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1. Gold has traded between $1,274 and $1,280 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is off $1 an ounce at $1,274… speculators switched to a net short position in COMEX Gold in the week to April 16, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday…meanwhile, holdings of SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest Gold-backed exchange-traded fund, dropped to 751.68 tonnes on Thursday, the lowest levels seen since October 26…continued strong central bank buying will help limit further declines but a key support band between $1,260 and $1,240 could nonetheless be tested before a major turnaround kicks in…Silver is flat at $14.98…base metals are also relatively unchanged with Copper, Nickel and Zinc at $2.91, $5.75 and $1.31, respectively…the big mover of the day on the commodity front is Crude Oil which has surged $1.45 a barrel to $65.45 (see below) while the Dollar Index is off slightly at 97.34…the key U.S. economic report this week will be GDP due Friday…for the last 3 years, and in 4 of the past 5, Q1 growth has been the slowest of the quarters – that trend may very well continue…a comedian whose only political experience consists of playing a president on TV cruised to a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election yesterday in what was seen as a reaction against the country’s entrenched corruption and low standard of living…Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s victory in the 2nd round of Ukraine’s presidential election was a crushing rebuke to President Petro Poroshenko’s 5 years in office…Sri Lankan police have arrested 2 dozen people in connection with a series of devastating suicide bombings at hotels and churches on Easter Sunday that left nearly 300 people dead and more than 500 injured…National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a little known radical Islamist organization, is alleged to have orchestrated the attacks with help from an international network…

2. A bullish surprise for the Oil market – the Trump administration announced this morning that it will no longer grant sanctions waivers to a handful of Iran’s Oil customers, accelerating its mission of driving the Islamic Republic’s exports to zero…the move threatens to wipe roughly 1 million barrels per day off the market at a time when Oil supply is already tightening…Crude futures spiked to nearly 6-month highs on the news…“President Donald J. Trump has decided not to reissue Significant Reduction Exceptions (SREs) when they expire in early May,” the White House said in a statement…“This decision is intended to bring Iran’s Oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue”…Trump unilaterally withdrew from a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran last may and restored wide-ranging sanctions on the Iranian economy in November…at the time, the administration granted temporary waivers to Iran’s 8 main buyers (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Italy and Greece), allowing them to continue importing limited quantities of Crude Oil from Iran…the market widely expected Washington to extend the waivers for 5 of the countries…however, any country still importing Oil from Iran will be subject to U.S. sanctions beginning May 2…another drop in Iranian exports would further squeeze supply in a market already tightened through sanctions against Iran and fellow OPEC member Venezuela, plus voluntary cuts led by OPEC…

3. Alberta Premier-designate Jason Kenney says that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s so-called “grand bargain” of seeking to advance resource development by gaining the approval of those with environmental concerns died on Alberta’s election day last Tuesday…“Yeah, that bargain with the Notley government ended on election day.  And it was from our perspective, and I think the vast majority of Alberta voters, a complete failure,” the United Conservative leader stated in an interview on CTV’s “Question Period”…Kenney said that the federal Liberals’ idea of “social licence” is a “sham”…Trudeau came to power on a pledge to get pipelines built while implementing a national climate change plan meant to make meaningful emissions reductions…in Alberta, the clearest example of this was seen by some as the introduction of a carbon tax in exchange for approval for the Trans Mountain Pipeline, but Kenney says that plan has failed…“We didn’t see one single environmental group, provincial or municipal government, First Nation, anybody move from ‘no’ to ’yes’ on pipelines as a result…all we got was stronger opposition to resource development and pipelines”…

4. This week will be one of the busiest of the earnings season so far with Coca Cola, Procter & Gamble, UnitedTech, Verizon, Twitter, Lockheed Martin and eBay just some of the companies reporting tomorrow…on Wednesday, Facebook, Microsoft and Tesla are just a few of the corporate earnings to expect…on Thursday, Comcast, Amazon, Ford, Starbucks and Domino’s Pizza are among those reporting…Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Colgate-Palmolive will deliver earnings on Friday…so far, more than 78% of the S&P 500 companies that have reported have topped analyst expectations, according to FactSet…“What can we infer about the early Q1 2019 reporters?  The results are coming in better than feared,” wrote Nick Raich, CEO of The Earnings Scout…“While the rate of Q1 2019 earnings growth (+5.60%) is down significantly from how these same companies grew Q4 2018 earnings (+21.02%), it is positive growth and not the negative earnings growth so many were forecasting just a few weeks ago”…

5. Markets in Europe remained closed today for the Easter holiday…the Dow has retreated 63 points after the first 30 minutes of trading…in Toronto, the TSX is off 8 points…the index closed at a record high on Thursday, completing a comeback that began last December…recent gains have been led by Oil and gas stocks, as well as other sectors closely linked to the broader economy, including industrials, consumer discretionary and financials…Canada’s main large-cap benchmark ended the day at 16,613 Thursday, breaking through the previous high of 16,567 set last July before concerns over global growth triggered a sell-off in the 2nd half of the year…the Venture, with strong support around 600, is up a point at 610…HIVE Blockchain (HIVE, TSX-V) was halted shortly after market open, pending news…the stock last traded at 75 cents and has been trending higher since late December after bottoming just below 30 cents…Westhaven Resources (WHN, TSX-V) is under pressure in early trading after releasing results from 4 more drill holes at its Shovelnose Property near Merritt…the best intercept was 17.9 m grading 3.7 g/t Au and 32.6 g/t Ag in SN19–02, including 7.85 m @ 7 g/t Au and 59 g/t Ag…SN-19–05 returned 28.7 m @ 3 g/t Au and 13.7 g/t Ag…(true widths are estimated to be about 80–90% of reported interval lengths)…Gareth Thomas, Westhaven President and CEO, commented, “Westhaven’s inaugural 2019 drill program at Shovelnose continues to expand on the high-grade Gold South zone discovery.  Currently the drill is moving southeast along strike from hole SN18–15 (46.2 m of 8.95 g/t Au) with hole SN19–06 (~40m southeast of SN18–15) successfully intersecting Zone 1 veining (assays pending).  Westhaven will be expanding from 1 drill to 2 drills in the early summer as recent drilling and geophysics have located multiple high-priority targets”…WHN is off 11 cents at 70 cents as of 7:00 am Pacific, falling slightly below its 200-day SMA…Zenabis Global (ZENA, TSX-V), which has tumbled from a high of nearly $7 in November to below $2, says it has received conditional approval to graduate its listing from the Venture to the TSX…“Moving to the main board of one of the largest exchanges in the world is a critical milestone for the company in terms of demonstrating the strength of our business and expanding our investment appeal to a broader and global audience”…

6. Independent investment dealers such as Eight Capital and Canaccord Genuity Group are beginning to place bets on the nascent e-sports industry, according to a weekend report in The Globe and Mail…a number of Canadian independents have begun producing research and hosting conferences on e-sports, a niche industry in which skilled video-game players compete with one another in front of live audiences, both in person and on-line…although there is currently a dearth of public investment opportunities for those looking to cash in on the e-sports craze, Eight Capital CEO David Morrison says that is about to change…“There absolutely will be a medley of public plays in e-sports that will be available in the Canadian capital markets in calendar 2019, of various shapes and sizes. We’re talking to many of them”…helping early-stage companies in emerging industries access capital has long been the specialty of Canada’s independent dealers…the cannabis sector has been an obvious boon to the independents…Eight Capital and Canaccord are hoping that e-sports can provide a new source of underwriting and advisory revenues…

7. JXTG Holdings Inc., a Japan-based mining and energy conglomerate, is exploring the sale of its majority-owned Caserones Copper Project in Chile, in a deal that could fetch about $1 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report, in the latest sign that rising prices for the industrial metal are driving deal making in the sector (Copper is up more than 9% in 2019)…the sale effort comes amid expectations of sustained strength in Copper prices…this is being driven in part by a lack of investment in new mines and burgeoning demand for electric and hybrid vehicles in which the metal is used more heavily than in ordinary cars…JXTG, along with Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co. Ltd. and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. – one of Japan’s largest trading houses – acquired the Caserones Project in 2006 for $137 million…it has a mine life of 28 years…however, capital costs ballooned to $4.2 billion from the original estimates of about $2 billion, and early days have been plagued by higher-than-expected operating costs and production shortfalls…Copper concentrate output at Caserones rose to 82,000 tonnes during the April to December period from 64,000 tonnes a year earlier…but the project has been behind schedule since it started producing Copper concentrate in May 2014 in the arid mountains of northern Chile…the problems at the mine highlight the challenges now facing miners in Chile as more accessible deposits have largely been tapped out…

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