Venture holds course in last week of August

Vancouver – Two days in the red were curbed by three days in the green for the S&P-TSX Venture Composite Index over the Aug 23-27 trading week, leaving the board up 9.23 points at 1488.85. The overall gain kept the Venture board on its sustained ascent, which it initiated in early July at below 1350.

Nevertheless, the summer doldrums were still apparent in the moderate daily trading volumes, which averaged 88 million. And the bears still greatly outweighed the board’s bulls: 152 Venture-listed companies fell to new 52-week lows over the week while just 45 climbed to new highs.

Rare Earth Element‘s share price continued its roller-coaster ride, this time soaring $1.05 in a week to close at $4.03. The company’s Bear Lodge project is home to the sizeable Bull Hill rare earth element (REE) deposit, which boasts 16 million inferred tonnes grading 3.46% rare earth oxides. While Rare Earth works through a scoping study on Bull Hill it is also exploring the project’s gold potential; last year the Sundance zone returned such intercepts as 175 metres grading 0.44 gram gold per tonne and 44 metres of 1.24 grams gold.

Work continues a pace at East Asia Minerals‘ Miwah project in Indonesia. The company now has three drill rigs on the property, with one focused on new exploratory targets. One drill working to connect the main zone to the northern Moon River area recently returned 0.5 gram gold over 259 metres; another hit 1.43 grams gold over 20 metres and 0.82 gram gold over 23 metres in the new Signal area to the west. East Asia also announced the petrographic studies indicate significant free gold at Miwah, in the oxide and sulphide samples.

Silver Quest Resources was one of the week’s most heavily traded stocks, moving 6.6 million shares to gain 16¢ and close at a new high of 84¢. The company closed an $8-million private placement on the strength of recent exploration results from its Capoose project in northern British Columbia and its three projects in the Yukon.

Another stock that saw more trading than usual was Bayfield Ventures. At the Burns Block property, which is directly adjacent to Rainy River Resources’ 5-million oz. namesake gold project, Bayfield drilled into 9 metres grading 12.88 grams gold, including 3 metres carrying 31.7 grams gold, early in its 20,000-metre drill program. The news lifted company’s share price 8¢ over the week to reach 55¢, a nice change from its 10¢ price in late 2009.

And one of the new Yukon darlings, Kaminak Gold, had another big week spurred on by another hot hole at its Coffee project. The second hole into the third gold zone at Coffee, known as Double Double, returned 5 metres grading 15.9 grams gold. The first hole hit 35 metres of 6.3 grams gold in early August. Kaminak’s share price rose 57¢ to reach $2.94, meaning the shares have tripled in three months. Other Yukon explorers that reached new 52-week highs include Northern Tiger Resources, Taku Gold, and Tarsis Resources.