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1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,709 and $1,690 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific the yellow metal is off $6 an ounce at $1,696…Silver has jumped 11 cents to $14.86 while base metals are steady with Copper, Nickel and Zinc trading at $2.30, $5.37 and 84 cents, respectively…Cobalt remains unchanged at $13.38…Crude Oil, riding a nice winning streak, has shot up by more than $3 a barrel to $23.80 (see below) while the U.S. Dollar Index is up slightly at 99.53…vehicle sales in the UK have plummeted to their lowest since February 1946…Wuhan COVID-19 has created a surge in takeout pizza orders, baking and pantry stockpiling…this has sparked a burst in demand for Canadian wheat and lentils, as restaurants remain shuttered and governments continue to urge physical distancing measures to prevent the spread of the virus…prices for Canadian spring wheat, a key ingredient in pizza crusts, for red lentils, a pantry staple, and for the durum wheat used in pasta have all soared in the weeks since the pandemic forced broad lockdowns of non-essential businesses…meantime, the low Canadian dollar, hit hard by weak Oil prices and government ordered lockdowns, has provided farmers with an additional boost…Trudeau this morning announced $252 million in new federal assistance for Canadian farmers and others in the agri-food sector, though the Feds continue to virtually ignore the struggling Oil and gas sector…Starbucks (SBUX, NASDAQ) CEO Kevin Johnson says over 85% of the U.S. company-operated locations will be reopened by the end of the week, with modified operations and hours…the chain plans to have more than 90% of cafes open by early June…Quebec businesses outside the Montreal region reopened yesterday as the province began the first phase of its ambitious relaunch plan, even while announcing a 1-week delay for the city where the Wuhan COVID-19 virus has had the most impact…Premier Francois Legault said the situation in Quebec is under control, but Montreal lacks the COVID-19 hospital capacity to open stores and other businesses by the original May 11 date…they will have to wait until at least May 18, but the aggressive plan to open elementary schools, daycares, stores, construction sites and factories over the next 3 weeks remains intact…the pandemic has hit the province harder than other areas of the country, and Quebec’s Director of Public has called the fast-paced plan a calculated risk…that’s a refreshing change for a country whose politicians are mostly gripped by fear…most other provinces are taking a more tentative approach – British Columbia, for example, has had only about 2,000 total cases of Wuhan COVID-19 (mostly in metro Vancouver) and limited deaths, but the NDP is operating Canada’s ultimate “Nanny State” and treating residents like kindergarten kids…as a result, B.C. is lagging the other 3 Western provinces in a reopening strategy…
2. Oil is headed for its longest run of daily gains in more than 9 months as the impact of production cuts indicated the glut may be beginning to ease…futures in New York rose for a 5th day after Genscape reported an increase in inventories of only 1.8 million barrels at Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for West Texas Intermediate Crude…that would be the smallest weekly gain since mid-March if confirmed by official data due tomorrow…meanwhile, the discount on Oil for June delivery relative to July narrowed to the least in a month, signalling that concerns of oversupply may be abating…the American Oil benchmark has more than doubled from an intraday low near $10 a barrel last week as OPEC and its allies start reducing production…in addition, U.S. giants Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips plan combined curbs of as much as 660,000 barrels a day by the end of June, despite a Texas regulator pronouncing an effort to mandate output cuts dead on arrival…there are early signs that the plunge in demand caused by the pandemic might have bottomed out in some markets, although clearing the glut that’s built up in recent months will take time…European Oil major Total SA said today that demand remains well below supply, even with widespread output cuts…but Norwegian bank DNB ASA sees change coming…“We are currently seeing accelerating Oil production curtailments outside the OPEC+ countries,” said DNB analyst Helge Andre Martinsen…“Even though the Oil market balance still looks quite oversupplied in the very short-term, we believe this is about to change quite quickly”…
3. Researchers have started giving healthy volunteers in the U.S. an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer (PFZ, NYSE) and German partner BioNTech (BTNX, NASDAQ), the latest study exploring a potential defense against the respiratory disease…researchers at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine in Manhattan and the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore said today they began injecting people with the first of 4 vaccine candidates from Pfizer and BioNTech…the clinical trial will help the researchers evaluate whether the candidates are safe, which produces the strongest immune response that could fend off the coronavirus and what the dose should be…Pfizer plans to advance the candidate that proves most promising…testing of the vaccine candidates in Germany began last month…results from the 360-person study in the U.S. could come as early as next month, but the vaccine will still need to undergo additional testing in more patients, said Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development…Pfizer will track the progress of the study to pick the most promising vaccine candidate, Dr. Jansen said…the plan is to “weed out, weed out, weed out, focus on what’s good and move on,” she stated…“It’s a quick elimination”…a vaccine could be ready for emergency use as early as the fall if testing indicates it works safely, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told The Wall Street Journal last week, though the company would keep studying it in clinical trials…
4. The Dow has jumped 371 points through the first 30 minutes of trading, buoyed by optimism about the easing of restrictions on economic activity in parts of the U.S. and Europe…the 5 stocks that have carried the market over much of the last decade – Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet – have little room left to climb, according to Goldman Sachs…those 5 companies collectively have upside potential of just 3% to Goldman analyst price targets compared to 10% for the other 495 firms that comprise the S&P 500 Index…given their clout, weakness in any one of the country’s 5 largest companies could bode poorly for the broader market…David Kostin, chief U.S. equity strategic at Goldman, said, “The multi-year outperformance of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google has led to record-high equity market concentration and narrow market breadth”…in Toronto, the TSX has gained 181 points (the Gold Index is off 8 points at 343) while the Venture is up 1 point to 477…Skeena Resources (SKE, TSX-V) has cut 32.2 g/t Au and 121 g/t Ag over 22.50 m in the 21B Zone at Eskay Creek…this includes 753 g/t Au and 445 g/t Ag over 0.83 m…infill drilling within the 21B Zone continues to intersect high-grade mineralization hosted within the contact mudstones as well as mudstone-rhyolite breccias and improves upon the grades from the surrounding historical drill holes…G6 Materials (GGG, TSX-V) has closed a $1 million financing…the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has halted Vancouver’s WPD Pharmaceuticals (WBIO, CSE), citing questions about a supposed COVID-19 drug candidate…the company had claimed that it was developing a compound that causes the virus behind COVID-19 to stop replicating…the SEC, however, has concerns about those claims and says that a halt is necessary for the protection of investors…Americas Gold and Silver (USA, TSX) has arranged a $25 million bought deal financing at $2.80 per share with Cormark Securities and Desjardins Capital Markets…
5. The potential for a major new PGE-rich discovery in the northern part of the emerging Midcontinent Rift continues to increase…Transition Metals (XTM, TSX-V) has reported 9.2 m grading 4.3 g/t PGM (2.3 g/t Pt, 1.9 g/t Pd and 0.17 g/t Au) within a broader interval of 23 m (80% to 100% true width) grading 2.4 g/t PGM at its Sunday Lake Project (25% free-carried interest), 25 km north of Thunder Bay, owned 75% by Impala Canada…another drill hole cut 2.5 g/t PGM over 26 m (80% to 100% true width)…significantly, both holes were drilled into the edge of the Big Red anomaly which appears to be part of a much larger untested northwest-southeast trending MT anomaly measuring 1,200 m x 400 m…the mineralized zone identified to date ranges from 20 m to 60 m in thickness and includes sub-parallel trends with up to 42.9 m grading 3.43 g/t PGM…only 4 holes have been drilled into “Big Red” and each of them has returned high-grade PGM mineralization…President and CEO Scott McLean commented, “Two holes from the recent drilling program intersected the outer extent of the ‘Big Red’ anomaly and continue to provide high-grade intersections over broad widths. In addition, the completion of a 3rd hole into a separate, high quality MT anomaly demonstrates the widespread nature of the PGM mineralization across the property. Exploration on the property is still at an early stage and with continued drilling there is excellent potential of building a significant mineral resource going forward”...in addition to its 25% carried interest at Sunday Lake, which is 60 km south of the Lac Des Iles mine, Transition owns a 100% interest in the nearby Saturday Night Property where drilling in 2017 intersected mineralization in a similar geological setting to that observed at Sunday Lake…this entire area will soon get much more attention as Clean Air Metals (AIR, TSX-V) is expected to begin trading shortly on the Venture after completing a $15 million financing that included Eric Sprott…XTM is off half a penny at 18.5 cents for a market cap of only $8 million…
6. Newmont (NGT, TSX; NME, NYSE), the world’s largest Gold producer, reported a rise in Q1 earnings today as both output and the Gold price rose from a year ago…adjusted net income was pegged at $326 million or 40 cents per share (vs. analysts’ consensus estimate of 42 cents), compared to $176 million, or 33 cents, in the same quarter of 2019…revenue rose 43% year-on-year to $2.58 billion primarily due to new production from the former Goldcorp assets and higher Gold prices…Newmont received an average of $1,591 per Gold ounce, an increase of $291 over the prior-year quarter, although the average price for Copper down significantly…Gold production increased 20% year-on-year to 1.48 million ounces while all-in sustaining costs per Gold ounce increased 14% to $1,030 per ounce…“Our world-class diversified portfolio of assets and resilient team delivered solid 1st quarter performance with $1.1 billion in adjusted EBITDA and $611 million in free cash flow,” said Tom Palmer, President and CEO…“Our robust balance sheet provides us with significant financial flexibility to continue allocating capital where it is needed most during this time of (COVID-19) uncertainty, while maintaining our industry-leading returns to shareholders”…in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Newmont said 2 operations are temporarily in “care and maintenance” but sites representing approximately 90% of its planned 2020 production are operating…
7. Probe Metals (PRB, TSX-V), which has Newmont as a major shareholder, has staked an additional 179 claims contiguous to the Pascalis and Megiscane-Tavernier properties at its Val d’Or East Project in Northwest Quebec…the new claims add 101 sq. km to the current project land package, increasing it from 334 sq. km to 435 sq. km…this extends the Megiscane-Tavernier Property to the southeast (146 claims) and the Pascalis Property to the northwest (33 claims)…the new claims were staked along Gold structures identified during regional exploration work and add highly prospective ground to the project…the Val-d’Or East land package represents one of the largest consolidated land packages in the Val-d’Or mining camp…President and CEO David Palmer stated, “Owing to the success of our exploration programs, and our increasing understanding of the Val-d’Or East Gold systems, we have expanded our property boundaries to include a number of highly prospective regional targets with excellent potential for new discoveries. We are fortunate to have a very strong treasury, with over $30 million in cash, which gives us the ability to continue advancing our project as we see these global Gold markets strengthen. We hope to resume activities in the near future and look forward to maintaining our position as one of Canada’s leading Gold exploration companies in 2020“…
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