear signal that the market has bottomed, the good quality companies will already have moved up substantially. At that point, wannabe investors will be forced to pay high prices for the quality companies or, worse, to buy second-tier companies thinking they are getting a bargain.”

When Rick Rule asked Roulston during a panel discussion at the recent Vancouver Resource Show and Investment Conference what area of the world was best for exploration, he quickly responded, “There’s no other place in the world with more geological prospectivity than British Columbia.” He is absolutely correct, in our view, and not only does B.C. have such “geological prospectivity“, but it also features political stability, a mining-friendly government that’s pushing even harder than ever to maximize this industry as a job-creating machine, and mines are going into production (Red Chris near Iskut being the latest example)…B.C. is “talking the talk” and “walking the walk”…the Northwest Transmission Line is a serious game-changer for northwest B.C., providing a necessary and inexpensive power source for projects of all sorts…

Potential Deposits In The Sheslay Valley Could Be Like “Pearls On A String”

Northwest B.C. will be the province’s exploration hotspot in 2014 (perhaps Canada’s) and the rapidly emerging Sheslay Valley Cu-Au porphyry camp will lead the charge through a handful of solid juniors and at least one major (Teck Resources Ltd., TCK, TSX, with the largest land position in the area) as we’ll be detailing in a special updated report in the coming days…Doubleview Capital Corp.’s (DBV, TSX-V) important recent discovery – it has intriguing size potential with increasing grades at depth – has changed the dynamics of this entire play which the “masses” haven’t even discovered yet (that’s good)…we’ve investigated this region for over eight months with hundreds of hours of research, and the geology over at least a 600 sq. km area of the under-explored, under-exploited Sheslay Valley is such that porphyry deposits could occur over many kilometres in this district like “pearls on a string”…the potential scale of this is truly amazing, and there’s a growing belief that the Sheslay Valley could very quickly develop into an old-fashioned, rip-roaring B.C. area play that singlehandedly breathes new life into the junior exploration market…there are never any guarantees, of course, in the risky exploration business, but the Sheslay Valley is looking increasingly exciting…

Below is our latest map on the Sheslay area, though there has been more staking activity (not indicated on our map) since the Doubleview discovery according to the B.C. Ministry of Mines web site, and Romios Gold (RG, TSX-V) also announced Monday that it has secured 2,800 hectares in the area…

You’ll note on this “big picture” map a classic northwest B.C. scenario in terms of the direction of these trends which are cutting southeasterly across the district – parallel trends, each one of them with the possibility of hosting one or more deposits…geologically, the Sheslay Valley is part of the Stikine Arch and on trend with all the major deposits, current and past producing mines to the south and southeast…there is ample evidence that the Stuhini group rocks of the Sheslay Valley have been subject to intense pressure, heat, and fracturing…a major tectonic event (or events) has occurred here…fluids are also critical to the mineralizing process of any major porphyry system, and this area according to the many geologists we’ve spoken to has all the earmarks of intense fluid throughput…

The three most active and best-positioned juniors in the Sheslay Valley, of course, are (in alphabetical order) Doubleview, Garibaldi Resources Corp. (GGI, TSX-V) and Prosper Gold Corp. (PGX, TSX-V)…there’s an interesting “rain shadow” effect in this area, due to mountains to the west, lengthening the exploration and drilling season from the spring into at least the late fall/early winter (Doubleview was carrying out drilling during a cold snap in mid-November)…areas immediately and further to the south, including the Stewart district for example, receive much more snow and have a considerably shorter exploration season…

Ashburton Ventures Inc. (ABR, TSX-V)

A company with a small but strategic piece of property in the Sheslay Valley that is worthy of our readers’ consideration and due diligence is Ashburton Ventures Inc. (ABR, TSX-V) which holds the nearly 900-hectare Hackett Property contiguous to the eastern border of Doubleview’s Hat Property as you can see on the map above…speculatively, a potential deposit at the Hat could quite possibly trend onto Ashburton’s ground (it appears the Hackett is within 1,200 metres or less of DBV’s discovery holes) given how these parallel trends are dipping southeasterly…as ABR has already reported, “Volcanic-sedimentary assemblages and intrusive rocks on the property are similar (to the Hat) and are believed to be part of the Stuhini group.”

Below is an updated 2.5-year weekly ABR chart from John…ABR currently has a market cap just below $2 million and the stock has been trading in a horizontal channel since late 2012 between technical support at 3.5 cents and resistance at 10 cents…ABR has been perking up ever since last week’s announcement from Doubleview, and as of as of 7:30 am Pacific it’s 1.5 cents higher at 6.5 cents on strong volume..as always, perform your own due diligence…

Today’s Markets

Asia

Asian markets were knocked down significantly overnight with Japan’s Nikkei finishing off its lows but down nearly 2.5% at 15007 after falling 377 points…China’s Shanghai Composite lost 17 points to close at 2033…the final China HSBC purchasing manager’s index (PMI) fell to a new six-month low of 49.5 in January…this was slightly lower than last week’s preliminary estimate of 49.6, confirming expectations of a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy…

Europe

European shares are mixed in late trading overseas…

North America

The Dow, which has lost 720 points or 4.4% over the last six trading sessions, is rebounding modestly today…there were no surprises from the Fed yesterday which is trimming its monthly bond-buying program by another $10 billion…the Commerce Department reported this morning that the U.S. economy expanded 3.2% in the fourth quarter, and investors have also responded enthusiastically to quarterly profits from Facebook (FB, Nasdaq)…as of 7:30 am Pacific, the Dow is up 69 points…

In Toronto, the TSX is 19 points higher while the Venture is down 7 points at 952…

TSX Gold Index Chart Update

With the drop in Gold today, the TSX Gold Index is under some mild pressure, down 5 points at 183 through the first hour of trading, but a 10-year monthly chart from John paints a promising picture of a market this is healing and on the road to better days in our view…the Index is emerging from strong RSI(14) support at the 30% level, forming a bullish “W”…look for the 200-day moving average (SMA), just below 180, to provide potential support…a rising 50-day SMA is an encouraging sign…

Probe Mines Ltd. (PRB, TSX-V)

In addition to the emerging Sheslay Valley district and of course the Athabasca basin uranium play that is in full swing, led by Fission Uranium (FCU, TSX), one of the top exploration stories in the country without a doubt remains Probe Mines’ (PRB, TSX-V) growing Borden Lake deposit and system in northeastern Ontario…Probe is gearing up for an aggressive winter drill program, starting imminently, to expand the very interesting high-grade zone discovered to the southeast of the original deposit…yesterday, PRB hit a new all-time high of $2.89…it has consistently out-performed Gold since the spring of last year when Agnico-Eagle Mines (AEM, TSX) took an equity position in the company…as of 7:30 am Pacific, PRB is off 8 cents at $2.80…

Below is a 2.5-year weekly chart from John…PRB started accelerating after pushing through resistance around $2.60…

Mason Graphite Inc. (LLG, TSX-V) Updated Chart

Note: John and Jon both hold share positions in GGI.  Jon also holds share positions in PGX, DBV and ABR.