BullMarketRun.com

From Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec

Gold has traded in a range between $1,762 and $1,799 so far today…as of 10:30 am Eastern, the yellow metal is up $7 an ounce at $1,797…Silver is up 60 cents at $40.51…Copper has gained 2 pennies to $3.98…Crude Oil has slipped 15 cents to $89.25 while the U.S. Dollar Index has jumped one-quarter of a point to 76.57…with the unpredictable situation in the euro zone, volatility in Gold and the equity markets is expected to continue…Gold remains in a consolidation phase and some additional weakness down to at least the $1,730 area is certainly possible as John outlines in this updated chart…

China has set its first national standard for Gold at 99.999% purity, state media Xinhua reported today, citing the National Gold Standardization Technical Committee…the national standard, which is in line with requirements for Gold bars set by the London Bullion Market Association, is seen by industry observers as another step towards liberalization of the country’s booming Gold sector, paving the way for the opening up of a physical trading market in the future…”Chinese Gold bars are now only recognized by local exchanges but not by the international market,” said a physical Gold dealer in Singapore…”One of the requirements for recognition by the international market is 99.999% purity…I think this is a necessary step to link up with the rest of the world”…

Global stocks are recording their fourth straight day of gains as traders bet that policymakers’ attempts to address the euro zone fiscal crisis have succeeded in reducing stresses in the financial system…U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told EU finance ministers in Poland today that they should end loose talk about a euro zone break-up and work more closely with the European Central Bank to tackle the debt crisis…”What is very damaging (in Europe) from the outside is not the divisiveness about the broader debate, about strategy, but about the ongoing conflict between governments and the central bank, and you need both to work together to do what is essential to the resolution of any crisis,” Geithner said…”Governments and central banks have to take out the catastrophic risks from markets …(and avoid) loose talk about dismantling the institutions of the euro”…

Poland’s finance minister made some chilling remarks on CNBC late yesterday…a collapse of Europe’s monetary union would likely lead to a breakup of the European Union as a whole, posing significant risks to the region and even raising the possibility of war in the long term…”If the euro zone were to fall apart then it’s hard to exclude the possibility of EU falling apart as well,” Jacek Rostowski told CNBC in an interview…”The EU has been one of the two great pillars of European peace and security of the past 60 years…therefore the danger in a longer-time horizon, in 10-20 years, in the absence of one of the key elements of our security system and one of the key elements of our political system, which ensures we deal with problems in this peaceful, democratic way we’ve developed, the risk of all sorts of authoritarian political movements, and therefore even war, in the long horizon, rises,” he said…

In light of the obvious failure of big government and the European welfare state, it’s quite incredible that Denmark yesterday embraced to an even greater extent a robust welfare system financed by high taxes…a left-leaning bloc led by Social Democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt (now Denmark’s first female prime minister – she is backed by the Socialist People’s Party) gained a narrow majority in the country’s parliamentary elections yesterday…Thorning-Schmidt wants to protect the welfare system by raising taxes on the rich…outgoing Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said tax hikes would harm the competitiveness of a nation that already has the highest tax pressure in the world…Denmark, like some other countries, is about to learn the hard way when it comes to insane fiscal policy that kills jobs and investment…

The CDNX staged a nice intra-day reversal yesterday and is up 1 point as of 10:30 am Eastern to 1765…the TSX Gold Index found support at 415 yesterday and is up 5 points at the moment to 428…

Below is an aerial view of Richmont Mines‘ (RIC, TSX) Francoeur mine site, situated approximately 7 kilometers west of Wasamac and 22 kilometres west of Rouyn-Noranda, taken from our helicopter fly-over of the Cadillac Trend…BMR will be interviewing Richmont President and CEO Martin Rivard today and we’ll be posting Part 1 of that interview and a related article by Monday as our northwest Quebec trip continues…

Commercial production at Francoeur will commence during the first quarter of 2012. Annual production for the estimated 4-year mine life is expected to be about 35,000 ounces.

Richmont has been unwinding an overbought condition after the stock soared recently to an all-time high of $12.10, just 6 cents shy of John’s Fibonacci target…it fell as low as $10.78 yesterday before reversing to the upside…it’s up another 28 cents at the moment to $11.43…John believes a retracement down to the Fibonacci 61.8% support level of $9.90 is possible…should that occur, back up the truck and load it up with RIC…Visible Gold Mines (VGD, TSX-V) suffered its second straight daily loss yesterday but overall the stock is still looking very healthy from a technical standpoint…it has experienced a normal decline in an ongoing up-trend as the stock simply backed off to its rising 20-day moving average (SMA) which is providing strong support…below that the rising 50-day at 34 cents provides superb support…RSI and Stochastics have come down as well which has helped to cleanse a somewhat overbought technical condition…VGD’s strong technicals and fundamentals support John’s near-term Fibonacci level assessment of 51 cents (that’s not a BMR price target, as we don’t give price targets, but a theoretical Fibonacci level based on technical analysis)…Adventure Gold (AGE, TSX-V) came out with an update this morning on its Meunier-144 Property in West Timmins…the initial deep hole being drilled by Lake Shore Gold (LSG, TSX), which was started in August of 2010, is now about 2600 metres in core length and with recent wedging it appears to be on track to potentially hit the intended target at 2400 metres vertical depth by late October…this hole is targeting potential zones down-plunge and on strike to mineralization at LSG’s 100% owned Timmins Mine Gold deposit where LSG has previously announced intercepts of up to 13.55 g/t Au over 50.8 meters and 61.35 g/t Au over 15 metres, and where LSG has announced further drilling results relating to their Thunder Creek Project (Rusk Zone) of up to 75.14 g/t Au over 18.6 metres…AGE is currently unchanged at 57 cents…keep an eye on Seafield Resources (SFF, TSX-V) which is very close to its supporting 1,000-day rising moving average (SMA) right around 20 cents…check it out on a chart, it’s quite interesting…SFF closed at 21.5 cents yesterday and hasn’t traded yet today…another company we like in Colombia, Batero Gold (BAT, TSX-V), released more drill results from its Batero-Quinchia Project this morning including 751 metres grading 0.54 g/t Au in hole #14…a newly discovered higher grade zone of mineralization was encountered at depth in that hole comprising 0.96 g/t Au and 0.14% copper over 121.89 metres starting at 310.93 metres…BAT is currently off a penny at $3.24…