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Visit the BMR comments section throughout the day for updates and helpful information. No Daniel’s Den today as Daniel is on a site visit.

1. Gold has traded between $1,316 and $1,323 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is flat at $1,318…yesterday’s drop pushed bullion below an uptrend line on the short-term chart going back to December…a strong support zone exists between $1,300 and $1,280…Silver is up 4 pennies at $16.41…Silver production is likely to keep growing in key producing nations Mexico and Peru, according to consultancy Metals Focus…Mexican output jumped by an estimated 5% last year while Peruvian production rose 1%, compared to a 4% decline in global output…Copper, Nickel and Zinc have eased off slightly to $3.15, $6.27 and $1.59, respectively…Cobalt continues to hover around a decade high of $37 a pound…Crude Oil has added 29 cents to $63.30 while the U.S. Dollar Index is now at a 3-week high of 90.59, up one-fifth of a point, as a rally begins to build…helping the greenback is the fact that euro zone inflation has slowed for the 3rd consecutive month, according to February data just released from the region’s official statistics office, raising further questions over the ECB’s ability to exit its easy monetary policy stance later this year…

2. Growth in China’s manufacturing sector in February slowed more than expected to the weakest in over one-and-a-half years, though base metals are reacting little to the news…the mainstream media seem oblivious to this but keep in mind that China’s Lunar New Year holiday period disrupts/distorts business activity over several weeks, so discerning any trend from February data is unwise…official manufacturing PMI in China for this month has come in at 50.3, below the 51.2 forecast by Reuters and the 51.3 figure seen in January…watch for a pick-up during March…

3. World stocks are set to snap a record 15-month-long winning streak today while the Venture’s 7-month winning streak will also come to a screeching halt after an unusual and volatile February…sellers pushed the Dow down 300 points at the close yesterday after new Fed boss Jerome Powell’s comments suggested the possibility of four U.S. interest rate increases this year rather than three…the Dow had climbed in 10 out of the previous 12 sessions following the late January/early February correction, so traders were certainly looking for an excuse to lock in some profits…Powell’s debut testimony to Congress struck a generally more hawkish tone than most investors were anticipating as he vowed to prevent the economy from “overheating”…meanwhile, the Commerce Department reported this morning that its second GDP estimate for Q4 has been revised down slightly to 2.5% from 2.6%…Q1 growth is expected to be weaker due to a seasonal quirk, but most economists believe the economy will strengthen throughout the balance of the year due to tax cuts plus other measures and reach the Trump administration’s 3% annual growth target…the slowing Canadian economy, hobbled by an Oil and gas sector that’s now in the tank and not likely to recover anytime soon, is expected to grow only 2.2% this year with a further slide in 2019…

4. The Dow has recovered 159 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…T. Boone Pickens was many things during his decades-long career – wildcatter, corporate raider, cattle trader, investor…now he has become an exchange-traded fund…the Pickens Oil Response ETF (BOON, NYSE) began trading this morning (it opened at $25.19) and reflects the Oil tycoon’s philosophy of going all in on the U.S. energy renaissance…it will track the NYSE Pickens Oil Response Index, developed last year by some of Pickens’ lieutenants at his Dallas investment firm BP Capital (it’s the first time the NYSE has branded a stock index with an individual)…in Toronto, the TSX is virtually unchanged in a not-so-enthusiastic embrace of yesterday’s bizarre federal budget that more resembled a social document…the Venture, meanwhile, is up 4 points at 819…Cornerstone Metals (CCC, TSX-V) is one of the highest-volume percentage gainers in early trading after releasing positive initial drill results from its Vanadium Project in Nevada (see below)…also south of the border and trading near a multi-year high is Blue Moon Zinc (MOON, TSX-V), steady at 11 cents…

5. Federal budgets, from the Martin-Chretien Liberals beginning in the 1990’s to the Harper Conservatives who followed and remained in power until late 2015, used to be about balancing the books and keeping Canada competitive…now they’re about something very different – virtue-signalling, identity politics, gender, race, and just about every social cause one can imagine in the face of daunting economic challenges – as evidenced again yesterday…deficits and debt are piling up as far as the eye can see, contrary to a Trudeau election promise in 2015, and – shamefully – not one word was mentioned yesterday about Canada’s urgent pipeline problem which is costing the economy $50 million per day or $16 billion annually, shaving nearly a full percentage point off 2018 GDP according to a Scotiabank report last week…while the pipeline issue was ignored, the word “gender” appeared no less than 358 times in yesterday’s budget and included this gem:  “At the same time, men and boys also have gendered intersecting identities and experience inequality, and are not all a homogenous group. This work will recognize that gender is not synonymous with women” ($1.8 million for something called Engaging Men and Boys to Promote Gender Equality, though that pales in comparison to the $2 billion in new funding for the Feminist International Assistance Policy aimed at “building a more peaceful, inclusive and prosperous world.”  It goes on and on and on…the Finance Minister, borrowing a line and a lie from B.C.’s budget, says the feds are putting “people first” but in reality they are putting the growth of government first while abusing all hard-working taxpayers…Canada’s competitiveness vs. the United States continues to erode as economic policy in the U.S. goes in one direction while Canadian policy (higher taxes, burdensome regulatory regimes, etc.) heads in another, leading to paltry estimated growth of just 1.6% in Canada for 2019…meanwhile, the federal government wants us to believe that it made all the right moves in recently rewriting the rules for approval of major resource projects across this country (that’s another boondoggle)…things are so bad on the Oil and gas front, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers issued an urgent call Monday in a news conference for an immediate “course correction” in this country given the fact that energy investors are now dumping Canada in favor of such places as Iran and Brazil…budgets speak volumes about the priorities of a government or an individual – yesterday, we saw the federal government’s priorities on full display and those misplaced priorities, cheerleaded by their media friends on the left, are not reassuring to investors…

6. Cornerstone Metals (CCC, TSX-V) has intersected 25.3 m grading 1.07% Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), highlighting results from the first 8 holes of a recently completed 20-hole confirmation diamond drilling program at its Carlin Vanadium Project in Nevada…significantly, 5 of the 8 holes returned much higher Vanadium grades compared to their neighboring historic holes, supporting an extensive near-surface horizontal high-grade mineralized Vanadium zone…the deposit has an historic Inferred resource estimate of 28 million tons at 0.515% V2O5 for a total metal content of 289 million pounds V2O5, based on a 0.3% V2O5 cut-off grade and defined by 127 holes completed by Union Carbide in the late 1960’s…CCC has just 21 million shares outstanding but keep in mind that 7.8 million shares from a 14-cent financing last October became free-trading just over a week ago…the stock is up a nickel at 33 cents as of 7:00 am Pacific…

7. CSE-listed Maricann Group (MARI, CSE) is taking a hit this morning in an unusual situation where underwriters have pulled out of a previously announced $70 million bought deal financing after regulators started posing some questions…Maricann has come under the radar of the the Ontario Securities Commission for not disclosing (the company says it was unaware of this) that CEO Ben Ward is under investigation for his actions at another company, Canadian Cannabis, where he served as CEO from 2013 to 2016…in addition, the OSC is raising concerns about why directors Julian Tabatznik and Raymond Stone sold about $8 million worth of shares days before Maricann announced its large equity financing January 29…MARI’s news release this morning stated that Tabatznik and Stone have both resigned…however, the company also stated that it’s unaware of any facts that could reasonably lead it to conclude that the OSC investigation of Ward has had, or will have, any impact on the ability of him to properly and effectively carry out his duties as CEO or director of the company…MARI is off 52 cents at $1.97 as of 7:00 am Pacific…

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