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Gold has pulled back $15 an ounce as of 5:50 am Pacific to $1,638…Silver is 24 cents weaker at $30.41…Copper is off 3 pennies to $3.79 a pound…Crude Oil is down 12 cents to $105.10 while the U.S. Dollar Index is up slightly at 79.22…

Today’s Markets

Asian markets were quiet overnight with China’s Shanghi Composite posting a 2-point gain to 2,440…European markets are up strongly despite a sharp rise in Spain’s borrowing costs at a bond auction…Spain’s Treasury issued 2.5 billion euros in 3- and 5-year bonds today, at the top end of the targeted amount and on solid demand, but yields jumped from previous auctions in February and March, fueling worries over the country’s ability to deal with its debt pile…the European Central Bank, as expected, has kept interest rates on hold at 1% and is so far resisting calls to restart its bond-buying program to ease pressure on Spanish debt…the central bank has put on hold its program for several weeks despite a rise in Spanish yields to 6%…a move above that, to 7%, is considered an unsustainable price to pay for refinancing the country’s debt…

U.S. stock index futures are pointing to a slightly higher open on Wall Street this morning…a busy day of corporate earnings reports and economic data today started with weekly claims for jobless benefits just released by the Labor Department…new U.S. claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected…initial claims dropped 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 365,000, the biggest weekly drop since early May last year…economists polled by Reuters had predicted a total of 380,000 new filings, compared with a just-revised 392,000 in the prior week…the four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, edged up 750 to 383,500 – the highest level since December…

Rainbow Resources (RBW, TSX-V) News

More encouraging news from Rainbow Resources (RBW, TSX-V) this morning which continues to show consistency and a steady determination to become the “go-to” company in exploration in the West Kootenay region of southeast British Columbia…news just came out from RBW and highlights are as follows…

1. The company has increased its Big Strike land package by nearly 50% to 12,700 hectares, staking almost all the ground available between its Rhea Property near Nelson and the former producing Second Relief Mine immediately to the south…Second Relief was the third-largest Gold-enriched skarn producer in British Columbia history…

2. Some excellent initial drill targets have been lined up for Gold Viking and International, the two properties in the Big Strike package that will be drilled first as soon as permits are received and ground conditions allow…that means Gold Viking is probably first on the agenda as that property is further south and at a lower elevation (snow melt is quicker)…

3. Interesting news from the Referendum Property which we’ve learned this morning actually has open-pit potential on its eastern side..a quartz-tourmaline stockworks system exists over an area 700 metres by 150 metres where historical near-surface Gold production has occurred with ore shipped to the Trail Smelter…this alteration zone is apparently open in all directions…this sounds like a great target, actually, for an immediate bulk sample and seems to have some geological similarities to some situations we’ve seen in northwest Quebec…”tourmaline” and “stockworks” are music to our ears…

4. On the western side of the Referendum, Rainbow will be going after a potential copper-Gold porphyry target over a 2 km trend given an historical 4.4% surface Copper showing in feldspar porphyry, and other evidence including soil analysis…this area has never been properly drilled (just three holes and 300 metres which is nothing) and even then, some intersections gave encouraging values of up to 0.25% Cu and nearly 1 g/t Au…

5. Result from recent initial field work at Jewel Ridge in Nevada are pending including assays from a sampling program as Rainbow continues to put together a Phase 1 drill program for that property in between Barrick’s Ruby Mine and Timberline’s advanced-staged Lookout Mountain Project…

Flake Graphite In West Kootenays

We’re surprised we haven’t heard anything yet from Rainbow or Anglo-Swiss (ASW, TSX-V) for that matter with regard to the graphite possibilities in the West Kootenays but we suspect this is a story that has huge potential after our discussion yesterday with Benjamin Curry from First Graphite (FGR, TSX-V)…a little-known fact is that a private company, Eagle Graphite Corp., owns one of only two natural flake graphite mines operating in North America – the Black Crystal deposit about 50 kilometres or so north of Nelson…there’s quite a large area, at least 70 kilometres north-south and 30 kilometres east-west, called the Valhalla Metamorphic Complex which is very prospective for flake graphite (highly metamorphosed rocks) and some companies have been securing land positions recently including First Graphite…Eagle Graphite produces high carbon, natural flake graphite with a purity level ranging from 93% to 99% at a mill about 18 kilometres south of the Black Crystal deposit (the mill, by the way, is about 23 kilometres to the west of RBW’s Gold Viking property)…rumor has it that Eagle Graphite is looking at an IPO which could really ignite graphite interest in the area…a geologist and a prospector we spoke to both said the Valhalla Complex is the “real deal” for potential flake graphite deposits and the fact there’s an existing mining operation gives that statement credibility…we’re continuing to investigate but it seems graphite investors have overlooked this district…

Golden Standard Ventures (GV, TSX-V)

Golden Standard Ventures (GV, TSX-V), which we put on our “Watch List” at the end of February when it was trading just below $2 a share, hit a new multi-year high yesterday of $3.03 – about a week after reporting a couple of stellar holes from its Railroad Project in Nevada…it could certainly continue to move higher but John’s chart below is good reason for some caution at the moment as overbought conditions definitely do exist on this stock at the moment…as always, perform your own due diligence…below is John’s updated chart for GV…

Note: John, Jon and Terry do not hold positions in GV.

Kaminak Gold (KAM, TSX-V)

There’s every reason to be bullish regarding exploration and potential new discoveries in the Yukon going into this summer, and of course one of the leaders of the pack there is Kaminak Gold (KAM, TSX-V) with its Coffee Project (the first 14 holes of a minimum 50,000-metre drill program were reported last week)…technically, Kaminak is looking promising at the moment with its first challenge to convincingly bust through the $2 area and then the 100-day moving average (SMA) which has flattened out at $2.20…

Note:  John, Jon and Terry do not hold positions in KAM.