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Check back later this morning for today’s BMR Morning Market Musings.

1. Gold is starting to become fashionable again…bullion touched a nearly 8-week high of $1,220 overnight and is up $13 an ounce at $1,216 as of 7:00 am Pacific thanks to a range of factors…Credit Suisse says it remains “constructive” on Gold prices, forecasting an average price of $1,338 per ounce in 2017…

2. The U.S. Dollar Index has plunged by more than a full point this morning after comments regarding the greenback by President-elect Donald Trump…in remarks to the Wall Street Journal published on its website last night, Trump said U.S. companies could not compete with China “because our currency is too strong. And it’s killing us”…meanwhile, Gold is also benefiting today from disappointing data from the New York region manufacturing sector while British Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a Brexit speech that pledged the UK to fully leave the EU’s single market by March 2019…sterling has enjoyed its biggest daily increase against the U.S. dollar since the 2008 financial crisis…

3. Optimism for U.S. economic growth has hit a 2-year high among those responding to the latest Bank of America Merrill Lynch Fund Managers Survey…the biggest bets among respondents are on banks, the U.S. dollar and real estate investment trusts, while some of the biggest areas of scorn are emerging market stocks, industrials and commodities (fund managers don’t always get it right)…a record level of respondents indicated small-cap stocks will outperform…

4. The Venture briefly touched 800 at the open this morning for the first time in 3-and-a-half months…through the first 30 minutes of trading, the Index is up 3 points at 798…the TSX is off 21 points while the Dow has fallen 52 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…

5. Evrim Resources (EVM, TSX-V) has made a high-grade discovery at its Ermitano Gold Project in Sonora, Mexico…Evrim and exploration partner First Majestic Silver (FR, TSX, AG, NYSE) reported assay results this morning from the first 4 holes of a planned 10-hole diamond drill program totaling about 1,000 m at the Ermitano West prospect located approximately 3.5 km southeast of First Majestic’s operating Santa Elena Gold-Silver mine…drill hole EW16–04 returned 18 m grading 11.4 g/t Au and 86 g/t Ag including 3.3 m grading 34.6 g/t Au and 242 g/t Ag…the results fit a classical epithermal pattern with low Gold and Silver grades at surface increasing at depth to economic grades where textures indicate a boiling environment within the vein…limited drilling shows a system open to the east, west and at depth…drilling is ongoing to complete a planned 10-hole program with further assays pending…EVM is up a penny at 24 cents…

6. Kirkland Lake Gold (KL, TSX) has drilled extensions of high-grade mineralization at depth and new high-grade intercepts, including a record result, from underground drilling at its Fosterville Gold mine in Australia…results from 20 underground holes totaling 6,471 m into extensions of the Lower Phoenix Gold system include the highest-grade drill intercept ever recorded at Fosterville. – 1,429 g/t Au over 15.15 m (estimated true width is 4.97 m) in hole drill hole UDH1817 (includes 21,490 g/t Au over 0.6 m)…Fosterville delivered record production of 151,755 ounces of Gold with a record mill grade and recovery of 7.55 g/t Au and 90.1%, respectively…9 rigs are currently in operation, focused on extending mine life…

7.  Mariana Resources (MARL, TSX-V) has released a robust PEA for the high-grade Hot Maden Gold-Copper Project in northeast Turkey…the base case mining scenario envisages total metal production of 2.6 million ounces of Gold and 142,000 tonnes of Copper over a total project life of 9 years…the post-tax discounted (8%) NPV, excluding pre-development exploration costs, is $1.37 billion (U.S.) while the post-tax IRR is 153% excluding acquisition costs…total CAPEX (initial + sustaining) is $261 million (U.S.) and the project features a short payback period of 2.1 years…metallurgical testwork, through flotation and concentration, completed to date on the high grade Main Zone mineralization has indicated high recoveries of both Gold and Copper…a Preliminary Feasibility Study is expected to be completed during Q3…a further 20,000 m of drilling is budgeted and planned for this new year…exploration drilling continues to focus on the discovery of new Gold-Copper resources at Hot Maden, especially to the south of the Main Zone…MARL is up a dime at $1.37 as of 7:00 am Pacific…