1. Gold has traded between $1,222 and $1,229 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is relatively unchanged at $1,223 as it continues to hold above its 50 and 100-day moving averages (SMA’s)…Silver is flat at $14.25…Copper is also unchanged at $2.80…Nickel, near the end of a sharp correction according to our short-term and long-term charts, is off 4 pennies at $4.90 while Zinc is 2 cents lower at $1.17…Cobalt is steady at $25.06…Crude Oil is rallying, up $1.58 a barrel to $52…WTI is still vulnerable, however, to a dip below $50 to test key support in the mid-to-upper-$40’s…the U.S. Dollar Index is unchanged at 96.92…Goldman Sachs looks for Gold to rise as investors seek the metal for portfolio diversification, particularly if growth in the U.S. economy begins to slow…in a report published this morning, Goldman analysts described themselves as upbeat on commodities in general, adding that the Gold market is underpinned by fresh central bank demand with some banks accumulating for the first time since 2012…
2. Can troubled Tanzania be fixed?…Barrick Gold’s (ABX, TSX) incoming CEO says he wants to pull together Tanzania’s mining industry to tackle a “desperate” tax dispute that has snared several companies, including the firm’s Acacia Mining unit…an increasingly acrimonious conflict has lasted almost 2 years with the government tearing up mining contracts, hiking taxes and royalties, and banning raw minerals exports…President John Magufuli, nicknamed the “Bulldozer”, swept to power in 2015 pledging to secure a bigger share of resource wealth and “cut corruption”…Acacia was later handed a $190 billion (U.S.) tax bill for underreporting output…the miner now faces dozens of criminal charges, from tax evasion to money laundering, with 3 employees arrested on related accusations…Randgold (GOLD, NASDAQ) founder Mark Bristow, Barrick’s new CEO after its $6.1 billion acquisition of Randgold closes in January, says that fixing Barrick’s mounting problem in Tanzania could require a collective strategy that has not been used there before…Tanzania is a classic example of how the resource sector is under attack in various parts of the globe, and that even includes Canada…
3. The slump in the Oil market since early October combined with a persistent and even deepening discount on Alberta Crude has resulted in a powerful double negative for Canadian energy stocks…the S&P/TSX energy index tumbled nearly 5% Friday to levels not seen since the 2014–16 crash…shares of big Canadian energy companies including top producer Suncor Energy (SU, TSX) posted losses on Friday of between 4% to 8%, leaving them with declines of 20% since mid-July…the group is rebounding slightly in early trading today…problems in Canada’s Oil patch – very much a self-inflicted wound – are now rippling through to other companies with exposure to the sector…the Trudeau government’s obvious reluctance or unwillingness to build new pipeline capacity, in addition to carbon taxes and a convoluted regulatory regime that forms Trudeau’s disastrous National Energy Program (as bad as or even worse than his father’s nearly 3 decades ago) is costing the Canadian economy tens of millions of dollars every single day – estimates range from $50 million to $130 million a day or up to $50 billion a year…career politicians, clearly not standing up for Canada and Canadian workers and families, are allowing this to happen in the name of “saving the planet” by adhering to a flawed Paris Climate Accord…Canadians have been duped big-time and the U.S. Oil industry (and others around the world) couldn’t be happier…
4. Goldcorp (G, TSX) and IBM Canada have co-authored an innovative first-of-a-kind technology product: “IBM Exploration with Watson” which applies artificial intelligence to predict the potential for Gold mineralization…it also uses powerful search and query capabilities across a range of exploration datasets…“The potential to radically accelerate exploration target identification combined with significantly improved hit rates on economic mineralization has the potential to drive a step-change in the pace of value growth in the industry,” stated Todd White, Goldcorp Executive Vice President and COO…developed using data from Goldcorp’s Red Lake mines in northern Ontario, “IBM Exploration with Watson” leverages spatial analytics, machine learning and predictive models, helping explorers locate key information and develop geological extrapolations in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods…“Applying the power of IBM Watson to these unique challenges differentiates us in the natural resources industry,” said Mark Fawcett, Partner with IBM Canada…“We are using accelerated computing power for complex geospatial queries that can harmonize geological data from an entire site on a single platform. This is the first time this solution has been ever used, which makes this project all the more significant”…
5. The Dow is rebounding after its worst Thanksgiving week since 2001…as of 7:00 am Pacific, the index is up 369 points…in Toronto, the TSX has jumped 105 points…Canada’s big banks will report their fiscal 4th quarter results starting this week, and analysts are expecting a strong finish to the year…Bank of Nova Scotia will kick off the reporting tomorrow followed by Royal Bank of Canada on Wednesday and CIBC on Thursday…Bank of Montreal and National Bank will report their results on December 4 and 5, respectively, for the 3-month period ended October 31…analysts predict the Big Six will show profit growth of about 12% year-over-year, driven by their strong international operations, accelerating commercial loan growth and rising interest income…they also expect BMO and National Bank will raise their dividends…Seabridge Gold (SEA, TSX) has closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement of 1 million shares, raising $14 million…while Seabridge’s main focus is the Eskay Camp, the company has planned a 2019 drill program at its 100%-owned Snowstorm Project in Nevada…the Venture is off 2 points at 600…iMetal Resources (IMR, TSX-V), one of Friday’s top traders, is up another penny-and-a-half at 13 cents on the potential for a new Gold discovery in the Gowganda area of Northern Ontario…
6. Tudor Gold’s (TUD, TSX-V) final hole (CB-18-39) of the 2018 exploration season, a 90-m step-out to the north of the Copper Belle Zone in the Eskay Camp, has intersected 564 m grading 0.91 g/t Au (including 234 m @ 1.15 g/t from 194 m to 428 m)…it also bottomed in mineralization…this is the widest and most strongly mineralized interval seen to date of the 69 holes that have been drilled within the zone, and more importantly, suggests potentially greater widths of mineralization continuing to the north and northeast…this new extension will be a prime target for follow-up drilling in 2019…Walter Storm, President and CEO, stated: “This very positive intersection in the final hole of the year at Treaty Creek exhibits particularly strong Gold values for a porphyry-style deposit. It is certainly the best result to date at Copper Belle – in terms of grade x length – being some 50% longer than the previous longest intersection. We drilled 9 deep holes in 2018, testing a large area with a wide-spaced drill pattern, a program which has expanded the Copper Belle zone to the north and northwest; discovering broad intercepts of Gold mineralization adjacent to similar wide intercepts reported in 2017. The target next year will be more drilling north and northeast of Hole CB-18–39, expanding on the significant grade and scale of the Gold mineralization encountered”...now, if only Storm could drum up more interest in his stock – entering today, there have only been 6 trading sessions in the past 3 months when Tudor volume has exceeded 100,000 shares…another example of a company that struggles to operate effectively in the public markets…
7. Tinka Resources (TK, TSX-V), which completed approximately 20,000 m of drilling this year, released an updated mineral resource estimate this morning for its 100%-owned Ayawilca Zinc and Tin deposits in Peru…part of the Zinc Zone resource is now classified as Indicated (11.7 million tonnes @ 6.9% Zn, 0.16% Pb, 15 g/t Ag and 84 g/t Indium), incorporating a higher-grade portion of the deposit…in addition, the updated Inferred resource is of a similar size and grade to the previous Zinc Zone resource reported in November of last year…the updated Tin Zone Inferred resource (14.5 million tonnes grading 0.63% Tin, 0.21% Cu and 18 g/t Ag) is substantially larger than the one released last year…the Tin Zone and Zinc Zone resources do not overlap…
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